Wow, The last few weeks were definitely interesting. Youngsil just came in one day and decided that the 7 sentence story we had written last week was not good enough--she was actually going to seriously think about it! We finally had about 3-4 sentences per page, and about 9 pages :) She must've finally decided that this book would be fun if she just gave it a chance!--or so I thought. The next week she comes in, it's "I don't want to" and "If you want a book, you write it!" and even "This is boring, let's just forget about it." I got so frustrated, but I know it's mainly because she doesn't feel confident in her language skills yet. Every time she makes a mistake on a sentence or word, she tells me to take over. And that's expected -- she wasn't raised with English, and I know her parents are also not perfect with English, either. On one hand, I want her to have a fun experience, and don't want to push too hard, but on the other, she won't let it be fun. I really hope that this week will bring about some willingness, now that most of the writing is out of the way.
One interesting thing is that she has started to practice her writing -- in a diary sort of thing. She was embarrassed when her mother told me. I think it's great that Youngsil is taking the initiative to practice and improve her writing -- it helps with grammar, handwriting, and understanding of the language, and that's just amazing. But it also must be a little bit of a sore spot for her if she doesn't want other people to know about it. As a college student, studying is what we are supposed to be doing -- for class, for a test, to learn. As an elementary school student, yeah, studying is important, but few kids actually do more than asked of them -- if that (at least, that was me when I was 6). My handwriting still isn't very good, and off the top of my head, my grammar usually has mistakes -- that's why writing is one required class at almost every age, people can always improve. But I don't think she sees it that way -- she is probably very conscious that her reading and writing level is lower than many of her classmates -- but she's bilingual! Of course as a child she would have issues with juggling the two. As a child, my brother spoke English with Japanese grammar... my mother was the only one who understood a single thing he said (some words were also combinations of the two). He used to get so upset when people couldn't understand him. But just like my brother, Youngsil only sees that she's different, and she wants to be just as good, if not better, than those around her. I already know she is an overachiever -- she pushes herself to do better always (when she wants to, at least). I'm just waiting for her mindset to overpower her fears, and then the question will be, what can't she do?
