Ting Bu Dong

Leo (fake name used to protect identity), my newest Japanese student, is the sweetest kid, super hard working, and very smart, but he sure makes me feel inadequate. Here's a glimpse into a situation that happens at least once a period.

Students are working on their English quizzes.  Leo finished his quickly because it is modified for his language ability (and shorter).  When he is done, he doesn't know what to do.  Now, instead of the usual middle school child, who would, at this point, pull out some random object and transform the desk into a battlefield or something of that sort, Leo wants to make sure he knows what he is supposed to be doing, or at least that's what I think he wants to know.  He comes up to me with his Japanese/English dictionary.  What will the first word in our attempt at communication be? 

"What".  Okay, that gets me started.  He wants to know something. He slowly types in another word, then changes it to English.  "Send."  Now I'm totally thrown off.  Send? I'm quite confused at this point, so I wait for the next word, "something."  And that's it.  What, send, and something, and he points to himself.  From this, I must guess at what he is asking.   Maybe I need to send something to him.  Maybe he wants to know what to send?  I throw the words out to the class, because sometimes the other ESL students have some insight, but today the closest anyone could guess was that Leo wanted to ask if he should send the quiz to the ESL teacher. That didn't really make sense to me.  So, I just gave him something to work on and he seemed fine.  What send something?  Who knows?

 
At least today I learned one thing about Leo through my periodic attempts at communication. He is writing using sentence patterns like "I like" " I don't like", etc.  One sentence I just could not figure out, though. "Horizontal bar is bad for me."  So I asked him to draw it.  What do ya' know? It's a gymnastic bar, that is, of course, horizontal.  And apparently Leo thinks it is bad for him, though I'm pretty sure he thinks "bad for me" means "I dislike it." Oh, the adventures of ESL...keeps me on my toes.

By the way, in case you didn't know, "ting bu dong" means "I hear, but I don't understand" in Chinese. I don't know it in Japanese. Maybe I should learn.