Tutoring Annie

May has refused to allow me to pay any rent for my apartment. She says that it's very cheap, and that I'm like family. I even tried to sneak money to her by hiding it in a book I gave her as a gift, but she returned it by giving it to Michael and saying that if I still wanted to be her friend, I wouldn't try to give her money again. I didn't think this was fair as she always gave me money when she came to visit me in Canada and when I repeatedly tried to return it to her then, she always refused. Maybe I should have tried the "You can't be my friend anymore if you give me money" routine on her before, but I didn't know it was allowed. There are still many things I have to learn about Chinese culture.

So, when May asks me for a favour, I obviously can't refuse as I am deeply in her debt. She doesn't ask for much, and always gives me so much more in return. One thing she has asked me to do is tutor Annie once a week while I am here. Now, I don't agree with all the tutoring and extra academic classes that go on here, and I don't feel that I can really help Annie by meeting with her for an hour and a half once a week for three and a half months, but if it makes May feel that she is helping out her daughter a little more, than I don't see much harm in it.

On Tuesday afternoons/evenings, Annie doesn't have extra classes, so that's when we've set our lesson. I called her around 5pm and she came over. I had talked with her Grade 6 English teacher at my school and he told me that she needed a lot of help with reading strategies and applying her knowledge of sentence structure to her writing. He gave me their reader and told me that I could do one of the stories that she had missed last week due to a school trip.

At 5pm, I invited her over. Michael was really excited and then got really mad at me when he found out that I was keeping Annie all to myself. I invited him to read a book beside us while we worked, but he preferred to sulk in another room.

I soon found out the problem with Annie's reading. She can communicate just fine, but has the vocabulary of about a North American in Kindergarten. Now, kids in Canadian kindergartens can speak very well and can understand most of what is being said around them, but when it comes to words and subjects that pop up in grade six reading materials, it's just totally out of their league. And if they haven't developed any reading strategies, such as trying to guess at the meaning of the word given the context, or have no interest in the subject (the non-fiction piece we were reading was about a South Carolina blacksmith), it's basically a write-off. We struggled through three pages and then I gave up. I didn't want to discourage her. From now on, I think we'll stick to simpler books which don't contain unfamiliar words in every single sentence, and forget about grade six materials.

Then we moved on to pre-writing exercises. I found out that she and her friends write a journal everyday to each other (in Chinese) for fun where they write a half to a full page about things that have happened or other thoughts and feelings. I was pretty impressed, and felt that it shouldn't be too hard for her to find something to write about in English then. So I gave her the assignment to spend not more than half an hour writing about how crazily Michael behaves when she is around for next week. We discussed a few things that she could write and then I left it at that.

During our lesson, I asked her about where I should take my garbage. I had heard the garbage truck a few times (they blare the first two lines of "Fur Elise" over and over again - it's a good thing Beethoven's not buried in Taiwan or else I'm sure he would rise and find a way to put all those garbage trucks out of commission...) but wasn't sure about where or when to take it out. She called her father, who prompty came over from next door and took my garbage out for me. Then Annie took all my recycling. I had to run after them to see where they went so that I could do it by myself next time. Joseph (May's husband) also checked my meter because he had to report it. I hope they'll at least let me pay my utilities, but somehow I doubt I'll ever see a bill. I've got to figure out a way to repay them for all that they have done for me, but I'm a little short on ideas. Well, I still have another three and a half months to figure something out.