Every Monday and Wednesday I go to a textile company and teach the son of the owner. Jimmy wants to study in the USA. Actually I think his father wants him to study in the USA. I think Jimmy wants to stay in Shanghai, eat hamburgers and surf the web in his bedroom but such is the rush for a foreign education that Jimmy is now having 6 hours of 1-to-1 lessons with yours truly every week.
Jimmy has been studying English for about 10 years but he still finds it difficult to make an error-free sentence. We went back to basics with the present simple. I like hamburgers. I am fat. You happy etc. Then we made it a little more difficult with negatives. I don’t like vegetables, He doesn’t like swimming – you’ve got the idea. I thought we’d push the limits now and go for questions. They were a bit harder but he at least knew some of the question words if not how to use them.
I gave him some homework. He had to make negative sentences using don’t doesn’t aren’t isn’t from positive sentences. Now, this shouldn’t really be difficult for someone who has studied English for 10 years. On Wednesday he proudly presented me with his completed homework. I was inwardly distraught though outwardly sympathetic when he presented me with the results of his study.
According to Jimmy, the negative of “The sun rises in the west” is not “The sun doesn’t rise in the west” but “The west rises in the sun”. Now you tell me how I can get this boy from IELTS score 3.5 to 6.0 in 6 weeks! If you can, then you are better teacher than me.