字字字英文教室 時代雜誌解析 英文單字倍增課程 (歡迎免費試聽課程)

 Wonder

The moon of the light,
The sea of the blue,
Everywhere, everywhere, on the earth.
However, I saw the petals
Blowing in the air like stars

An American mother showed me this poem, Wonder, written by her 6-year-old boy. There are no difficult words in it, but somehow those simple words get off the ground, transporting the reader to the realm of a dreamy world. His Wonder makes me wonder: Would our six-year-olds come up with poems like that? Maybe, if their parents wouldn’t cram them with too much knowledge that blocks their imagination.

The mother proudly showed me another poem, Twinkle:

Twinkle 

O mother,
Your beautiful eyes,
They twinkle,
Like stars.
Mother,
Your eyes,
Whenever they open,
My heart feels nice.

I looked at the mother when I finished reading it, and indeed the mother’s eyes twinkled. Parents like that are unusual. I often have parents coming to me asking how to help their kids pass certain English tests. Those parents’ eyes rarely twinkle; instead, they often look concerned, insecure, anxious, or puzzled. You could sort of imagine that those worries would be carried through their kids’ lives, and it is difficult to stretch creativity when too much worry is in the way.

I asked the American mother what kind of learning environment she gave the boy. With her eyes twinkling again, she said that she just wanted him to be happy.

I went to this class to do substitute teaching

One said to me that he did not want to learn English because he hated president Bush. I said I was surprised he got so political at such a young age. Another told me that they are not learning English, but rather “American English.” Yet another said to me that I was so stupid that I did not even know how to tell the whole class to be quiet. I told him that I have been trying to be smart all my life.

A girl just sitting in the front told me that there’s no need to learn English because she will kill herself when she is 20 grin

That disturbing remark did not quite match her sunny smile. Whether she was joking or manipulative I don’t know, or, maybe, nowadays, like those 9/11 hijackers, it’s cool wanting to die.

I still persuaded her to learn English, in case she decides to live when she is 20. There is still such a lot of world to see, and she would see more in English.

In my teens, I bought a set of English-learning books that came with 7 audio cassette tapes to save my English. I read the books and listened to those tapes over and over but could not understand much. After that, there was no apparent improvement in my English, but the experience triggered my interest to learn the language. To this date, I still have those tapes though they are no longer useful.

Now students mainly use CDs to learn English. Amy*, a high school student, told me her school demands that every student subscribe to an English magazine that comes with a CD. However, no student – not even one, she said – uses the materials. Instead, some students use the magazine as a lunchbox tray, and most use the CDs to toss at each other as if they were Frisbees. Owning learning materials certainly is not equivalent to learning from it.

Lord, how we have changed. In terms of price, user-friendliness, durability, and sound quality, the CD is far superior to the cassette. The problem with CDs is that they are easy to produce – they are a dime a dozen now – and thus, less valuable. Besides, they often come out so fast and in such high numbers that students like Amy are eventually overwhelmed by too much information: they don’t know how to use the information and don’t know where to start under the cramming education climate. Naturally, CDs become Frisbees.

I flipped through the 20-something English articles in the magazine.  Most of them were quite good. I picked one article on fashion designing (Amy’s interest) and told her that every month she only needs to read one article and listen to the sound file from the CD. Of course, she may read more if she likes. Now she is the only one in her class to really use the magazine-CD.

Less could be more. Haven’t we learned?

When we first met, Paul* told me that he knew nothing about English.  I thought he was being modest.  Later I found out he was simply being honest.

Paul was chief of a government organization overseeing more than a hundred staff.  Busy as he was, he had never learned English and never needed to.  But that, of course, was then.  He told me that gradually he was being “confined” by his subordinates who more or less knew some English.  He felt belittled when English was needed.  “It’s like putting myself in a house without windows,” he said.

Paul was in his early 60s, and teaching him English was unlike teaching a young kid.  My first challenge came when helping him to pronounce the alphabet, but his iron lips make pronunciation learning difficult: for hours of our first lessons, he couldn’t even pronounce sounds like [v] or [z], no matter how hard I tried.  This is not gonna work, I thought.

But Paul also had an iron will.  He knew he had to kick those learning barriers; otherwise, they would kick him.  Paul listened to the English CDs every day trying to imitate those sounds.  The second week I saw Paul, he sounded like a different person.  One month and four classes later, he already learned all the phonetic symbols.  Those sounds he pronounced were struggling to get out, but they were about right.

I noticed that to Paul studying English was not like studying; it was more like breathing, breathing the air that had long been missing.  After the English alphabet, he started to learn simple words like “cat” or “book” – he was slowly opening up the window to breathe.

Now I am teaching Paul simple sentences such as “This is a computer” or “Today is Monday.”  He awkwardly recites those sentences over and over again, seven days a week.  He reads English before going to bed, and he has English dreams full of those sentences.

Still a long way to go and Paul knows it.  But he believes that he is able to communicate in English in 4 months.  That does not sound too far-fetched, considering the iron will he has.  A man of determination, you know, is capable of anything.

Time

Reading is a way to gain useful information and it can also be an entertaining activity. But for many who have been learning English for years, reading English is just pulling teeth. How could we access information or be entertained through a foreign language that contains so many words and cultural allusions we don’t understand?

Like how we develop Chinese reading skills, English reading takes time. Not just weeks or months; it takes much longer than that. You are slowly developing your reading ability but maybe you don’t feel it. Don’t stop if there are certain things you don’t understand when reading. Be curious and treat problems like long lost treasures. Just keep going and in the end you will breathe the fresh air.

My friend Kimberly* has a small library that contains so many English books. The books are not just for decking out the room or to impress her guests; Kim really uses them. I wondered how she could consume so much information in English. She told me that she started to read routinely in English in college. It wasn’t fun, but she was so curious about certain information she found in those English materials such as arts or short stories. When she was in the US starting her Master’s program in Education, reading wasn’t about curiosity; it was about not being kicked out of the school. Every day, she encountered so many new words and all she could do was try to know them. She continued to do the same thing and it was a long time before she felt she could read English without struggle. But once she got to the tipping point, there was no turning back. She started to read, comprehend, and have fun with different subject matters. Now, she doesn’t read for any English tests or school assignments; she does it for herself. “English is an important channel for me to obtain bountiful information and enjoyment,” she said.

Kimberly told me that to her, reading English is like walking in a long dark tunnel in the beginning, and it sure didn’t feel good to walk in the dark. “But,” she said, “just keep walking and keep groping forward…at the end of the tunnel, you will see light. You will be free then.” Surveying the books in her library, I knew what she meant. Now she has the English abilities that are difficult for others to measure up to, and no one can take those abilities away from her.

The Thin Line

 
Mat* was sitting in the corner of the conference room – as far away from me as possible.  The company hired me to teach them English tests.  Some students had great desire to learn; others, like Mat, were attending the class because their bosses told them to.

I walked over to Mat and asked him to read a paragraph for me.  He looked at me with those eyes, begging me to give him a break.  “Well…,” I said, “…maybe we can do it…some other time.”

During class recess, I saw Mat outside the conference room.  He looked away avoiding eye contact.  I did not even have the chance to bid him hello.  Then, I realized that I was not an English teacher; I was, at least to Mat, an English monster.

After the class, I went right to the company’s restaurant and ordered something to eat.  An NBA game was on TV; it was the final playoff game between San Antonio and Detroit.  Mat was a few tables away – he was also watching the game.  He headed toward me and started to talk about NBA games: his favorite players, teams and all that.  I listened attentively, not wanting to miss a word.

I thought, This is another Mat.  Just a few minutes ago, this guy seemed to have hard time speaking English, now he was pronouncing basketball stars’ names such as Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Richard Hamilton in fluent English.  He should have good basics to practice English if he wanted to.

What stopped him then?  I don’t know.  It seemed there was this thin line between his love and hate for English – see how beautifully he pronounced those NBA stars’ names.  Was it possible for him to cross the line to the love side?  Can he apply his NBA passion to English learning?  Very likely, I think.  If regular textbooks are difficult to digest, he can try to learn the language from NBA games.  Why not?

Love

When Carl was 2, his mother read him children’s stories before tucking him in. Then he was too young to understand anything about the stories, but he liked it.  The mother’s voice was better than any lullabies.

The mother often had tons of workload in the office and needed to continue to work after office hours. She was always exhausted when it was around 10 o’clock at night, but reading Carl stories was the last job in a day – and also the most important, however silly those children’s stories were.

Gradually, those words from the mother lips started to take shape in various forms – castles, forests, monsters, unicorns, princesses, witches… – a wonderland was thus created by the mother and it drifted into Carl’s dreams every night.

Carl is 10 now and he loves to read. Reading is such a major part in his life that he can’t sleep without doing some reading. He knows that there are more than just castles or monsters hidden in sheets of paper.

Many parents think money can buy their children knowledge. It can’t always.  Love can.

I once met a French guy who told me that he did not like to talk to some Taiwanese whose English was not good.  Wait a minute, I thought, This guy’s English had a strong French accent and was very difficult to understand, and he complained about our people’s English!  And he taught English!!

Another time, I was talking to a Japanese client over the phone.  The connection of the phone line was good but something did not seem right.  The client talked on and on and on in his Japanese-accented English – and the way he spoke made me question my English ability.  Wait a minute, I’d been studying English hard and now this guy seemed to force me to adjust my English to suit his Japanese – or Japanese English, for that matter.  And, why did he sound so confident?  Where was that confidence from?Most students I met, on the other hand, fear English.  Likewise, it is a big question as to where the fear is from.  The statement “My English is not good” is being heard over and over again, and it has become tiring to hear it.  It sounds like asking for people’s pity.  Normally, you get it when asking for it.

But, just for a minute, and for the so many minutes that will follow, let’s pretend our English is good.  Think of the two great pretenders I met – the Frenchman and Japanese – who showed no fear when they talked; they didn’t give a damn; they simply expressed.  So when we speak, try to speak with force; when we write, write with ease, regardless of our English proficiency.  We don’t need to have good English to do so; no one does.  With time, that pretending will become reality.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

    -- Stephen King "On Writing" 2000

I have this writing course in which students read for 90 minutes and use 30 minutes to write their reflections on what they read. I don’t care what they write, as long as they write.

During the writing session, the students, especially Mark*, would ask me how to spell certain words. One time he didn’t ask me any spelling questions; he just buried himself in the desk and I could see his pen running fast on the paper – the pen virtually led him. Suddenly, Mark rose from his seat, charged toward me, and shot out his hand giving me his writing, his face pumping red.  “That was fast,” I said. It was not just fast; it was a lot. Normally, it takes a student about 30 minutes to come up with a half-page; there Mark gave me two full pages in 20 minutes.

Mark wrote about his recent breakup with his childhood sweetheart – so recent that it happened only a few hours earlier. He went to her school to pick her up but there she suggested splitting up, saying things like “you are too good for me” and “It’s nobody’s fault,” the kind of lines we are all too familiar with from third-rate TV soap operas. Helpless and powerless, he didn’t know how to react. Mark went home, lay down, and tried to understand the situation. It wasn’t easy. He rose and started to dial, but the phone was not answered.  He continued to dial and dial and dial…until the girl’s phone was out of power from the constant ringing. Mark rushed out of his place heading straight to her campus to look for her, but she was not in the library; she was not in the gym; she was not in the restaurant; she was not in the dorm. Mark kept running, his sweat mixing with tears. It was hell.

He concluded his writing with a climax – he finally spotted her riding on another guy’s motorbike, holding onto him tightly. “It was a strange feeling,” Mark wrote.

Grammatical mistakes aside, Mark’s writing was, mama, at full throttle. Every word was jumping and charged with high voltage. There was so much energy in it that there was no escaping it. Reading it was like reading Apple Daily.  Actually, it was better than 10 Apple Daily articles combined. I told Mark that the writing was very good. He looked at me, puzzled, not realizing that he had written a good story.

Mark didn’t come to the class in the following week. One month later, he showed up with a smile and said hello to other students. It seemed he was back to his normal self. He told me that he just had a 3-week vacation in Hawaii. I asked him: “Is everything okay now?” “Everything is fine,” said Mark, his face beaming.

When we first met, she spread out a big piece of paper on the desk with the song lyrics of "Smoke Gets in Your Eye" she transcribed earlier and wanted me to read those lines for her.  Every word she wrote down was as big as a giant beetle: they were big and clearly written.  Then, she took out an antique recorder and awkwardly pressed the "record" button, and I started to read those lyrics for her.  In the MP3 era, it's neat to see people using this old gadget.

She became a regular in my class.  She raised questions, took notes, and read English out loud in class.  Her pronunciation was not correct yet every word was loud.  From time to time, she would operate her little machine to record class sessions.  Those tick-tick sounds of the machine showed so much of her urge to learn.

Sometimes she complained that the words in the class handouts were too small.  That's easy; I just augmented the font size of the words and printed the handouts for her again.  With font size 36, every word looked bigger even than her "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" handwriting; they were now big enough to be "exploding in your face."  She was happy.

She told me she wanted to talk to her great-grandson when he came back from the US.  The boy loved her, but there seemed to be a little communication problem.  “This year will be different!” She said.

Somehow people stop learning when they pass certain age, as if learning is the thing for the young.  Many do nothing but watch TV all day long after they retire; they are often labeled as “couch potatoes” – I think “couch zombies” is more like it.  She was different; that fire was still burning in her eyes, and would continue to blaze for quite some time.  Wasn’t she a beautiful woman?  She IS THE beautiful woman.

Josh* was in the reading room reading a thick book.  There were other kids in the same room playing computer games or chatting, but Josh didn’t seem to get bothered.  I went over to him and found that he was reading the English version of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth installment of the Harry Potter series.  It was surprising.  However popular Harry Potter was, it was difficult even for an adult to read, and Josh was only 8.  Curious, I asked Josh if he could understand the book.  He said: “Well…just some…”  He blushed.  I pointed at some words on the page to know if Josh knew them, and he either shook his head or guessed them wrong.  Finally, I pointed at “reckon” and Josh replied: “Maybe…it means ‘think.’”  Josh was right this time, though he was not so sure.

It’s easy to make out the situation: Josh focused on the words he knew – rather than whining on the words he didn’t know – to make sense of the Harry Potter story.  As I had just learned, it’s unlikely that Josh would know most of the words in the book.  However, those few words he knew gave him enough clues to somewhat brighten up the story.

On the other hand, many adults – especially smarter ones – often complain that there are too many words in English; they have this preoccupation that it’s important to know many words in order to read.  Probably those unknown words in a text make them feel insecure and reading becomes repulsive.  In the end, they end up reading very little because of the fear.  Uncertainties stop them from moving forward.

I don’t know what that is, but there must be something in the society that educates people to limit their perceptions – maybe it is the unacceptability of mistakes.  In the competitive business world, a tiny human error can cause an unrecoverable disaster.

But reading is a different matter.  Imagine reading as an adventure in which you will never get punished for making mistakes – and those mistakes are important stepping stones for you to climb higher and to explore more.  Josh was only 8 and knew little; he could only use his imagination to guess the part he did not understand when reading Harry Potter.  I don’t think he was some kind of child prodigy; he simply had no fear of the unknown – his naïve curiosity was not yet polluted by the adult rationality.  To be sure, he might understand only very little from the book, but his attitude in learning was already better than most adults.  He did not complain that he did not know this or that word when reading.

Because he did not know how to.

Joe looked stupid, but he wasn't.  When Joe sat there in the class, it seemed the purpose was simply to sit there: his eyes were wide-open, but his mind was obviously setting somewhere else, wherever that was.

But sometimes, maybe 3% of the time, probably on a whim, Joe was suddenly attentive and asking me questions, and I would grab those precious moments to answer them.  He could understand conjunctions or make sense of subordinate clauses in a matter of minutes.  When Joe was quick, he could be really quick.

One day, Joe’s father came to the cram school and peeped through the classroom window; there he saw Joe was spacing out again.  Joe’s father was furious.  After the class, right in front of everybody, he scolded Joe for not being attentive in the English class and for wasting the tuition fee he paid.  Joe didn’t take it well; he doubled the volume and yelled back – he was virtually screaming at his father, saying things like his father’s inconsideration and all that.  The father’s face turned blank.  He turned around, got out of the school, and got in his car.  Joe, still shouting and yelling hysterically, was one step behind.  He went over and kicked his father’s BMW repeatedly like a piece of junk.  Not saying a word, the father just drove away, leaving Joe there crying and screaming, with tears smeared all over his face.  We teachers and students were puzzled by the scene.

Other students told me that this happened a lot.  It always started with the father’s criticism to Joe, and Joe would get offended easily, but the situation had never got so out of hand.  Of course, gossips about the father being powerless or Joe reckless followed.  I don’t know; maybe Joe was tired of never getting credit for any progress he had made.

Shortly afterward, I was at the bus stop.  Joe walked toward me.  He looked calm now.

"Weijen…I…can you lend me some change to take a bus?"

"So, you didn’t get in your father's car."  I struggled through my pocket for coins and gave him 15 dollars.

"I need only 10…I have some too. Here."  He returned me the 5 dollars.

"Boy, next time…don't shout at your father in public,” I said, “do that at home."  Joe gave me a bitter smile.

His bus came, he hopped on the bus and off it went.  He did not say "bye bye" to me; he was not in the mood to say "thank you" either. 

I don’t understand.  Did Joe have to make such a scene in front of everybody just because of his father’s negative remark?  Did it matter that much that Joe had to stay attentive in class all the time?  If Joe didn’t learn English well, so what?  No big deal, really; life goes on.  Joe still had that 3 percent of time paying attention.  The percentage should increase when he gets older.  It will.

Tiffany told me that she started learning English when she was 13, and that was also the year she first read National Geographic magazine (國家地理雜誌).

Of course she couldn't read the magazine then; she couldn't even understand simple English.  But she was so drawn into those beautiful pictures of Yosemite National Park (優勝美地國家公園) in the magazine that it seemed the size of her heart mattered more than did her ability.  She looked up all those words one by one in a dictionary.  After one month, she finished the article.  She only had faint idea of what the article said; a brilliant start nevertheless.

Pretty soon, those school grammar books could not satisfy her curiosity; she had to go to bookstores to find other books.  While other students were struggling with English, Tiffany just wanted to know more through the language, however ineffectively.  At 16, she entered Taipei First Girl High School without much trouble, as she did Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of National Taiwan University 3 years later. 

Now, Tiffany, an English teacher, is in her early 50s.  She has published many books on English learning and owns a small English school.  I met Tiffany only once at a friend's company and the conversation last for about 30 minutes.

If there were no Yosemite National Park or National Geographic magazine for Tiffany, there were still English tests, pushy teachers or parents, but, to be sure, they would not be as effective as the attractions of Yosemite.

Would it be nice if everyone could, intentionally or accidentally, find his or her own Yosemite as early as possible?

Maya took an English test in 2004, in which a question in the reading comprehension test asked: “What is the definition of ‘phantasmagoria’?”  Maya had never seen the word before.  She thought the word looked like a combination of phantom (which means “ghost” or “illusion.”  She also knew the famous play, the Phantom of the Opera) and morph (which means “change image”).  So she guessed the meaning from the context and wrote "It means something keeps changing its shape" on the answer sheet.

Maya’s friend Michael showed her a novel, "Midnight's Children." (by Salmon Rushdie) He told her that the story was very imaginative and the writing was beautiful.  Maya browsed through the pages and encountered "phantasmagoria" again.  She asked him the meaning of it.  "Let's see...here we have phantom...I really don't know," said Michael.  Though Michael, an American, didn’t know the exact meaning, his western background probably guided him through the book without much trouble.  As soon as Maya was home, she looked up the word.  It means "bizarre image" or "ever-changing scene."  Then, she thought that she might have answered correctly to the test question.

Maya was reading a novel, the Taipei Mutt, (by Eric Mader-Lin) and she encountered the word again in the line: “…Block after block it goes on like this: there’s the crowded phantasmagoria of shops…”  So, in the book, “phantasmagoria” is used to describe the ever-changing forms of Taipei’s shops – right next to 7-11, you might see Hang Ten or Watson’s or whatever.  By now, Maya’s grasp of the difficult word was secured.

What will happen to “phantasmagoria” in Maya’s brain?  Who know?  Nothing is certain.  The word might remain there.  Or it might be slowly drifting away if Maya stops reading English.

The Entrance Examination was just a few weeks away, and Jim, along with the rest of the classmates, was hopeless.  The teachers already gave up on the whole class and about two-thirds of the students were absent.  Jim didn’t want to go to school but had no other places to go either.  While students of other classes were busying themselves preparing for the big test, Jim and his classmates were doing all kinds of strange activities in the classroom: gambling, chatting, reading comic books, or listening to music.  It was like a vacation.

One day, Jim asked his good friend Frank* to stay after school.  Jim planned to steal some English reference books from other classes, because most students didn’t bring their books home; they kept them in their desk drawers.  Frank thought that was a terrific idea: he too was tired of gambling or doing nothing in school; it would be nice to do something different for a change.

They made sure no one was around and went through a few classrooms.  Frank covered Jim while he was “working.”  In just 10 minutes, Jim “collected” more than 100 reference books from those desk drawers.  They carefully stuffed the books into their backpacks, sneaked out of school alleys, clambered up the wall, and got themselves safe into the street.  They divided those books into two piles.  Jim took the pile with many English books and Frank took the other.  They smiled at each other with a great sense of accomplishment.  It was a good day.

Days went by as if nothing had happened.  No one reported burglary.

Jim didn’t go to the Entrance Examination, and he didn’t read those books he stole either – not even open any of them; he would have hard time reading them anyway.  It was more than a decade later that he started to browse them because “English suddenly made sense.”  He didn’t know why; he just began to read a lot, and those stolen English reference books were a great help.  And once he got started to read, he never stopped. 

X  X  X  X

Now, Jim teaches English.  I need to consult him about English whenever I have questions.  I didn’t know how he learned so much English; now I do after he told me the story.  He didn't know why English suddenly became interesting to him at that moment.  Nor did he know why he stole those books.  Maybe it was his youthful frustration, or he just liked English, though he understood very little of the language then.  This petty crime happened more than 30 years ago, but, make no mistake: Jim talked about it as if it was some kind of heroic deed.

I told Jim that now I knew his secret, I would rat on him.  He paused for a second and said: “Oh…in fact…you should….after all, I was guilty of stealing those books, and I owe a lot to those book owners, whoever they were.”

Edison is very knowledgeable in English.  He can easily spell out difficult words and their phonetics.  He has a clear understanding of grammar -- he is quick to point out others' grammatical mistakes.  Edison has hundreds of English dictionaries and reference books and he uses them thoroughly.  The problem is, he does not APPLY those rules to real situations; he does not use the language in life; he does not even read.

When Hilda speaks English, you would wonder whether she has ever studied English.  She mispronounces almost every word and there are tons of mistakes in her expressions.  Yet she uses the language to the fullest to get her messages across.  Believe it or not, Hilda is a tour guide.  Armed with her broken English, she brings people to different countries around the world.  When she talks to foreigners, she is confident and earnest, and her hand gestures are always there to help communication.  Once I heard an American commenting on Hilda's English: "No one's English is better than Hilda's."  The irony is, Hilda is unlikely to pass any English test.

Edison is strong in his linguistic ability, but not his communicative ability.  Hilda is just the opposite.  Then, one question arises: What is the purpose to learn a language?  "Well, to communicate," you would say.

It does not make sense if so many people cannot even express simple ideas after learning the language for a long time.  We assume that we have to learn grammar well in order to speak.  So, the logic goes, we can't communicate if we are not good at grammar.  True, tight control of grammar can facilitate communication, but, to me, it is not that essential.  Edison and Hilda are real people and here we have a comparison.  You would complain that you cannot remember all those grammatical rules in English, but I think we need to demystify our fear of the English grammar.  If you use the language often, eventually, the English grammar will follow you around.

It’s very difficult to teach Sandra. She did not think like normal people. When she told me things, it was hard to understand her. Worse, when she expressed herself in class, she babbled on and on and on, and no way to stop her. Another teacher told me that Sandra’s husband left her and this might explain her restlessness.

Afterwards, Sandra stopped talking; she didn’t even listen. She just came to the class and started to write hoping that her writing could improve. Again, it’s difficult to make out her writing. When I asked her what she was trying to say, her explanation would confuse me further, and I could only pretend I understood. When I explained English grammar to her, she did not grasp it. So I just edited her writing and tried not to edit too much. She was very happy because she thought she had improved.

In fact, she had not.

 Her writing did improve after 6 months. Gradually, I understood her writing – her words started to make sense and the organization of her writing was also improved. This was amazing, considering that she just sat there and wrote. One day, Sandra wrote: “My husben to china, he not back, I vary mess he.” (My husband went to China and he has not come back. I miss him very much.) 

Maybe it took her very long to learn to express herself in English. It was good that she finally did.