Challenging Tuesday

Jewel (not her real name), my 46-year old student was absent for a week. I was informed that her father was gravely ill and she needs to attend to him.

She is, currently, my greatest challenge since I started teaching for JC-APE, a Korean institute devoted to ESL learning.

An absolute beginner, she was my most unique student since the only English words she can utter are just YES and NO.

It was a good thing that I learned Hangul from my previous employers so I thought that teaching her is as easy as ABC. My colleagues were quite impressed on how I handle my students in just a click of my hand, constantly asking me for strategies on how to teach efficiently. Jewel was doing a wonderful job in her lessons. Day after day, I saw her improvement and I felt so happy.

I was so excited to see her on my roster and made a note to prepare a special lesson plan for her.
At the end of our meeting, I was flabbergasted.

I spoke with her and asked "How are you?", she answered, "How are you?"
I repeated my greeting, and twice she answered the same.

I told her, "Jewel, I am asking you a question. Please answer it." in Hangul.
And thrice she said, "How are you?"

"Okay," I muttered. I don't know what just happened but it seems my student had a sudden case of short-term amnesia and forgot everything that we had talked about.

I went through our lesson anyway. It looked like she needed a little bit of refresher. But as time passed, a realization struck me that not even a bit of our lessons were remembered.

So I told her in Hangul, "I'm sorry sweetheart, but it looks like we'll have to start our lesson from the beginning and I don't care if it will take us a year to learn the basic grammar."

She understood, thank goodness and told me in fragments that she'll study hard. "I'm sorry Erica. Tomorrow, I studying very many."

Agreed.

Because no matter how much effort I put in teaching, if the student is not willing to take an extra mile to learn, I can't do anything.

Let's see.