On Learning

By Josephine Yip

we had an American English teacher from Texas in Primary 3 before I had the words to describe what Woody from Toy Story was when I did not know the Chinese word for jeans meant cowboy pants she taught us that the capital of this Lone Star state was Austin and talked about the other jumbo cities: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio in Primary 4 when I scored full marks on the mock mathematics exam my teacher scribbled stupendous! next to the number 100 in red

I stared in confusion thinking the word meant stupid, brainless and unbelievable as it was— or at least most Americans would think— that we had end-of-year exams starting from the ripe age of Primary One but that is the prime time to cultivate “work ethic” alas I know nothing about the Wild West nor long division nor what Americans think when they talk or act in the way they do we speak the same speech but it always feels like different dialects