Tutoring and Teaching Study Skills
Trilingual Instruction (Chinese, ASL and English)
Author: Chang, Mei-yuk (Maggie), M.A. in Educational Psychology
December 2000
y deaf student’s name is Jian Zhang. He is 25 and born in Shanghai, the Northeastern part of China. He immigrated to the
USA with his younger, hearing sister five years ago. I tutor Jian at Los Angeles Pierce College on Tuesday and Thursday
mornings. The Special Service Department chose me to tutor him because I could write Traditional Chinese Language,
know Basic Simplified Chinese Language, speak Cantonese, use American Sign Language (ASL) and write English. His needs fit
nicely with my qualifications because his primary language is Simplified Chinese Language. His dream is to become a software
engineer in the future; but his poor English skills created problems for him. He failed English classes repeatedly. Also, he used
American Sign Language and speaks Mandarin in America. He did not know that ASL has very complex grammar and that it is
different from English structure. For example, English has one serial stream of phonemes: ASL has its own morphology (rules for
the creation of words), phonetics (rules of hand shapes), and grammar that are very unlike those found in English. Deaf people often
think and write in their native language which, when translated into English, seems very fragmented and grammatically incorrect. In
order to improve his self-efficacy and enable him to deal with his assignments and classes, I decided to use trilingual instruction
(Simplified Chinese Language, ASL, and English) with new metacognitive knowledge to tutor him.
When reviewing Jian’s assignments, I found many errors. It was obvious to me that he has a problem with English skills. It
did not mean that he has a learning disability, but that his trilingualism caused problems. As we learned in class, “learning a second
language is much easier for children that adult. (Pressley, 1995, p.288)” Many deaf students have problems learning a second
language if they were taught by poor instructors, however. If a deaf person tries to learn a second or third language as an adult, it’s
even more difficult. These language-skill poor students often risked low achievement in school due to improper teaching techniques,
cultural and language bias and barriers at school (or at home) and the resulting poor self-esteem due to their lack of achievement.
Because of these educational barriers, Jian has had difficulties. I could relate to his problems, having suffered some of the same
impediments. I decided to tutor him and to help him academically in his first language. In this way, he could gain an appreciation of
his own language and knowledge base and culture, as well as appreciating others. In learning a second language, his self-esteem
would increase with his increased competence level.
I encouraged Jian to practice his ASL stories after he read English. Sometimes, I used ASL and wrote Simplified Chinese
Language to show the humor in the story. I also shared my own experiences. Humor helped him learn unfamiliar English
vocabulary, especially jokes and idioms. As example of this was the saying, “No Pain, No Gain.” He laughed at that. He seemed to
enjoy learning this way. In one session, I gave him three or four Chinese-English books, which had different short essays. All of
them could improve his English by teaching him about English education and English as a second language instruction. Then, he
could begin to use critical thinking skills while reading. Sometimes, when he could not find English words from a Chinese dictionary,
he used ASL to describe examples to me and then I gave him the specific word. For example, he signed, “principles of good
behavior.” I gave him the word “morality.” This word was a noun. I explained to him how to change the word to use as an adjective.
The word was “moral” – which deals with the principles of right and wrong behavior.
I helped Jian write his essay. First, I looked for the teacher requirements, and saw if the basic requirements were met. I
encouraged him to read the textbook and then summarize each paragraph by creating a topic relating to the chapter. We also
discussed the supporting ideas of the outline. Then he wrote different ideas to put into each paragraph. After, he wrote the
organization within each paragraph. I corrected Jian’s paper and wrote many comments and ideas on that paper in both Chinese and
English. Some examples of my comments were: “The first paragraph is not clear. You seem to jump to conclusions and miss a lot of
things. Is the information in each paragraph unique? Are the paragraphs in a logical order and connected by transitions? Is every
sentence in the paragraph related to the topic sentence? You have to write with more clarify of expression, thinking, and vision in
this paragraph. For instance answer, “Why did your father move to the USA to marry an American woman? Were your parents
already divorced when you move to the USA five years ago?”
Jian thought hard about his paper. He told me that he had a difficult time expressing his ideas in writing his paper because
of his language barrier. I gave him an exercise. I told him to try to use his own Chinese words and then interpret them into Basic
English with a Chinese dictionary. He was to write what he thought the Basic English sentence would be. After freewriting, he had
to look over the grammar, and discuss any problems he found. I taught him the three following patterns for writing sentences:
The first pattern:
The man (subject) eats (verb-transitive) candy (object).
Noun.
=
Person, Place, or Thing
Verb.
=
Action (Most of the time)
Object
=
Also, noun.
Proper use of articles
=
a, an, the
1
The second pattern:
a. Maggie (noun.) is a teacher (noun.).
b. Maggie (subject) is (be-verb.) pretty (adj.)
“Be” verb.
=
Present tense: is, am, are. Past tense: were, was.
Adj.
=
Describes e.g. tall, hungry, pretty, etc.
The third pattern:
a. The man (subject) walks (verb-intransitive).
b. The man walks slowly (adverb.)
Adverb. Everyday
Into (preposition) the house
On (preposition) the lawn
To (preposition) the school
Also, I indicated ways to practice subject/verb agreement, correct use of punctuation, pronoun subject agreement, consistent tenses,
and proper word form. He proofread his paper by himself. Then, he told me that he recognized that learning English was not easy for
him. Identifying and correcting his English language errors were difficult. He has not given up on the tutoring sessions. I adopted
different materials and media to meet his needs. I also taught him different basic strategies and activities for improving his grammar,
vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
In the article “Metacognition & Self Efficacy, “ I agreed with the idea that prior knowledge (Bruning, 1999, p.295) could
aid Jian’s performance as an older student. But Jian’s prior learning and Chinese language base was so imbedded within him – it
colored all of the new information he learned. It was hard to unlearn things. He needed to learn how to apply Chinese concepts in
learning English. This was what I helped him to develop. I used different teaching strategies to improve his learning, which
empowered him psychologically by increasing his self-efficacy, according to Bandura (Bruning, 1999, p.307). Peer tutoring
benefited not only Jian, but also me because of the imbedded cognitive demands we both employed. For instance, I knew multiple
approaches and had many different ways to support him and help him discover the best model of learning for him. We both benefited
from mutual feedback. I effectively taught him to become more metacognitively aware, and helped develop his motivation and
interest in the process of learning, according to Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory.
Moreover, Jian had learned a new way to employ a trilingual-tricultural approach. This approach held that ASL and
Simplified Chinese Language should be the first language he grounded himself in and then English should be taught as a second
language through fully accessible ASL and Simplified Chinese Language. All three languages were given equal value and
prominence for him. Without using a trilingual approach with him, it would be difficult for him to identify language errors because of
the syntactical difference between Chinese and English, and because the Chinese “Alphabet” was so vast, complex and
idiogrammatical. Therefore, tutors or teachers ought to encourage him to concentrate on the syntactic phase of processing and
morphological differences between Chinese and English. For instance, English letters were clustered into meaningful words, words
into phrases and sentences, and sentences into the text.
Chinese:

English
:
Many people are concerned about the pollution of the environment.
Using both languages could help him to describe a better model of determining how the input differs from Standard English. Using
both engaged his older knowledge base and his newer one. And we’ve learned in this class that “long-term memory processes” were
needed to make reading meaningful (Bruning, 1999. & Abbeduto, 2000, p.323).
Overall, helping Jian with his limited English proficiency to acquire a better working knowledge of English writing skills
was difficult for me. Tutoring him partly in his own native language and in English was a great challenge for me, not only because
my native language was Cantonese, and Traditional Chinese Language which was almost the same as Simplified Chinese Language
when written, but because of my own English usage problems. I felt that I was successful on many levels, though. I used a variety of
familiar examples to help explain more complex ideas so he could assimilate them better. Sometimes, he took a long time to
comprehend the English translations. I had to create a long-term model and employ many of the teaching strategies and materials that
would be appropriate for him at a concrete operational stage. Tutoring Jian gave me an opportunity to apply what I knew, find
practical applications for hypothetical situations and to discuss concepts. It really stretched me in a cognitive way and gave me a
chance to reflect on things discovered about my student’s and my own learning process. I became a cognitive apprentice and a coparticipant in learning. I not only integrated what I learned from the past and from the Advanced Psychological Foundations of
Education class at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), but I applied it in a novel way. Tutoring Jian showed me that I
could make a significant contribution to my society and to the field of education.
Reference:
Abbeduto, L. (2000). Taking sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Educational Psychology. Guilford, CT:
Dushkin/McGraw-Hill.
2
Bruning, R.H. Schraw, G.J. & Ronning, R.R. (1999) (3rd Ed.) Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Pressley, M. & McCormick, C.B. (1995). Advanced Educational Psychology for Educators, Researchers, and Policymakers. New
York: Harper-Collins.
3