Teaching English to the Waegukin [Jae Min]

Once Clement had finished his punishment essays, one on the evils of alcohol and the other on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., copies were sent to the teachers evaluating him. They were enlightening. For one, they were handwritten, an oddity in the era of computers. The cursive was surprisingly legible, if a bit cramped, and hints of erased Hangul could be detected around the margins. Despite Clement's best efforts, there were still a number of misspellings and grammar mistakes, though curiously enough they were mistakes that a Korean learning English would make rather than a native speaker - very occasionally a plural lacked an 's', the word 'very' sat in place of other more natural adverbs, and sometimes his idioms were stilted or odd, having been either badly translated from Korean or Korean in origin. But what it also showed was that Clement had a distinct writing voice, presented his thoughts clearly, and could write a factual paper in his own words while making it interesting to read, three things none of the teachers had expected. (One of them searched for it online to make sure it wasn't cribbed, but found it was all good.)

The testing, however, showed that Clement was reading at a fifth grade level, had atrocious spelling, needed a lot of work on his grammar, and even more on comprehension and vocabulary. His listening comprehension was very good though, and out of curiosity, when a tester read Clement a paragraph and had him repeat it back, only two words were missed. The math portion of the testing also showed this dichotomy; the written portion was abysmal, but Clement could recite his addition and subtraction just fine and the times tables correctly up to the sevens.

For pre-school tutoring, Clement had been given the fifth grade English textbook, a mix of fifth and early sixth grade spelling and vocabulary words, a student dictionary that explained things just simply enough to make Clement feel insulted, and a set of workbooks that had only the back halves remaining, the front pages having been completed and removed. A reading list tucked into the text included old standards like Where the Red Fern Grows, Julie of the Wolves, and The Giver, and newer selections like the first books in the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter series. After admitting he had not read a book outside of school (in English) in... ever... he'd been told to choose a book off the list and that a report on it would be due at the end of the first week of school.

The text, two workbooks, dictionary, folder, papers, and notebook of his own looked like a lot of Serious Business piled up on the table in the empty classroom. Enough so that he'd just left them in their little stack and had gone to look out the windows. A pencil and a pen poked out of his right jeans pocket. A patch of gauze was taped to his left shoulder under his t-shirt, where he'd scratched at the healing skin too hard. The middle of his face still had a pink rectangle of scar tissue he was told would fade to something less noticeable, and it peeled like a sunburn around the edges from where he'd scratched. Healing burns itched like crazy.

When he heard someone come in, he turned.