I Hate English by Ellen Levine

I Hate English by Ellen Levine is a story about a young Chinese girl, Mei Mei, who experiences culture shock when she moves to the United States.  Her sadness is manifested in her dislike of English.  To Mei Mei, English letters fight and bang into each other.  When an American teacher comes to the Chinatown Learning Center to work with her in English, Mei Mei becomes angry because she fears that if she learns English, she will lose her Chinese identity.  The story ends with Mei Mei appreciating her bilingualism.


This story is an excellent one to read with all students, but will especially resonate with recent immigrants.  Students can use the book as a springboard for discussing their own experiences with learning English, as well as to share their own native languages with classmates.



Ideas for the ESL classroom:

• Background knowledge: words we know in other languages; write on chart paper and post in the room
• Character development: How does Mei Mei change throughout the story?  How does the author show Mei Mei's feelings?  Check predictions.
• Making predictions: Looking at the cover, what do you think the story will be about?  How do you think Mei Mei will respond to the English teacher?  Do you think Mei Mei will learn to like English?
• contractions
• proper nouns
• Vocabulary that may be tricky for ELL's: lonely, noise, bang, sound, strokes, tutors, arithmetic, ping pong, checkers, post office, pails, shellfish, stared, glared, continued, suddenly, strange, invisible

Some Writing Activities for students to respond to the story include making an English/ native language dictionary.  The students could begin their dictionaries at school using agreed-upon words with illustrations and then take the dictionaries at home to work on with their families.  Students could also create a chart about how certain words in English sound (banging, hard, soft, ringing, fuzzy).  Students may want to journal about how they feel learning English, including both likes and dislikes.  They could use their journal responses to create a brochure about learning English.


Happy reading!
Jacquie