Ma Xiaofei is my student, a special student in the Chinese class of the language school I teach.

  I live in Kosice, the second largest city in Slovakia, with a population of less than 300,000.

The Chinese class I set up in the national language school is the only class in the city to learn Chinese. Every year, students from primary and secondary schools and adults who have a certain English foundation are recruited to form a mixed class.

The reason why Ma Xiaofei is special is that he is only six and a half years old, but he sits in a classroom dominated by adults and senior students.

  In the first class of the new school year, Aunt Ivan from the reception room led the little boy into the classroom and carried him to a chair.

Seeing this childish little boy, I felt a little bit of a drum in my heart.

  Every year at the beginning of the new school year, I want to know the basic information of each student and give each person a Chinese name.

I named him "Ma Xiaofei" based on the homonym of "horse" in the name of the little boy.

  After a few classes, I found that Ma Xiaofei was a big trouble for this class.

Letting a child who does not know how to write his own name in his native language sit in an adult class to learn a "foreign language" can only be said that neither I nor the school considered it at the time.

After the first few classes, Ma Xiaofei stopped "listening to lectures": he sharpened every pencil in the pencil case with a pencil sharpener, leaving a table full of pencil shavings after class; scribbling on books with pencils, Then wipe it off with an eraser. The eraser and the pen alternately fall to the ground, get off the chair, and climb under the table to find the eraser and the pen. This set of up and down movements continues to reciprocate.

I know this is not the way to go.

I made it clear to the principal that I didn't want him.

But the principal and Aunt Ivan both said: "The child is very interested in learning Chinese, and the family has paid all the tuition for one year. We don't ask him to learn to any level. We just let him sit there without taking the test. Come on."

  Every time I go to class, I have to walk up to Ma Xiaofei from time to time, turn the textbook to the appropriate page, and put his finger on the word he is reading, but when he reads the third word, he loses his finger. I don't know the numbers, I can't find the page, and I don't understand what I'm talking about. From the beginning of the class, I often stare at the clock on the back wall and ask, "Teacher, how long until the get out of class ends?"

  In this class every time the class is not full, students do not come to class if they have other activities.

There were only two students in the class, Ma Xiaofei and a girl. The girl was just 11 years old. She was too young in the class. The four-tone tones were never pronounced incorrectly, and the words could never be remembered. She was also a student who gave me a headache.

At that time, the Spring Festival was approaching. I turned on the projector, put on a few pictures of the prosperous Chinese Spring Festival, and told them the customs of the Chinese Spring Festival.

The two children listened to the "story" with great interest, and Ma Xiaofei would also scold me from time to time: "I teach Chinese to our whole class at school!" I opened my eyes exaggeratedly: "Really?" Seriously: "Really, the whole class is sitting below, even the teacher is sitting below, only I teach them from the podium." The picture of this little guy "taking Chinese class" quickly appeared in my mind. What the classmates and teachers taught, the heart tightened.

In that class, I borrowed a pair of scissors from the mail room, took some pieces of red paper from the decorative wall at the back, and taught them to cut the word "Spring". Opened the chat box: "Our classmates all say that I look like Bruce Lee. I play football the best, no one can beat me!" I turned my head and looked: his hairstyle and eyes are really the same as Bruce Lee, that kind of self-confidence He was like a ray of light that instantly illuminated me.

  The course is going on, and Ma Xiaofei is playing on his own.

For some pronunciations in Chinese, beginners are simply "one pot of porridge".

For example, as soon as I read "I go to the gym to play basketball" and hear "I play basketball at the gym," I have to correct it over and over again.

When I asked the mispronounced classmate to read it to me again, I heard a clear and standard Mandarin "go to the stadium to play basketball" from Ma Xiaofei's mouth, and I gave him a thumbs up.

From then on, whenever someone made a mistake, I used my eyes to signal Ma Xiaofei to demonstrate when I corrected it. He seemed to be my little assistant in class.

He sometimes repeats the demonstration several times to others, showing a look of disdain, and sometimes expressing understanding: "I just can't learn it, I teach my mother at home, and she can't learn it either."

  After class, I went out and passed the sofa where Aunt Ivan and Ma Xiaofei were sitting, and I heard their conversation: "How was the class today?" "It's very good, the teacher praised me, I'm a student The best student." I thought that once I was ready to persuade his parents not to send him here, but before he could say anything, his mother greeted me with a smile: "Marco likes your Chinese class very much, every time We prepare schoolbags early in class, and often sing Chinese songs for us!" I had to swallow the words that I wanted to persuade him to dismiss.

  The school held an event on the "June 1" International Children's Day. They had to prepare food and say a word in the language they had learned.

I designed a competition to use chopsticks to hold popcorn, and gave each student a pair of chopsticks in advance, telling them to go home to practice.

On the day of "June 1st", several new students who were going to sign up for next year also joined our class. Ma Xiaofei taught them to say that sentence in Chinese again and again, and helped the children in other classes to make dumplings. He was very "master" the fan.

  The competition started. The children gathered around a large box of popcorn. Some dexterously and some clumsily put the popcorn into the paper bowl in their hands. The one-minute timer was over. Some children only had a few grains of popcorn in their bowls. The popcorn in Ma Xiaofei's bowl was one point higher, which surprised me.

He counted "forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven..." in Chinese while sandwiching it, as if it became a performance, everyone applauded, and Ma Xiaofei's face showed a "Bruce Lee-style" proud look .

  I decided to apply to the school for a new class next year, specifically recruiting a class for young children, and let Ma Xiaofei be my "teaching assistant" and monitor.

I deeply blame myself, how wronged it is to let this child Ma Xiaofei sit in the "scripted" classroom!

  As the Children's Day event drew to a close, the children of our team were dressed in my custom-made clothes: a yellow T-shirt with two red Chinese characters "China" on their chests.

The children stood in a row and recited in unison the words they had practiced countless times in Chinese: "On this Children's Day, we wish world peace!"

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