Let me introduce you to Emily

In one of my blog entries while in Beijing, I shared with you a touching experience I had meeting a 15-year-old high school student at the New Oriental School. Her name is Xiaoyi Lei. Xiaoyi Lei does not live in Beijing, but rather was there for 2 weeks participating in a summer camp language course at the New Oriental School. For the Chinese, this is a very expensive program at which students receive intensive instruction in English. It's a program that a family will make extreme sacrifices for in order to give their child an opportunity to receive support in learning the English language. In the class where I met Xiaoyi, there were 93 students!

College entrance exams are so incredibly challenging and competitive for Chinese high school students. A portion of the exam includes English. It is so important for them to do well on the exam that many high school students go to the school Monday through Saturday until 10 at night to study and get top scores on the exams. This is because only about 20% of high school students are able to go to college.

Xiaoyi was a very shy girl but she had one request of me. She wanted nothing more than an English name. How honored I was to be given the task to name this young lady. I gave her my business card and asked her to email me as a name was something that was special, and I wanted to think about it. I heard from Xiaoyi this week! She and I exchanged emails and I learned more about her. Xiaoyl likes to play sports; she especially likes swimming. She also enjoys playing the Guzheng, a Chinese instrument shown in this picture. Math is her favorite subject and she feels that she is a very good student. Xiaoyi told me that she spends long hours each day studying in order to pass the college entrance exam in a couple of years.

I have given her the name, Emily. After searching through names and their meanings, I found Emily was a perfect fit for Xiaoyi. Emily is of English origin meaning "to excel." What a great way to describe Xiaoyi and what I hope for her future.

Comments

[Christine]

Emily...wonderful choice...gives me an idea for the start of the school year...researching the student's names...using the computer lab and search engines...I could tie it in to the work we do with meanings of suffixes, prefixes and root words too...thanks for the inspiration...