hellooooo.

yesterday evening was really tiring. taught jieling tuition at 7:20pm to 9:15pm and rushed to zhongwei tuition from 9:30pm to 10:50pm. reached home at 11pm, warmly welcomed by the screaming joys of baby xian xian. lol.

zhongwei is my new primary 3 student from taiwan, taipei. his command for english is pretty weak due to the lack of exposure to english language in taiwan. in fact, he's supposed to be in primary 4 but his english could only get him in a primary 3 class. it was really cells-killing to teach him because he refused to sit down and listen, hopping around the room, playing guitar a min and basketball the next.

"Do you understand what is Neighbour?"

"i am a basketball team leader you know." (in mandarin)

"answer my question"

"how old are you?" (in mandarin)

"what is neighbour? how do you spell it?"

"are you a student or a teacher?" (in mandarin)

"do you understand my question? answer me in english."

"I DON'T KNOW." (finally in english!)
"now you answer me."(in mandarin AGAIN)

"ok. i am 18. a tourism student and part time tuition teacher. do you know what is tourism?"

"so you charge my mom money?"(in mandarin)

"ARGH!"

that's basically how difficult it is to settle him down.

i tried very hard to expand his vocab and stop his habit of translating DIRECTLY from mandarin to english, but to no avail. he chit chat with me in mandarin from food to games to music, but not his work. he refused to move his brain to make a sentence structure and use "白痴造句法" (idiotic way of sentence structuring)

"peace means he ping. now, make a sentence with peace."

"WE ARE PEACE!"

bang wall. i taught him innocent, war, neighbour - and he make a sentence exactly the same as above, just changing the keyword.

"WE ARE ______"

and i can't mark it wrong because it REALLY does make sense by saying : we are innocent & we are neighbours!

one particular cute entry of his school journal:

My first week of school

two years ago i at taiwan. i look for a while here school and taiwan school are not same. taiwan school can not choose the food here can choose the food. here only can wear white shoes and white socks there what colour also can But must be sport shoes an need to wear socks so the first week of school Let me know the taipei school and singapore school are not same.

weird sentences, where are my full stops, why the sudden capital letters.

=(