A Tale of Two Cities Supporting Xinjiang

This time, Abu did not give up easily.

Chang Peng helped him turn the hard-to-remember words into tunes of Xinjiang folk songs. For example, he turned agriculture into "Age Li Kou, the hands that plant the land," and harvest into "Ha Wei Shi, cotton bolls full of branches."

When you encounter grammatical difficulties, use cotton fields as an example. For instance, "Farmers grow cotton every day" means farmers grow cotton every day, and "Farmers are picking cotton now" means farmers are picking cotton now.

Abudu became increasingly engrossed in learning, not only actively seeking out Chang Peng to ask questions during breaks, but also writing English words on cotton bags and reciting them while working.

Once, when his classmates tried to tease him again, he pointed directly to the cotton field outside the window and said, "Do you know how to say cotton boll? It's 'cotton boll'; a harvester is 'harvester'; and I can even say how to grow cotton in English!"

Those classmates stood there stunned, and no one dared to laugh at him anymore.

During an English class, the teacher asked everyone to make a sentence using the word "harvest." The previously noisy classroom instantly fell silent, and even a few students with average grades frowned and scratched their heads.

The boys in the back row who used to make fun of Abudu kept their heads down, afraid of being called out by Chang Peng.

"Abudu, why don't you give it a try?"

All eyes in the class immediately turned to Abudu, and the boys in the back row whispered, "Does he even know it? What if he mispronounces it again and makes a fool of himself?"

Abudu took a deep breath, stood up, and said loudly, "Every autumn, my family helps harvest cotton in the field. We are always happy when we see white cotton bolls."

The classroom fell silent the moment the words were spoken.

The girl in front of her turned around in surprise, and even the English teacher on the podium was taken aback for a moment before smiling and nodding: "The sentences are fluent and incorporate real-life situations; it's exceptionally well said!"

This caused an uproar in the class.

"He can actually construct sentences? And so fluently!"

"That word you pronounced was so accurate, even better than mine!"

The boys in the back row looked at each other in disbelief, unable to utter any more teasing words.

For the first time in English class, Abudu raised his head and, meeting the surprised gazes of his classmates, subtly raised the corners of his mouth.

At the end of the month, Chang Peng walked into the classroom with the test papers. His first words were, "One student has made a huge improvement this time, jumping from the forties to seventy. Can you guess who it is?"

"It's definitely Gulnazar!"

"No, maybe it's Eric!"

The students were all guessing, but Abudu just kept his head down and picked at his fingers, thinking it definitely had nothing to do with him.

"It's Abudu!"

Chang Peng smiled as he read out his name and handed him the test paper. "Not only did you pass, but you also got a high score on your essay. Everyone should learn from him!"

"What? Seventy points?"

"Did I hear that right?"

A collective gasp filled the classroom as students crowded around Abudu, staring at the score and red checkmarks on his test paper, their eyes wide with shock.

The boy who used to laugh at him came over and said, "Abudu, you're amazing! Can you teach me how to memorize words?"

"I learned all of this from Teacher Chang. He taught me to use cotton and wheat fields to memorize words, which was so much fun!"

Chang Peng immediately encouraged everyone, saying, "As long as everyone perseveres, even the most difficult obstacles can be overcome step by step."

That night, Jiang Hengli lay in bed, but his mind was filled with images of what happened in class during the day, like a movie playing in his head.

He simply sat up, fumbled for a cigarette in the dark, something he rarely did, but today he was really worried.

The cigarette butt glowed intermittently in the darkness, and he couldn't help but recall what he looked like before he came to Xinjiang to provide assistance.

At that time, at the school assembly, Jiang Hengli was still making a statement: "We will definitely bring the good methods from the mainland to Xinjiang so that children in Xinjiang can also learn Chinese well, fall in love with Chinese, and see a bigger world through Chinese."

His colleagues couldn't help but praise him: "Hengli, you're capable and experienced. You'll definitely shine there and bring hope to the students!"

He spent several sleepless nights preparing those lesson plans, incorporating all his experience from teaching in Dalian for over a decade. He meticulously marked the key points and difficulties, and even wrote down the details of classroom interactions.

At the time, he thought that these solutions had worked well in Dalian and would definitely work here as well. But who would have thought that they would become "useless" in Xinjiang?

Reality slapped him hard, and Jiang Hengli even began to doubt whether he had made the wrong choice.

The classes that captivated students in Dalian couldn't even generate the most basic interaction here; his carefully designed letter-writing activities were met with resistance from students who were afraid of not writing well.

The more he thought about it, the more anxious he became: he clearly wanted to teach well and teach the children everything he knew, but why couldn't he find a way? What if he delayed these children who were eager to learn knowledge? Not only would he have failed their expectations, but he would have also failed to uphold his original intention of coming to Xinjiang to help.

Jiang Hengli lit another cigarette and suddenly remembered the time he taught a bad class in Dalian.

At that time, the students in the class were at the bottom of the class in terms of grades, and no one had high hopes for him. But he persevered, adjusted his methods little by little, and eventually managed to raise the overall grades of the class.

He has an indomitable spirit; the more difficult the situation, the less he dares to back down. How could he possibly give up so easily this time in Xinjiang?

We can no longer simply copy the mainland model; absolutely not. Continuing like this isn't teaching; it's harming children. I'm here not to impose my own experience on them, but to teach them a language they can understand, learn, and use.

We must revise the teaching plan according to the actual situation here, solve the problem at its root, and make sure the children fall in love with Chinese.

Once the idea came to him, Jiang Hengli was wide awake. He got up, picked up a pen, and forcefully wrote down the words "reconstructing the teaching plan." Then he listed the students' problems one by one: limited Chinese vocabulary, lack of understanding of mainland cultural background, the content they learned was irrelevant to their lives, and a lack of confidence and fear of making mistakes...

As I wrote, the direction in my mind became clearer and clearer.