Jimmy’s lessons have been the subject of much talk between me and my friends. He has managed to make very little progress over the last 6 months I have been giving him 1-2-1 lessons. The subject if our last meeting on Monday was how to pass the visa application interview at the US embassy.
The agent responsible for Jimmy’s university application gave Jimmy a list of questions he would be asked and told Jimmy to memorise the answers. Clearly even if Jimmy is able to do this, if the interviewer asked him a question which was not here he would be stumped. Even on Monday after 6 months of intensive lessons he still could not understand “Which degree would you like to do in university?”. The word “degree” confuses him every time. It doesn’t matter how many time I have told him what it means, he still can’t remember 5 minutes later.
Anyway Jimmy showed me the list of questions and answers which the man had given him. To use the tactic of memorising the asnwers is, as you can imagine, useless. Nevertheless it was my last lesson with Jimmy and I obliged him by sitting at the computer and composing better answers for him to memorise, answers that he actually understood. Some of the suggested answers are laughable and so unlike anything which Jimmy would say that the clerk would definitely smell a rat.
The chances of Jimmy passing the interview are as slim as the chances of me walking down the pavement on Guangzhou Lu in a minute, without falling over tables, broken paving slabs, rotten food, parked and driven bikes, children crapping and urinated, toy salesmen outside the Children’s Hosptial….
At least winter has gone – one positive thing!