I am a forgetful person, so I am putting this on record. She told me that she had problem teaching him because he’s not concentrating, and asked if I could teach both of them. I would have taken over the task if I can teach both during the short stint of 100 minutes but that translates shorter tuition time per person and its not gonna be good for them. I can’t believe my ears that she actually asked knowing the constraints of time, and other limitations. While she might be right that he need someone authoritative doing the teaching, I thought she had not put in her best efforts turning this into a vicious cycle. During many occasions, I have related to her that its important to speak the mother tongue during tutorial but she refuse to listen, can one imagine a Chinese language teacher giving lectures in English 80% of the time? I have no doubts about her standards in the Chinese language – she did her As majoring the language, but I am concerned that she is not using the appropriate method to teach the mother tongue. The other problem was her bad attitude and stubbornness. At the end of tutorial, she asked for assistance on a single character that describe the sound of pants tearing apart. It was getting late, and after some searching, we still couldn’t find the appropriate character and suggested to him to check with his teachers the next day. But I am still there checking the dictionary … I told her that we should persevere in what we do, but she rebutted “你可以自己坚持…“ and that implies that I can continue to persevere but not her. I was dumbfounded by her comments, continue searching for that character and I managed to find one that is close enough. Now, I am contemplating if I should let her continue… no point forcing the issue if she is not interested. Perhaps, I should go to their place from 7pm – 10pm so there’s more tuition time for both of them.
