In-Class Reading
10 Mar 2011 1 Comment
in Tiger Mother
We read this Time Magazine article about Tiger Mother in my class last night.
We read it aloud together, and I was afraid it was going to be a struggle–it’s probably a much longer article than most of my English 96 students are used to reading, and the vocabulary is pretty sophisticated. But, we went over some vocabulary before we started, and, turns out, my students were really into it! They were all following along well, and a few even had questions or comments as we were reading! For homework, they are going to type up a response to the article, and I’m interested in hearing what they have to say. I think that Tiger Mother is irresistible because everyone has an opinion. Many of us are parents, but we’ve all been raised by somebody, and we all have opinions on how we were raised. I even recommended Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (the book) to my students. It is easy to read, and it’s not very long, which are important qualities for English 96 readers.
Mar 15, 2011 @ 18:12:20
Yea for unexpected morning naps. Double Yea (Yea! Yea!) for long, unexpected morning naps. 1st of all–your English 96 students don’t read articles. They just look at the pictures of the shirtless rap stars and monster trucks.
2nd of all, I think you make a good point that Tiger Mother is so appealing because we all have experience with parents–and therefore we all have opinions.
3rd of all, it’s too bad that your English 96 students can’t appreciate reading that delays the gratification a little–after all, much great writing does that for a reader–and I suppose that one of Chua’s points in Tiger Mother is that delayed gratification is much better gratification especially if it’s delayed because you really had to work at it and earn it.