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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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Words Words Words 字字字英文教室
聯絡方式
Tel: (02)2537-6169
Fax: (02)2933-1080
Address：松江路204巷11號１樓（松江民生路口，御書園旁巷口進入）
Blog: http://learnby.pixnet.net/blog
E-mail: weijen.lin@gmail.com
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 About Bruce
 
  “Using No Way as Way, Having No Limitation as Limitation”, said by Bruce Lee (李小龍). 語言的教學與功夫的操練有著類似的邏輯，這也是給自己取名Bruce的原因。閱讀時代雜誌的年限已不可考，從高中時代開始即大量獵取世界新聞，尤其以國際外交、中美關係居多，在2004年，取得全民英檢高級證書。除了任教於語言中心外，也兼職在陽明醫學院、中華電信及在各大銀行擔任講師，課程內容仍以Bruce最擅長的新聞英文及單字解析為主。
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字靈魂課程
 將單字課程取名為字靈魂，主要是希臘和拉丁字首字根就如同英文單字的靈魂，能夠抓住字首字根的意思，才算是真正懂得單字的應用及所表達的意涵。
希臘和拉丁字首字根有穏定單字定義的功能，對大多數西方人來說，經常無意識地使用字首字根在語言文化的認知上，因此Bruce也給字首字根取名為Word Anchor and Western Souls or Western Subconsciousness.
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