I will try better for my son

For more than a week now, Tuan’s apparent progress in his preliminary English skills, particularly his quick understanding of the difference in use between various model sentences (eg: These are very nice TV sets is different from These TV sets are very nice in form though similar in meaning), has made me feel more self-confident in my program of guiding him to revise his English lessons for some upcoming weeks before teaching him anything new. From the beginning when sending him to learn English from my friend Miss Ha – who is experienced in teaching English to children and speaks English quite finely with correct intonation, I agreed with the teacher that Tuan needed to learn English without high speed but essentially with steady comprehensive grasp, that means, he was expected to get good skills in listening and speaking, correct pronunciation, long memory of new words, new model sentences, and correct writing too.


After about 4 months of being the only student in his class taught by Miss Ha at her home every Saturday morning, thanks to her careful guidance combined with my and his own efforts to practice regularly English at home at weekends, Tuan has made some, though still small, progress in listening, speaking and writing English.

To tell the truth, as an expert of English for many years, I always very much wish my son to learn better and better this foreign language so that he will have an useful means of communication and good for reading purpose in his future work. That’s why whenever seeing Tuan’s attitude of being less enthusiastic and sometimes even lazy in practicing speaking and listening English, I can’t but get angry with him. I usually show my worry about his laziness by shouting loudly or even scolding him. However, just a few minutes later, seeing him to seemingly repent of what he has done, hearing him speak or read English better or seeing him more eagerly type English new words on computer, I must reproach myself and rethink of my own attitude toward him. Probably I am not patient enough as a mother toward my son. I must be calmer and more reasonable to him. Tuan is only a 9-year child, not grown enough to understand fully the necessity of learning English as well as other new things. I must be more patient in explaining these to him for his gradual awareness, Especially more than once he asked me: "Do I speak correctly, Mummy ?", expressing his more serious attitude of learning, then I realized of having been too tough to him, I should have been more gentle. I must be more optimistic in my thinking too: English will be necessary but not so important for Tuan as for me because Tuan should study in a technical branch for his major future profession as we have defined quite clearly for him, that means, English will be only a bridge for him to come into scientific-technical knowledge.

This evening, Tuan will go on learning Unit 10 of Let’s Learn English Book 1 with my guidance. Some hours ago, I just completed drafting some main points of my explanation to him tonight on the new words describing the weather. In fact, I don’t like the rainy weather today, but such a weather is good for Tuan to imagine the sentence “It’s rainy in Ha Noi today. There are many clouds over there”. Tomorrow is Saturday, starting Tuan’s weekend, so I hope it will stop raining and get fine so that he can write and then we, both mother and son, can jointly say this right “It’s sunny in Ha Noi today. There are no clouds.”