The distance between "him" and Taiwan - Difficult transition for international transfer students

Section 1 Crossover

One midsummer afternoon, I simply tidied myself up, and I hurriedly rode my bike to Ye's new home. The car stopped in front of an old five-story apartment building, and the iron gate was closed. I pressed a white electric bell, and then heard the sound of the door opening. This is the second time I have entered this room. The layout of the house is three bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom and one kitchen. Since the landlord has just renovated it, the space is spacious and bright. As soon as you enter the door, you will see a very simple living room. There is a low tea table on the left, a plastic chair next to the coffee table, a few cardboard boxes piled up in the corner, and children's toys scattered on the floor. Although it was a bit messy, it seemed full of life compared to the empty rooms the last time I visited the house.

I sat on the only chair in the living room and slowly told the Ye family couple how our USR tutored Ye Xiaoge this semester and his recent learning attitude and other issues. The atmosphere in the living room suddenly became solemn, and Brother Ye, who was sitting by the side, didn't dare to look his father in the eyes. Dad Ye asked again: "Why did you do this? How many times have I told you to study hard. If you don't study, will you be like Dad when you grow up?" Brother Ye lowered his head and remained silent. Neither of us knew what he was thinking, but I instantly remembered what he said before, "I regret coming to Taiwan".

Brother Ye, 15 years old this year, is a tall, slightly chubby little boy. Ye's mother often joked about him, saying that the kid was a little anxious, and was called "Mr." when he went out. As soon as he heard it, he immediately protested and said, "I'm still young." As he entered adolescence, he began to pay attention to his appearance. Whenever I said that I would buy him a drink, he would ask if drinking this drink would make him fat? Is that drink good for your health? But in the end I drank it all in one gulp. Although he is already in the 7th grade of junior high school, he is still very childish compared to other classmates. He often competes with his 11-year-old brother to be jealous. There is nothing wrong with this kind of thinking. After all, at this age, he should maintain his innocent character and live a carefree life. However, his parents' decision to immigrate to Taiwan completely changed his life.

"Taiwan Dream" and Real Life

The story begins in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, many Chinese people immigrated to Vietnam due to economic or war factors. Grandpa Ye was one of them. When South Vietnam fell, the Taiwan government sent China Airlines special planes to South Vietnam to evacuate overseas Chinese, but only to a few lucky people holding Republic of China passports. Their family members, like most other overseas Chinese, were still trapped in Saigon despite holding the "Overseas Chinese Registration Certificate of the Republic of China" [1] . After Vietnam’s reform and opening up in the 1990s, Papa Ye’s older brother and sister applied to the ROC government for naturalization as expatriates, and Papa Ye, the youngest son, was the last of the three children to set foot on this land. Father Ye married the gentle mother Ye in 2003. The next year, he left his wife behind and came to Taiwan alone to start a new life as an immigrant. With no academic qualifications and an inability to read Chinese, he joined his brother's decoration team. He lived alone in a small suite and was busy from morning to night, but he lived a fulfilling life. The busy work schedule also helped him lessen his longing for his newlywed wife, and the long distance made him appreciate every moment the couple spent together.

Brother Ye was born in 2005, and four years later the family welcomed their second baby. When the children grew older, in order to reduce the burden on her husband, Ye's mother also began to go out to work, so she left the children to her grandmother to take care of them. Brother Ye and his younger brother have been dependent on their mother since they were young. They respect and fear their father who only sees each other once or twice a year. They always feel that their father is a giant who can do anything. At every family gathering, he heard his father, uncle, and cousins ​​sometimes speaking Cantonese and sometimes Mandarin, which made him extremely envious, and he looked forward to a bright future, so his yearning for Taiwan became bigger and bigger.

2016 can be said to be a turning point in Ye Xiaoge’s life. This year, he followed his mother and brother to this long-awaited land with excitement. However, his so-called "Taiwan Dream" was shattered little by little as he lived on the island. The family of four lived in a small apartment in Jingmei. Except for the few days when they went out to play with their father when they first arrived, the mother and son hardly ever went out. Later, in order to provide the children with a comfortable living space, Ye’s father rented a house under his brother’s name, and applied for admission to the nearby elementary school for the children, and the brothers officially became “international transfer students”.

Difficult connection

The so-called "international transfer students" refer to students who have received a certain period of education abroad in a non-Taiwan state religion system, or students who have been transferred to Taiwan state religion and other education systems several times (Zhong Zhencheng, 2017). Due to lack of language skills, these children face various problems in adapting to Taiwan after returning to Taiwan, and they cannot smoothly integrate into Taiwan's education system, and the Ye family brothers are no exception.

The elementary school the two brothers attended is located near a community where many new Vietnamese immigrants live, so some of the students in the school are the new second generation. The biggest difference between the Ye brothers and the second generation who grew up in Taiwan is their language communication skills. Brother Ye, who had only learned Chinese for a few months before coming to Taiwan, began to realize the gap between himself and his peers. The brothers couldn't understand the content of the class without the language foundation, and had to be reduced to "guests in the classroom". Therefore, the school had to take a one-year remedial language teaching method to deal with it, so that the Vietnamese elementary school had graduated from the fifth grade. He was in fifth grade, while Ye Xiaodi was demoted to first grade.

At the beginning of April 2018, the New Resident Care Team of the National Chengchi University USR Project, which I belonged to, entered the campus to provide targeted Chinese teaching for these transnational transfer students. Although there are sufficient professional teachers, the biggest problem facing the tutoring program is how to arrange reasonable and effective tutoring time. The school has not yet had the concept and measures of transnational transition education, and based on the class schedule and school progress, it finally decided to use the lunch break to conduct Chinese tutoring. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 12:40 noon, Brother Ye has to go to the library for 40 minutes of Chinese class after lunch, and then rushes back to the classroom at 1:20, and has to go to school after school. Pro class. When Ye Xiaoge first learned that a Vietnamese teacher with a background in Chinese teaching would come to teach him, he was very surprised and looked forward to it. However, he also quickly realized the pressure brought by such an unreasonable class schedule. Lack of rest, he tends to feel tired in class, which makes the actual teaching unable to maximize the benefits. As a result, the project host communicated with the school many times, trying to apply for changing the tutoring time to improve the quality of teaching, but in the end the school rejected our suggestion on the grounds that it was in accordance with the regulations. The various factors raised by the school further highlight the unfriendlyness of the current national education system for students transferred from abroad. From the perspective of the system, it can only be said that the school has "done its responsibility", but from the perspective of the children, is this reasonable and fair?

Simple campus life is not simple

I once asked him what is the biggest difference between schools in Taiwan and schools in Vietnam? He smiled and said, "Taiwan's schools are relatively large. There are many trees planted on the campus, and the toilets are very clean." We talked about the campus environment, but he avoided talking about the teachers and classmates. From the answers, it is not difficult to see that since he came to Taiwan, his quality of life has improved significantly, but that is all. Other issues that he is very concerned about, such as homework, academic performance, and making friends, are as he said "nothing". , Everything must be "started from scratch". Chinese is his biggest difficulty. Due to the impact of his language ability, he cannot keep up with his peers, leading to strong self-doubt and helplessness in learning. However, these setbacks are far worse than the seemingly ordinary campus life The harm caused to him.

"My classmates called me 'mentally retarded' at first, and I didn't know what that meant." Brother Ye recalled the time when he first entered school, "Later, I knew the meaning of those two words. I told the teacher, and the teacher told the class I asked the students on the Internet to verify, but the students said they didn’t hear it. So someone scolded me later, and I choked back.” I don’t think we need to discuss the teacher’s handling method, but it is obvious that the teacher’s speech or relationship between students The lack of sensitivity to bullying caused children to deal with things in the same inappropriate way without realizing it, which in turn affected the relationship between peers.

One day in May 2018, the teacher of our team suddenly received a call from the director of the counseling room saying that Ye Xiaoge was crying a lot at school, so he asked us to come and help. After being comforted by the teacher, he gradually calmed down from his nervousness and fear, and explained what happened. It turned out that he was walking with some classmates after school the day before yesterday. When he passed a certain doll shop, he found that the claw machine was unlocked. The other students asked Ye Xiaoge, who was the tallest, to reach in and get a doll, and one of them took the doll home afterwards. The next day, the owner of the store approached the school for a theory based on the footage captured by the monitor, and asked the school to deal with the matter seriously. Ye Xiaoge was invited to the counseling room to inquire about what happened. At this time, because he didn't know how to express or defend himself in words, he fell into the pressure of fear. Therefore, he could only cry when the counselor asked questions. to respond. He was afraid of being punished by the school, and even more afraid of his father's reprimand and punishment, so he cried and begged not to notify the parents. Later, under the mediation of the school, the parents came forward to apologize and compensate the store, and the matter was finally reconciled smoothly. After the incident, Xiaoge Ye was depressed and chose to escape, and further closed himself to avoid getting hurt. After that, I went home to stay with my younger brother, and basically had no friends, and this mentality has continued until now.

Now he is a middle school student, and for him this year is the beginning of a new stage of promotion. However, as the first school year was coming to an end, although his situation had changed, he still found it difficult to integrate into class life. Although he was not excluded, he still felt out of place and was always picked out of the group. In response to this problem, the class instructor once said that the students are very friendly, and hoped that Ye Xiaoge could open his heart and take the initiative to communicate with the students. The teacher of our team also suggested that he can choose a small teacher for him from among the classmates, and he can also seek help from him if he encounters difficulties in schoolwork. However, after hearing this, Ye Xiaoge stopped him on the grounds of "I don't want to cause trouble to my classmates". Later, he quietly told me in Vietnamese that the real reason was that he didn't want to be laughed at by his classmates, "I can't even answer simple questions". When I heard this sentence, I was surprised and at the same time realized that he is a sensitive child. From an adult's point of view, this may be a joke of his classmates and not a big deal, but we have not seriously thought about it. How would such a joke affect him? He said it wasn’t that he didn’t want to interact with his classmates, but that he couldn’t integrate into the topics in the class and didn’t know how to get along with unfamiliar people. In the past, some classmates called him a dog and asked him not to look directly at them when speaking. Over time, he developed this habit. He has a habit of not looking into each other's eyes when talking. And these not-so-good experiences have always been buried in his heart, causing a social shadow, making him more fragile and sensitive, and he has never been able to cross the fence in his heart.

The role of the family

When it comes to the education of transnational transfer students, family, school and students themselves are definitely not an extension of a dotted line, but a circular relationship with interlocking responsibilities, and family education can be said to be the most important part of it. In the past thirteen years, Papa Ye's participation in Brother Ye's life was not high. Coupled with the fact that the mother is busy with work all day long, the responsibilities of the Ye family brothers' education and life all fall on grandma, grandpa, and grandma. However, intergenerational education will inevitably pamper the child more, which in turn will encourage his dependence and make him lack independence. When encountering problems, he will only wait for others to solve them. This became even more obvious in the days after Brother Ye immigrated to Taiwan.

After the family reunited, Father Ye played a very important role in the family. All members had to report to him everything big and small, and everyone had to obey him. Deeply influenced by traditional concepts, he has always believed that all the children's learning problems can be solved by "outsourcing" them to schools. If the children can't keep up with the Chinese class, then send them to cram schools, and never delve into the problem. source. If Brother Ye's Chinese ability is not improved, he will still be unable to understand whether he is in school or in a cram school. Therefore, the education model for local students will not be of much use to him. Our team has repeatedly tried to communicate with him whether we can use Brother Ye’s time to attend cram school on Saturday mornings to improve his Chinese ability, but ultimately failed. The reason why Papa Ye has such an idea may have something to do with his growing up experience when he was a child. Father Ye was born in 1978. At that time, Vietnam had not yet embarked on the road of reform and opening up. People’s lives were very difficult and the family’s financial situation did not allow it. Therefore, studying became almost a luxury for him. He didn't read many books when he was a child, he didn't have learning experience, and he didn't have the habit of urging his children to read. In terms of disciplining children, Papa Ye is very strong. "Brother Ye is most afraid of being hit by his father." After listening to Mama Ye's sharing, the image of Brother Ye begging in the counseling room suddenly appeared in my mind. It is undeniable that traditional parenting concepts still have a deep-rooted influence on many Vietnamese parents. Most of them believe that spanking is a sign of affection and scolding is a sign of love. Children cannot be effective without spanking, because apart from spanking and scolding, they always seem to find it difficult to find effective methods. parenting methods.

Parent-child interaction, "brothers and friends"

At 4 o'clock in the afternoon on June 1, the sky started to drizzle, and the "Political Rice Dumpling Activity" came to an end. I accompanied the Ye brothers to the door of the classroom. As I walked, I told Brother Ye to be careful on the road, and my father was waiting at the gate of the back mountain. If you can't find them, you can ask your brothers and sisters on the road. Xiaodi Ye was holding a little doll in his hand - the reward he had just received for answering the question correctly. He turned around and asked me: "Teacher, where is my brother's gift? I have a gift, but my brother does not." I explained that this event is only for children. Prepare a gift, my brother is old so I don’t have any, I will give him a replacement next time. Little brother Ye followed his brother with a regretful expression. The two brothers were drifting away, and watching their backs slowly disappear, I felt extremely warm. Maybe the brothers often quarreled. The elder brother likes to tease the younger brother. The younger brother sometimes says he hates his older brother, but in fact they have the closest relationship in the family. It's the two brothers.

Except for the cram school on Monday and Thursday, Ye Xiaoge is responsible for picking up his younger brother home from the parenting class after class every day. Because my father and mother are busy at work and have one day off every week, they work until evening every day before returning home. Therefore, their brothers always have dinner outside, even on Saturdays. After attending the cram school in the morning, he will rush back to accompany them. Younger brother, when his parents are not around, the task of taking care of his younger brother falls on his shoulders. However, when taking care of the younger brother becomes a "responsibility" and "should", the relationship between brothers is more or less affected. Little Brother Ye hardly has any space for himself. When doing anything or participating in any activities, he must first consider how to arrange for his younger brother. Brother Ye almost missed his first graduation trip in his life because of this. Ye's father refused his request on the grounds that "no one would take care of his brother." Extremely disappointed, he always felt that his younger brother was a trouble. Under the coordination of the teachers in our team, Xiaodi Ye was picked up and dropped off by our teachers, and things turned around.

Basic needs of immigrant families - a stable home

One day in mid-May, after finishing the National Chengchi University World Carnival, I dragged my exhausted body back home at around 2 p.m. Taking advantage of the gap, I squinted a little. Soon it was 3:30, and a new task started again. The story starts from last Sunday. That night I suddenly received a call from Ye’s mother. At first I thought Brother Ye was having some difficulty in studying. It turned out that the landlord wanted to sell the house where they lived. So they were asked to move out in one month. They planned to apply for social housing while looking for a house, so they asked me to accompany them to the relevant departments to inquire. Later, through Brother Ye's sharing, I learned that he had been in Taiwan for three years and had moved every year. He was no longer surprised. In the first year, they moved from a small apartment to a house under their uncle's name and lived there for a year. Later, their aunt asked them to move out on the grounds of selling the house, but "in fact, the house was still rented to others, but we never owed them rent." Ah." Mother Ye said helplessly.

At 3:30, my father came to pick me up on his motorcycle. After getting on the bus, I asked: "Where are we going now?", and he replied: "We are going to a place on Nanjing East Road. I don't know what it is called in Chinese." I then asked: "What is it called in Vietnamese? What?" He replied: "I don't know, I just know that the place manages social housing in Taipei City. I asked my friends and they said they should apply here." I asked, "Are they all issued by the bureau? "He replied, "I don't know either." Just like that, I was taken away by him in a daze.

We arrived at No. 168, Section 3, Nanjing East Road at around four o'clock. He was very familiar with this place, including where to renew his certificate and the direction of the elevator. After asking, we found out that he had come to ask before, but he didn't understand it well, so he didn't understand. He brought me here specially. The place we went to is called the "Residential Services Division of the Urban Development Bureau", which is the unit responsible for the formulation of the residential (state) housing rental system, rent allocation, rent collection and litigation, other supplementary subsidies, rental supplements and subsidies, and other related matters. The person in charge explained that the procedure for applying for a national residence is very simple, just hand him the filled-in application form, but the queue time may take more than 8 to 10 years. I thought I heard wrong at first, but he seemed to have guessed what I was thinking, so he emphasized once again that everyone has to wait for more than 10 years for their turn, because there are so many people applying now, including low-income households, and "the contract period is only One to two years, are you sure you want to apply?" Is this an implicit message for us to give up? When we were still hesitating whether to fill out the application form, we heard someone who had just come in ask: "My friend is queuing up. This is the 10th year. How come the number is still 1,000? How long do we have to wait?" The organizer said helplessly, "That's not the case. There are too many people applying." Dad Ye and I left the show silently.

After returning home, I spoke with Mr. Gao, who is in charge of the New Resident Care Project, and learned that state-owned housing and social housing are different concepts. We rekindled our hope and started looking for leasing and hosting service companies. However, after some contact, the answer I got was that the low-income quota for this period has been full. Low-income people can only rent at a 10% discount on the house price. Therefore, it is recommended to rent an ordinary residence to retain the rental subsidy qualification. On the evening of May 20, I accompanied the Ye family to see the house. The originally scheduled time was 8:30, but I arrived ten minutes late. I heard their conversation when I arrived. In fact, although Dad Ye was not very fluent, he could still communicate. However, what was puzzling was that he stopped speaking in Chinese after I showed up.

The house is located in the alley behind Dinghao Supermarket in Section 2 of Muxin Road. The surrounding environment is very quiet. Because it is a newly renovated house, it looks spacious and comfortable. The rent for three bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom, one kitchen and one balcony is NT$17,000 a month. Before I came, they had already discussed rent, household registration and other issues. The landlady expressed her understanding of the relocation and was willing to cooperate, but she was not satisfied with the rent issue. The price proposed by Father Ye is 15,000, and the house tax will be paid by themselves. Mother Ye and the landlord are also very skeptical about this proposal. The former is afraid that the housing tax will be very high, and the latter is afraid of suffering a loss. Mother Ye asked me for my opinion. To be honest, I couldn’t help. I had rented an apartment in Taiwan, so how did I know about these problems? Later, the couple asked the landlord to increase the rent by one thousand, but the house tax was borne by the landlord. Come and pay. The landlady said that she had just bought the house not long ago. She was a landlord for the first time in her fifties, so she was not clear about many issues, including rent subsidies for low-income housing. She said that although she was willing to cooperate and provide information for applying for rent subsidies, she would not provide a copy of the building ownership. This was one of the reasons why she rejected Aboriginal tenants not long ago. Father Ye, who originally thought he knew a lot about this matter, was completely surprised. Although his family currently receives a monthly subsidy of NT$10,000, he could not answer questions such as how to apply and what information was required. Seeing that the atmosphere was a bit awkward, he took out his mobile phone and called a new immigrant named Sister Ping, and then simply threw the mobile phone to me. Sister Ping on the phone said that the procedures are actually very simple, and only need the landlord to provide the housing tax bill, the lease contract and their low-income household card. The landlady couldn't make a decision on the spot, so she made an appointment to reply tomorrow.

At noon on May 21, I received a call from my landlady. She straight to the point raised some of her concerns: first, since the Ye family and his wife did not have a regular job, they were worried about whether they would default on rent; second, whether Papa Ye had bad habits such as drinking, smoking, and fighting. As Ye Xiaoge’s tutor, I actually don’t know much about the two questions she asked, so I can only reply truthfully. The landlady expressed her understanding, and then said that the reason why she was so worried was because her friend had been deceived by new Vietnamese immigrants before. I also feel very helpless about this, just like the Vietnamese proverb that "a grain of mouse droppings spoils a pot of porridge", the behavior of some people has invisibly dragged down the entire ethnic group. However, in the end, the landlady still expressed her willingness to rent to the Ye family, and asked me to confirm with Ye’s father whether we could come over to sign the contract tomorrow night. After hanging up the phone, I immediately called Mother Ye. Since noon was her busiest time of the day, I delayed my call back until the afternoon. After talking to Mama Ye at 1:00 p.m., I immediately called the landlady to confirm. Unfortunately, she was showing a new tenant at the time, so I had a premonition that something was wrong. Confirm the signing with me. As a result, I didn't get a call from her until the evening, so I made several calls but no one answered. I started to be a little anxious because I still have classes on Thursday night, so if I confirm the contract, I must invite my teammate to come to support, and she is also very busy with work recently, so she needs to arrange in advance to come. The landlady didn't reply until after 11pm and said she wouldn't give us the final answer until noon tomorrow. This is how a busy day ends!

At around 12 noon on May 22, I finally received confirmation from the landlord. I immediately contacted Dad Ye and also informed my friends and Teacher Gao. Teacher Gao also suggested many things that need to be paid attention to in the contract, including housing tax, and it should be stated in the contract that "the landlord needs to provide the relevant documents for the tenant to apply for subsidies" and so on. I suddenly realized that there are so many things that need to be paid attention to . After I came back from get out of class at around 9 p.m., I contacted my support partner that night to inquire about the signing, but it turned out that it wasn't over yet. It was after ten o'clock that she reported that the signing had been successfully completed, and asked me to go to the Wenshan Administrative Center at 5:30 the next day to assist in the household registration transfer.

When I arrived at Wenshan Administrative Center at 5:30 pm on May 23, I saw Father Ye already waiting there. While waiting for the landlord to arrive, he happily shared that he had successfully signed a two-year contract yesterday and was finally able to live a slightly more stable life. When I asked him whether he would like to seek help from a new resident base to handle the follow-up matters, he said that as long as the household registration is transferred, the follow-up matters will be much simpler. He still wants to ask the owner of the Vietnamese snack bar, A Ping, to apply for subsidies. Sister is here to help. The landlady also rushed over from the company at that time. The lobby on the second floor of Wenshan Administrative Center was empty at that time except for the three of us, so we went straight there after drawing a number. After the landlady provided the documents related to the household registration, she quietly put forward her ideas to me. After going home one night and thinking about it carefully, she felt that the two-year contract was a bit long. She was afraid that her income tax and house tax would change too much by the end of the year, so she asked if it could be changed to one year. Papa Ye expressed his hope that the signing date would not be changed, but he promised that if the housing tax rises too high, he will give her money. At 6 o'clock, I finally successfully completed the household registration transfer procedures.

The matter finally came to a successful conclusion, and it also brought me a lot of thoughts, including the pressure brought by family and school to the reincarnation, as well as various problems that immigrant families face in a foreign land. Although the government has set up a caring center for the various problems faced by new immigrant families, it actually does not help some families who live in a relatively closed life like the Ye family. They are unwilling to step out of their comfort zone, but because of their lack of ability, there are many things in life that they cannot solve by themselves, so they avoid certain things that should be fully responsible and rely on others to help them. But some things that are avoided have a decisive impact on their lives, and there are interlocking relationships between them, which slowly form a habit of dependence.

After the tutoring class on Friday afternoon, Brother Ye and I talked about the current difficulties their family is facing. Parents don’t know Chinese characters, and as the eldest son, he needs to work harder. He was happily preparing to leave class, and suddenly lost his good mood. When he went downstairs, his steps became heavier and heavier, and he said helplessly, "I know, we have moved three times in the three years since we came to Taiwan, it's really annoying! But why does everyone say that to me, why don’t you tell my brother?” I didn’t know how to reply him for a while, yes, “Why? Why did the adults create so much pressure on him to make him feel so young? Are you out of breath?" Perhaps at the moment his father decided to immigrate to Taiwan, he virtually ended his happy childhood. On the way home, I kept thinking about a question, whether all transnational reincarnations are doomed to have no right to be happy?

Section 2 The future of international transfer students

"Written to Myself Ten Years Later"

Dear Ye○○

Everyone has his own way, and so do I, but I don't know it yet. I don't know what I will look like in ten years, I guess I will be more handsome or smarter, but I should be the most handsome teacher in ten years, and I guess I will be in thirty years He is a very rich principal. After becoming a principal, I will buy a car, buy a lot of houses, and take care of my parents. I'll buy a house for my parents (no fee) and rent it out to others (fees apply). In this way, I will have more money. I will use the money for "travel", "eating", and "buying a car". I will also go back to Vietnam and sell the land to me when I am old (but still very smart). Okay Go back and live.

You ten years ago

Ye ○○

June 14, 2019

Section 3: Experience in Chinese language tutoring for international transfer students

1. Vietnamese Chinese teachers’ tutoring experience

origin

I officially joined the National Chengchi University Social Responsibility Planning Team at the end of February 2018. So far, I have been responsible for tutoring two international transfer students, namely a student surnamed Xiao and a student surnamed Ye. The former is a first-year elementary school student and the tutoring time was in April 2018. from November to June 2018; the latter is a seventh-grade junior high school student whose tutoring period is from November 2018 to June 2019. Since my specialty is teaching Chinese to adults, I will inevitably encounter difficulties and setbacks when I am responsible for teaching Chinese to children across fields, especially to international transfer students. At the same time, there is currently very little research related to teaching cross-border transfer students in Taiwan. In addition, schools have not grasped the characteristics and needs of cross-border transfer students. Under such circumstances, which textbook should be used, how should the teaching content be designed, and how to comfort them? Students' emotions and how to communicate with tutors and even the school must be explored by teachers themselves, so as a foreign student, you can imagine how difficult this task is.

Tutoring tasks

I met Ye Xiaoge in the summer vacation of 2018. At that time, he and his younger brother accompanied his mother to participate in the Chinese class in the USR community. As a mother and son, Ye Xiaoge, who has the best Chinese proficiency, often plays the role of the little teacher. It was not until November 2018 that I officially took over the task of tutoring him. At the beginning, our counseling time was from 12:45 to 1:20 every Monday at noon. At noon on Monday, when the whole class was enjoying their lunch break happily, the tired Ye Xiaoge slowly moved to the tutoring room to attend class. Later, after many coordinations, we won the tutoring time for the eighth class every Friday.

After more than two years of studying hard in Taiwan, Brother Ye has made significant progress in his speaking ability and can communicate with others smoothly in Chinese. However, due to the need to adapt to the new environment and his low self-esteem, he has difficulties in making friends. On the first day of my tutoring, I used the seventh-grade Chinese text as the content of the class, and found that he couldn't read many words, including the words he had already learned. The difficulty of Chinese textbooks in China is quite different from his current level, which caused him to be tired and disgusted in class. After discussing with the team of teachers, I chose to use the sixth volume of "Learning Chinese and Moving Forward" published by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Council as the main text, supplemented by Chinese textbooks, as a teaching material for tutoring students. However, during the first phase of tutoring, we faced a more pressing problem, which was to help students named Ye complete homework in subjects such as Chinese and biology, and nature. Therefore, both teachers and students were chased by homework every week. , The time for school tutoring classes is obviously not enough, and students need to answer their homework through LINE after class. For me, these are all unfamiliar areas of knowledge. The whole process requires inquiry, language conversion, and writing guidance. I must do enough homework for each class and spend twice as much time preparing for lessons as before. Due to the language barrier, my parents were unable to provide appropriate assistance to Brother Ye in his studies. Therefore, I became his only channel, and over-dependence also emerged. Brother Ye began not to take the initiative to ask about homework in advance, but put it off until the next day when it was due to be submitted. This situation occurred frequently and made me realize that I had to make changes. After adjustment and communication, and the addition of new tutors in the second stage, the tutoring work has gradually entered the right track.

After classroom observations and multiple interviews, it was found that Ye Xiaoge mainly uses environmental learning strategies in acquiring Chinese. That is, he uses class time to not only listen to lectures, but also chat with peers and teachers, combining sight, listening, and speaking. A combination of stimuli to create a variety of immersive environments to facilitate language acquisition. Due to limited classroom time, he uses listening to "sounds" as the main input method. However, in the past process of pronunciation acquisition, due to insufficient time to effectively sharpen his ears and insufficient reading volume, confusion and vocabulary errors occurred, such as : Confusion of words and tones such as "ji" and "qi", "connection" and "borrow", "profit" and "li", "bad" and "cao", "has" and "yi". On the other hand, he has not yet developed the habit of self-study. In the absence of practice, he has also adopted strategies such as generalization, avoidance, and borrowing from his native language, such as writing the character "Hua" as "Yan + She", and "Stand". If the characters are written as "yan + difficult" or "jie" in an up-and-down structure, then the left-right structure "Tian Jie" is written. When writing, try to use simple sentences with a subject-predicate structure in syntax. When writing Chinese characters, only choose familiar vocabulary, etc. Although in some cases, it is based on making oneself appear fluent and using only fairly confident vocabulary, in general learning situations, such a strategy does not help learning.

In view of the above problems, I used a lot of reading and writing methods when tutoring Brother Ye. I used class time to select articles suitable for his Chinese level and asked him to read and answer related questions. On the other hand, he also uses PPT and software to make related games to expand his vocabulary.

My company, your growth

Over the past year, Brother Ye has made significant progress in Chinese, but he still lacks self-confidence, has difficulty getting along with his classmates, and appears to be passive in his studies. Brother Ye’s tutor spends a lot of time with him, and is worried that Brother Ye will give up if he has no sense of achievement for a long time. Our team will try our best to help him participate in this year’s summer vacation organized by the Education Bureau of the Taipei City Government. Prerequisite study camp. The purpose of this study camp is to assist international transfer students to learn effectively, use summer short-term intensive study, improve their Chinese language skills, and lay the foundation for middle school study. The teaching targets are mainly cross-border transfer students from public and private primary and secondary schools in Taipei City who are currently in sixth grade and going to seventh grade. Since there are still places, cross-transfer students in the junior high school stage are open to participate, so Brother Ye was able to apply. We hope that through this opportunity, he can broaden his horizons and get along with friends with similar backgrounds, so that he can understand that he is not alone on this long and arduous journey.

Brother Ye is the oldest in this class. Apart from being a little shy on the first day, he quickly got into the situation, cooperated with the teacher throughout the process, and was willing to help other children, teaching them writing and sentence making, and even used English if they didn’t understand something. He explained it to them in a brotherly manner. What is even more surprising is that his humorous speech is very popular among children, and most of the atmosphere in the classroom is brought about by him. Although his performance in language learning still highlights many shortcomings, the changes in his thinking and performance in all aspects in just two weeks make us, the teachers in charge of his cases, happiest.

2. Experiences of Taiwanese Chinese tutors

When I first met, Brother Ye was always in a state of asking and answering, and I felt that his learning ability was not very good. I had to keep asking questions since he didn't initiate the conversation. Later, after we got to know each other better, he would take the initiative to talk about his life experience, and I realized that he was not as closed as I imagined. However, because his vocabulary is still not enough, when he wants to express his thoughts, sometimes he cannot express them, which makes it difficult for us to judge whether he has no feelings, is afraid to speak, or still has feelings but does not know how to express them, so This is where we need to spend more time in the process of counseling him. Because we often talked to him, and later the teacher from the school guidance room joined in, after the second Duan exam, I felt that he began to change and became willing to express himself. In the case of Brother Ye, he is in a state of "not learning" rather than "not learning". The reason is that he has not learned the basic Chinese knowledge, so he is unable to learn.

I started with Chinese characters at the beginning and taught the principles of Chinese character creation, which coincided with the teaching content of his Chinese language class this semester. I found that Brother Ye’s understanding ability was pretty good. The teaching strategy was mainly based on the progress of the Chinese language. Later, it gave me a deep feeling. Our Chinese second language teaching generally focuses on oral English and daily life, but oral English is no longer an obstacle to Brother Ye. There is no problem in life, but the content in Chinese textbooks is too difficult for a second language learner. When I helped him review for his first Duan exam, I discovered that the special thing about Brother Ye’s situation is that he doesn’t know some seemingly simple words, but he can do those that are more difficult. Although I helped him review some test questions, I don't think it's efficient. At that time, I was shocked to realize what he can do, and what he can't do, which is completely different from what I imagined. Later, I asked him to read the text "Xie Tian" and found that out of the nearly 1,200 words in the text, he did not recognize about 70 words. He could read the words that were not among the 70 words, but he did not necessarily understand them. Its meaning, for example, the word "offering table", he understood as "sharing a table", and the annotation in the book was more difficult for him to understand, "table on which sacrifices are placed", within 7 words, he understood I only understand "'s" and "table". This commentary not only did not help, but on the contrary gave him a greater burden. Therefore, I later developed a method that did not ask him to understand the text, but only asked him to combine the pronunciation and the shape of the characters, and asked him to read the text all the time. At the same time, I also asked the Chinese teacher to join in to help. Because Chinese needs to combine pronunciation, glyphs and meanings. You have to handle these three things at the same time before you can understand the text and paragraphs. So as long as he handles the pronunciation and glyphs well, he will respond to the meanings faster. . This is like the method of traditional enlightenment education, the main task is to recognize characters. I personally think it is still effective, and he has made progress in literacy. But later, Brother Ye found this method boring, so I adopted another reading strategy. I just ask him to describe the content of the text after reading it, and then I use a mind map to draw the key points, so that I can clearly understand which parts he understands and which parts he does not understand, and then provide targeted guidance.

When I tutor, I mainly cooperate with Chinese classes, but there is a dilemma in cooperating with Chinese classes. It shows that test scores are so direct. If test scores are put aside, the student himself will be anxious. He hopes to improve his Chinese language scores through this tutoring. He himself has such expectations, but the problem is that the gap between his ability and the test requirements is too big. The gap he needs to fill is really big, and our tutoring time is so limited, and the lunch break is actually not suitable Used for tutoring. There is a text he particularly likes called "Blue Bead Necklace". He himself took the initiative to express that he liked stories that were more heartwarming and related to family ties, family, and gratitude. So I plan to read this type of article to him during the summer vacation. Therefore, if you continue tutoring next semester, you will still need to read a lot. Let him have a lot of "input" to come in, and then he will have a chance of "output". In addition, I also found that Brother Ye is very interested in writing, and occasionally uses the writing skills he learned in Vietnam. However, he is not very fond of writing yet because he has too little content. He has a lot of ideas but no corresponding vocabulary, so he still needs to read.

Brother Ye said that if his Chinese language class was in classical Chinese, he would only understand 10% of it, while in vernacular Chinese it would be 30%. Geography and civics classes would be completely neglected, and history would be 50%. He has 6 Chinese lessons a week, and 2 lessons each for Civics and Geography. According to this calculation, he has 10 lessons that are free. I think it is a pity and a waste of his time. I personally think it would be best if we could withdraw from tutoring. The so-called withdrawal does not mean withdrawing completely. About 5-6 classes per week would be enough. This would give us more tutoring time to improve his skills. Chinese. However, we currently do not have authorization from the education authorities, so it is actually very difficult to promote this type of teaching model.

3. The experience of junior high school tutors

The first time I got to know Brother Ye was not long after he started seventh grade. The tutor found that Brother Ye's Chinese understanding, speaking, and reading were significantly behind his classmates. He was worried that Brother Ye would have difficulty adapting to junior high school, so he expressed the hope that Brother Ye could be given additional assistance. After contacting him, the teachers from National Chengchi University who had helped him take Chinese courses when he was in elementary school also continued to help him take Chinese courses.

Gradually we discovered that Brother Ye needed more help than just Chinese teaching. Brother Ye shows a slight lack of self-confidence, has difficulty getting along with his classmates, and appears to be passive in his studies. Brother Ye’s tutor spends a lot of time with him, and is worried that Brother Ye will give up if he has no sense of accomplishment for a long time. Therefore, he hopes that in addition to Chinese teaching, there will also be teachers who can talk to Brother Ye. In this way, Brother Ye and I started to have regular conversation time.

Brother Ye is actually very busy at school. In addition to the 35 classes per week in the schedule, there are also remedial teaching, Chinese teaching during lunch breaks, and eighth period or tutoring after school. It is even more difficult for Mr. Ye to find time for talks from such a full schedule than it is for me. Finally, we used the lunch break one day a week. I was a little worried that it would affect Mr. Ye's energy during class in the afternoon, but he seemed to be used to having a "schedule" at noon every day.

At first, I wasn’t sure what Mr. Ye’s Chinese listening and speaking abilities were. I was worried that if he used too difficult vocabulary in the conversation, it would deepen his frustration. Even if Mr. Ye understood what I said, he would still be frustrated. You can see him racking his brains, using the only Chinese or English words in his mind to try to piece together what he wanted to express. Fortunately, a good tool we discovered later—Google Translate. Every time we talk, my computer always opens the Chinese-Vietnamese and English-Vietnamese translation webpages to confirm that we both understand what the other person wants to convey. Although this method is very slow, it successfully reduces the tension between us. Because of the language barrier, he was able to gradually establish a relationship with Ye Xiaoge.

In the conversation with Ye Xiaoge, what I hear most often is that he shares what happened in Vietnam in the past and his plans for the future. From his words, we can feel his nostalgia for those days in Vietnam. During those days, his grades were good and his composition was selected as an excellent article. Whenever talking about this past, you can see the light in his eyes. However, as soon as he mentions the present, this light dims... Even with the encouragement of many teachers around him, telling him to take his time, not to rush, and that language learning needs to be accumulated, but every time when the results are announced, I feel very grateful to Brother Ye. It's all a blow. And, the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. The successful experience in Vietnam made Brother Ye accustomed to setting a very high goal for himself. But the reality is that even if Brother Ye spends twice as much time, he may not perform as well as in the past, not to mention that Brother Ye The little brother himself knows that he hasn't really tried his best in his studies. Under the current system, every teacher is chased by teaching progress and has no time to stop and wait for Mr. Ye to catch up. There is currently no system to help such students make the connection, so they can only wait for Mr. Ye to catch up. Don't give up learning because you can't keep up, and continue to have confidence in yourself.

Every time I look at Mr. Ye, it reminds me of the suffering and helplessness I felt when I studied English in an all-English cram school. What’s more, Mr. Ye is in a foreign language environment almost all day long. Ye Xiaoge revealed more than once that he prefers Vietnam, perhaps for him, that is the real "home". When talking about his future dreams, Brother Ye quickly answered, "I want to make a lot of money and buy a house." It made me think about what kind of growth experience made a seventh-grade child give such a pragmatic answer?

The job of a tutor is not so much "counseling", but more like "accompanying". Brother Ye and I may not be able to answer why his learning and growth process is more difficult than others, and we cannot guarantee that the future will be better. But as I often share with my students, the challenges in life are actually life lessons. God knows that you can complete them and learn from them, so he sends you this lesson. Thank you Brother Ye, for being willing to open your heart to us, and let us accompany him on this not so easy road.

[1] http://www.zghqwx.com/zjxs.asp?whichpage=16 , visit 2019/06/15