We All Keep Learning

I’ve decided that what I really teach when I teach beginner mah Jongg is not a game, but reading comprehension. I was not great at reading comprehension as a young child. I know now that I had undiagnosed dyslexia. I have always been a terrible speller, as all you readers already know. I made up for it all by being a good story teller.

I was creative and could describe scenes in colorful ways, but as far as retaining written information went for me, it took me long into adulthood before I was good at that. I made it through college successfully by being a great public speaker and an only so-so writer.

As proof that we can always learn and improve, my reading comprehension is good now. I am much more precise in my use and understanding of language. Perhaps my poor quality in this as a child has helped me to be the teacher I am.

Over the years I have developed by beginner class to maximize teaching people how to read and understand the card in a way that helps them get up to speed in playing the game the fastest way possible.

Recently I have had advanced students who had not taken beginner classes from me who ask me all kinds of basic questions that they should know the answers to, but they were never taught how to read the card and translate it to words that they can understand. If you don’t have the vocabulary you can’t comprehend it.

I can remember in fifth grade asking my teacher how to spell a word and she would say, go look it up in the dictionary. This was totally unhelpful for me, as a dyslexic if I could not figure out what the first three letters were. I knew the word, I knew the meaning. I knew how to use it in a sentence. I just could not spell it. Having that as my learning history makes me want to always ensure people have all the tools and can do all the steps so they can figure things out on their own eventually. I know that we all learn differently, but we all do need to understand the vocabulary and the meanings before you can go on. It’s basically just reading comprehension.