Saturday, January 25, 2014

Maxine Hong Kingston, Three Step Responce

1) Velcro words/phrases
Dumbness
“I stand frozen”
“the first silent year”
silent
misery
“being a Chinese girl”

2) Emotions/Feelings
sadness
concern
shock
pity
anger
sympathy

3) Curiosity- questions?
Is she not good at English because she is so young or Chinese?
Was she really quiet for a whole year or is she stretching the truth?
Why didn’t the teachers pay more attention to her?
When did it get better?


*Free-Write for 5 minutes:

This made me feel a lot of emotions. I was able to relate to her because my sister was a shy kid when she was younger. The teachers neglected her and when she was in second grade my parents went in for a parent teacher conference and the teacher didn’t even know my sister. Things got much better when my parents put my sister in a different school (that same year) where the teachers would encourage kids to speak up and have a voice so that they could learn and be challenged. I feel like if all the Chinese girls were quiet, why didn’t the teacher do anything about it? I felt really bad for her, because it must have been so hard and on top of that- nobody cared. It was really easy to see this in my head. Kingston used many descriptive details that really evoked emotion in me, the reader. The way she used the word silent often and quiet just really hit me. It also made me sad to see that such a little girl, a kindergartener, could feel “dumbness.” I felt really bad for her.

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