慕紀客蓓如是說

In Kevin’s English class, I always let him call me Miss Liu but not Mom. And when he does that, we are kind of going into a play where he plays the student and I play the teacher. We are not mom and son till the class is over.

We will read books, talk about things that he is interested in, play games and do some creative writing.

He is a quick learner especially in speaking. He started to call papa and mama at 8 months. No later than 18 months old that he began to use complicated sentence structure while other same age kids were still trying to pronounce words in a childish way, i.e. calling things with the repeated and simplified form, like “mama” not “mother”, “mam-mam” not “I want to eat something”.

I took 5-year-old Kevin to a French class a few months, where the teacher was surprised of Kevin’s pronunciation. The other parents admired his precise and fine adjustment in French and English.

I know that he can learn fast to speak a lot of languages. But unfortunately, I don’t have that much resource and time to educate him since he has to practice two music instruments since 5.

Music is also a kind of language. You have to make sounds and to communicate with others. Music is also art. It is a way to express yourself in a beautiful style.

I don’t regret that music occupied a big bunk of our daily lives though he might sometimes. Because he is a good language learner so he is also good in learning music. He has the nature of sharing with voice and songs. He has the gift.

What I’m going to say is that I know I can find many good English teachers, much better than me, for Kevin. I choose to teach him by myself is not because of money or my ego, if there is any, but is because that might save us time, the most precious thing a person could offer.

I can teach him in the class and off the class, so he can learn anytime. I can decide to give him assignment or not, it is quite important when he has concert or performance exam. I know what he likes so I can surf the internet with him to find an article talking about the medieval castle wall’s battlement/crenellation structure, i.e. merlons and embrasures. I know how he likes Gundams and how willingly he wants to share the Gundams stories he made. And I can use that as a decoy to ask him to do a lot of things that he doesn’t even know that he could.

I will let him go to some other places to learn English in the future of course. And I know he will love the passion of learning languages as much as I do.