Service #3

Another new service project I'm involved in now is tutoring, which I started last week Monday.

The child I'm tutoring is a Japanese boy named Rei in 4th grade, who can't speak English. When I went, I found out there were many other kids who had trouble with English, but Japanese just was a language none of the language helpers were compatible with. My job is to come once a week during his classes and work on his school work with him, which at the moment he writes in Japanese, and improve communication between Rei and the teacher.

Last Monday (10th of October), the teacher (my old 4th grade teacher) wanted me to work on helping him translate a piece he wrote about an outing in Japanese. Rei seemed a little taken aback at first, not knowing how to react to me. I think the session went really well because by the end, he opened up more, and we got half of the translating done, which helped me also to see his level of English (some vocabulary but with no sense of grammar). I also noticed his personality and his age enables him to not have problems making friends  even without having to speak the language. However he's also learning French (also a new language) at the same time, which worries me.

Today we worked on the last half of the translating. I was glad Rei seemed to be happy to be doing this, and although he gets bored fairly easily, he learns quickly. Although I'm not keen on teaching him much grammar because he's still young and can learn without it, I want him to get a hang of past tense words, and learn words like "first" "then" "next" "because" "but". I also realized that according to him, his mother is keen on him learning English and she helps out with his homework etc. What I hope is that I'm not confusing him by teaching him English really differently from his mother.