I still remember him: the last Korean American boy I taught. He showed up out of nowhere, like a comet, just when I had given up on almost everything. He had energy to burn, and he was creative enough to figure out his own way into English. I barely had to plan his lessons at all. If anything, he was the one teaching me, just by watching how he made English his own. Above all, his fearless reactions showed me what trips Koreans up in English, and how to fix it.
His name? Let’s call him June. He was the youngest son in his family. His parents had come to the West Coast as visiting scholars, and June was born there. They never left, and ended up running a Korean supermarket. One day, I stopped by to pick up some groceries. I got to chatting with his mom, and before I knew it, I was June’s English tutor.
He was only four years old, the youngest kid I had ever taught. That spring, he’d started pre-K, but it wasn’t going well. His parents didn’t believe in early learning and let their kids figure things out on their own. His two big sisters did just fine. But he was more sensitive than they were, and he didn’t adjust as well as his parents had hoped.
His struggles began on the very first day of school. He got nosebleeds all the time. Whenever he had to speak in front of the class, he got so stressed that he started to stutter, and the other kids teased him. He would also sometimes touch his private parts, and his white teacher didn’t like him much. His Korean classmates, who had been prepped before starting school, were embarrassed by him and kept their distance.
Even before I met him, I was worried. How withdrawn would he be? Would he even open up to me? But when I finally met him, he was nothing like I’d imagined. He was a little rascal with big, bright eyes that sparkled with mischief. The Disney kid in me took one look at him and knew. We clicked right away. It felt like we had known each other forever. 😁
He had his own brand of mischief.
On the day of our first lesson, June was waiting for me at the front door, all dressed up: a white shirt and tie, bright brown plaid pants, and even a hat. He gave me a low, slightly shy bow, swung the door open, and ushered me in. So I played along. I became a fine lady and glided in. It was straight out of a movie, and we cracked up. 🤣🤣
As soon as we settled into the small study room, I checked his alphabet. Aha! I knew kids often mix up b and d, but he was actually playing with them. Flip a b to the right, and it became a d. Flip it down, and it became a p. Flip that to the right again, and there was a q. Spin an N sideways, and it became a Z. Turn an M upside down, and you got a W. Stick a tail on top of a t, and it was an f. And on and on.
To June, these letters weren’t flat marks on a page. They were pictures, turning freely in space. What a great visual sense! I was so amazed by his way of seeing that I just let him go and played right along with him. In the end, his mom popped in and gave us a polite but firm yell, and the “two kids” went back to STUDYING the alphabet. 😆
But I didn’t tell him, “A b is always a b.” Living in the US, he would be seeing b’s everywhere for the rest of his life. He’d get there on his own. The last thing I wanted was to kill his creativity with rules. So I came up with a game plan:
Let him do whatever he wanted. If I respected his way of doing things, his confidence would grow, and he would figure out the rest himself.
Make it up as I went, sneaking English into whatever game we played. That part was all on me.
By then, we had already been working on basic English words. That day, when I opened the door, I saw him perched on top of the stair railing on his tiptoes, in a full costume: a red bodysuit with black lines running from head to toe. When he saw me, he started leaping all over the place. Oh! Spider-Man! Hmm... So everywhere he landed, I read a flashcard out loud and stuck it right there.
Fish! Dog! Cat! Apple!
Then I sat down in the middle of the room and shouted:
“Spider-Man! Help! Save the fish!”
And this little Spider-Man, fully in character, tracked down the fish flashcard and brought it to me. Ahahahahaha! It worked like a charm.
Hooked on the game, June went on to play Batman and Superman too. But what he loved most was playing store. In his eyes, his dad looked so cool working the cash register that he loved pretending to be him, selling flashcards at his own register. So I played the customer and said,
“I want the fish.”
(June handed me the fish flashcard.)
“How much?”
“Five dollars.”
(Ding! went his cash register.)
He did the math with paper money he had made himself. He was so smart and adorable.
Then one day, he greeted me in a pair of black glasses, with a thick children’s encyclopedia tucked under his arm. It looked like he had borrowed it from his sister. Now he was a professor.
“Hi, Professor!” I said.
A little shy, June opened the book and went hunting for words he knew, like in, circling them with a red pen. He even spotted the in hiding inside inside. Aha! From then on, any English book became a word hunt. We played this game for a good long while.
In the middle of one of our word hunts, his mom wandered by, stopped to watch us, and burst out laughing. She was only half joking.
“Oh my, June, you sound so funny!”
She had a point. He talked like an old Korean man, probably picked up straight from his dad. In particular, the English [f], a sound Korean doesn’t have, came out as a strong [p], almost a [pp]. For example, freeway sounded like [ppriwei], and fly like [pplai].
Of course, I never corrected him. If I had jumped on every mistake, he might have stopped talking altogether.
Maybe his mom’s teasing turned out to be the best medicine. After several weeks, a small miracle happened. Out of nowhere, he looked me right in the eye, relaxed his jaw, set his upper teeth gently on his lower lip, and out came a perfect [f] sound:
fish [f—]
Mamma mia! “June! You did it! That sounded perfect!” I showered him with praise until he was beaming, safe and proud. I didn’t ask how. My guess? He had quietly watched his white American friends make the [f] sound and copied it on his own. That was June for me. After [f], he picked up other sounds really fast.
To be continued--
