Implications for English Teaching Learning Activity Suggestions for Future Researchers
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APPENDICES
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APPENDIX 1 Summary of the Novel
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, Girl in Translation is an inspiring debut about a young immigrant in America, a smart girl who, living
a double life between school and sweatshop, understands that her family’s future
is in her hands.
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl
64 during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the
more difficult truths of her life —the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight
of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition
—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself, back and forth, between the worlds she
straddles. Through Kimberly’s story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from
Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their
family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl
growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and a world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an
American immigrant —a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and
love, and all that gets lost in translation.
Taken from: http:jeankwok.combook.shtml
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APPENDIX 2 Biography of Jean Kwok
Although Girl in Translation is a work of fiction and not a memoir, the world in which it takes place is real. The youngest of seven children and a girl at
that, She was a dreamy, impractical child who ran wild through the sunlit streets of Hong Kong. No one was more astonished than her family when I turned out to
be quite good at school. They moved to New York City when she was five and her only gift was taken from her. She did not understand a word of English.
They lost all our money in the move to the United States. Her family started working in a sweatshop in Chinatown. Her father took me there every day
after school and we all emerged many hours later, soaked in sweat and covered in fabric dust. Their apartment swarmed with insects and rats. In the winter, they
kept the oven door open day and night because there was no other heat in the apartment.
66 As she slowly learned English her talent for school re-emerged. When she
was about to graduate from elementary school, she was tested by a number of exclusive private schools and won scholarships to all of them. However, Shed
also been accepted by Hunter College High School, a public high school for the intellectually gifted, and that was where she wanted to go.
By then, her family had stopped working at the sweatshop and theyd moved to a run-down brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that had been divided into
formerly rent-controlled apartments. It was a vast improvement, but there was still no money to spare. If she didnt get into a top school with a full financial aid
package, ahe wouldnt be able to go to college. Although she loved English, she didnt think it was a practical choice and devoted myself to science instead. In her
last year in high school, she worked in three laboratories: the Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology labs at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center and the
BiophysicsInterface Lab at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Brooklyn.
She was accepted early to Harvard and shed done enough college work to
take Advanced Standing when she entered, thus skipping a year and starting as a
sophomore in Physics. It was in college that she realized that she could follow her true calling, writing, and switched into English and American Literature.
She put herself through Harvard, working up to four jobs at a time to do so: washing dishes in the dining hall, cleaning rooms, reading to the blind,
teaching English, and acting as the director of a summer program for Chinese
67 immigrant children. She graduated with honors, then took a job as a professional
ballroom dancer in New York City: waltzing in high heels by day and writing by night. After a few years, she left ballroom dance and went to Columbia to do her
MFA in fiction. Before she graduated from Columbia, two stories of hers had been published in Story. In my last year at Columbia, she worked fulltime for a
major investment bank as a member of a five-person computer team that addressed the multimedia needs of the Board of Directors.
She then moved to Holland for love and went through the process of adjusting to another culture and learning another language again. She taught
English at Leiden University in the Netherlands and worked as a Dutch-English translator until she finished Girl in Translation. After it was accepted for
publication, she quit to write fulltime. She live in the Netherlands with her husband and two sons, and the publication of this novel has been a dream come
true.
Taken from: http:jeankwok.comauthor.shtml
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APPENDIX 3
Jean Kwok’s Honors and Awards:
Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award shortlist 2012
Hunter College High School Distinguished Graduate Award 2012 TAYSHAS High School Reading List 2012
American Library Association Alex Award 2011 Orange New Writers title 2011
John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist 2011 Costco Book Pick 2011
Suburban Mosaic Book of the Year, Adult and High School 2011 Florida Teens Read 2011
Salt Lake County Library Reader’s Choice Award 2011 County-City Library Pick 2011
Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award 2010 National Blue Ribbon Book 2010
Barnes Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick 2010 Indie Next Pick 2010
China Daily ’s Top 10 Books of 2010
School Library Journal ’s List of Best Adult Books 4 Teens 2010
The Guardian’s Choice of First Novels 2010 Women Home
’s Top 30 Books of 2010
69 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction 2010
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Debut Author 2010 Book Bloggers Appreciation Week Best Cultural Book 2010
About.com’s Best of 2010 Pick Flavorwire’s Ten Women Authors We Love 2010
Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award nominee 2010 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship
Columbia University Graduate Writing Division Fellowships Harvard Club of New York Scholar
John Harvard Scholarship for Academic Achievement of the Highest Distinction
Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholarship for Academic Achievement of the Highest Disctinction
Taken from: http:jeankwok.comawards.shtml
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APPENDIX 4 Lesson Plan
Subject : Speaking 1
Topic : Expressing Opinions about intrapersonal conflict and
conflict resolution
Semester : 1 One
Time Allocation : 2 x 50 minutes
Material : Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok Chapter 5, p. 35-36
Teaching Method
: Lecturing, Group Discussion, Presentation