Shou Wang

“Hang on to hope” is the name of the school where I last taught children how to handle their oral English. They were thought to be too young to learn on their own. I remember parents anxious to get their children ahead of the curve so they rammed English lessons down their throats so they can qualify to enter the bilingual schools like Yu Chai.

At first, the parents were belligerent about the no-textbook approach their child’s new teacher followed. After all, they invested heavily on many aids provided by the Cambridge/Oxford/Princeton Press related publications that might have been hastily copied by enterprising shops in Shanghai and Beijing. Besides, learning meant suffering. Parents came prepared to sit through the hour session to make sure their child paid attention. The children were so fear stricken with stern Mom’s look in the class that their brain shriveled under the pressure of sessions. One mother even interjected herself in a class when her child did not answer fast enough, and responded as a matter of pride to a question for her “baby.”

I allowed parents to remain in the classroom, ever looking for the opportunity to hit “two birds with one stone” (an unfortunate metaphor) until I reminded myself that my priority were the kids; the parents only a distant second. Not surprisingly, when the children were left to themselves with the teacher, the learning process accelerated.

Our method was simple. Students listened to what was uttered, and repeated them so they can hear their own vocal chords making sounds. We shunned reading; the focus was on hearing, so I got them to listen (ting) and repeat (chungfu).

For a start, we focused on what they heard publicly. We had ample materials. They listened to English songs but they did not repeat the words since mimicking is a gift and a talent. Not many claimed the ability to sing, the first balloon to be punctured since everyone can utter a sound.

One song used was familiar, about butterflies (hudie), sang first in Chinese and later, in English. There were three such songs. The translations were not standard Oxford, but a Chinese singer sang them with “Chinese characteristics”! That’s when I came up with the Deutsch englisCHe word to denote the British Isles’ mixed Celt, Norman, and Angle tongues, now getting global massaging including that of the Chinese (CH) with its own characteristics.

The trick is to get the students to pronounce words, letting them hear themselves do so. They needed to hear themselves repeat the word. This seemed to be a step skipped in the classroom as the intent was usually to “understand” meaning; they were taught how to use the dictionary, write and recognize words, but for all practical purposes, retained the Chinese characters, and forgot the English word save when it was memorized before taking tests. We unearthed other songs in the popular media, particularly from animated movies. I will get a lot of mileage from Frozen in the coming months to come.

A recitation that I used with motion patterned after the tai-chi without bothering with meaning is about a watermelon, Yi ge da xi gua, familiar to local audiences. We start with breathing, deeply and continuously, sans stress or strain. The same goes with the movement of muscles and bones, where the stressed chop and jab, usually associated with martial arts, takes gracious form in fluid body muscle and bone movement, and heavy soul (breathing).

I have one big watermelon.

I slice it in half.

One for you, and one for me.

The motions are simple. We stand with feet slightly apart, children facing teacher, beginning with a sustained deep inhaling through the nose and exhaling of breath through the mouth while arms are down; palms facing inward are then lifted to the middle of the body trunk, palms now crossed and turned down and out to the top of the stretch and swinging outward to make the form of a big “O” ending with palms resting together in front below the stomach. This was done while loudly reciting the first two lines above.

The “slice” part began where the big “O” ended, the palms facing up, the right atop the left were raised just to the level of the chest, turning it so both faced in and then out until both palms reached the top of the stretch and with palms together like the universal gesture of prayer were brought down to cut the front air straight down in half, palms pointing to the ground together.

The “belonging” part had the hands with limp wrists raised back, the left above the right and shoving a cloud to the side, and doing the reverse on the right side.

It was an uncomplicated exercise, with the students mouthing their English words to gestures they already knew on a ritual they already understood. They listened and repeated, a lesson we wanted them to internalize for learning to learn on their own. Lessons advanced to describe sense experiences, express feelings, articulate thoughts, and declare acts. It followed a natural process. That simple!