BAH............

It's been nine months since I volunteered to tutor my cleaner auntie's 2 daughters. (Read: Stumped...... And Embarrassingly So) One of the ways I have been trying to improve my now Primary 5 kid's English is by expanding her vocabulary. And I believe(d?) vocabulary is best learned in context.

My conventional method is to task the student to find the meaning of a word in the dictionary and make a structured sentence out of it. You know, making sentence? In fact, it does not matter to me if my this kid's sentence structure is grammatically incorrect as long as I could see that she understood the gist of the word. I understand her English proficiency is really substandard compared to peers in her level.

With the already low expectations, I was nevertheless shocked into near catatonic state when I marked her homework [making sentences] last week. The mind blower ones as below:

Blaring (Blare) - When the wind blow, the leaves on the ground make a blaring sound.

Instinct - All humans even animals had their own instinct.

The moment I read those sentences, I had only one classic mentor's grouse in my mind: I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Bah. She makes me feel I'm lousy at my job .