Connecting Mandarin and English,
Chinese and
American,
people
with people
Again, No Quiet Appearance
(October 21, 2008) (return
to Homepage)
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We
met her at English Corner. Another English major but beyond our classes.
She asked if Gail could help her with a speech she was going to give in
a competition. She goes by "CC." Melody asked me to review a writing
during a class one day, which I did during our ten-minute break. Chandlar
asked if he could come by some evening to gain some tips on pronunication.
When "CC" came by, her friend Cherry came also just to visit.
Several students had asked us if we would
attend the speech competition and they gave us tickets, somewhere in the
tenth row. When we arrived we flashed our tickets and were met by the same
young lady who met us at the Chinese Cookoff. She usherd to the thrid row
dead center. I tried to show her our tickets and indicate that this is not
our assigned. She ignored my comments and told us that this was the row
for the judges. We could only chuckle inside. We knew that we have coached
the speakers, how could we be objective? Knowing there would be other judges
we also knew that our opinions would be overridden. Indeed, four of the
speakers had come to us for support and after the competition the fifth
asked for help.
The speakers were followed by 14 wondrful
solo vocalists all in English. Some of them were fabulous and it was wonderful
to hear American music. Finally there were three plays, written and performed
by English majors. Gail had helped with the "Romeo and Juliet"
one and I ended up working with the rewrite of another play which won the
competition and will go on to another competition later this month.
One doesn't have to try very hard to make
an impact and impression on these students. They so want to learn and excel.
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