During our last session, we finished the article. During these sessions, we
discussed many concepts, of which he understood all. Ooki had to learn many
words, but in return, he is now able to use these words. Whenever a new word
arises, we not only go over the word, but we also create example sentences.
This allows him to practice the word using the word as well as getting a better
grasp of what the word actually means. Obviously, not many words directly
translate into their other language’s counterpart. When we’re going over these
words and concepts from this article, Ooki always seems to be employing an
English approach. What I mean by this is that from his use of grammar and
structure, he seems to be thinking in English, as opposed to many SLLs who
think in their native tongue, then translating it. I think out of all the
surprises I obtained from Ooki, this was the biggest one.
Even as a speaker of native English, fluent Mandarin, and conversational (to
some extent) Japanese, I occasionally think in a more natural language before I
translate it into the target language. However, I would like to say that this
is due to the fact that words and phrases don’t translate the way they should. For
example, sometimes when I speak in English, I want to say a phrase from the
Chinese language that gives the meaning I want to convey. However, this phrase
does not exist in English; therefore I have to think about what the phrase
really means in a roundabout way before I am able to express it in English.
In the end, Ooki was able to have a grasp on the entire article. He read
the article out loud and explained each (sentence) idea to me. Obviously, it
took him a while to get through it (5 pages in 3 (hours) days), but the idea is
still there. Since this was an intensive comprehension reading activity, I
would say that this was very impressive.
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