Bruce Cooper

After retiring from 30 years of engineering and research and

development at McDonnell Douglas, Bruce Cooper told himself “First, I

want to do nothing since I haven’t done that since I can’t remember.”

Three months later, he ended up at the Literacy Services Program at

the Newport Beach Library, where he has been tutoring a woman from

Japan for the last two years.

If it’s not their native language, a person trying to learn

English can be in an extremely challenging situation, he said.

There’s the vast vocabulary, the wide use of colloquialisms and the

phonetic system with a seemingly larger amount of exceptions than

rules. The position of teaching it might only be slightly less

complicated.

“When you first start out, it’s really somewhat difficult. It

takes a lot on the tutor’s part to really develop where to go and how

to go,” Cooper said.

The Literacy Services Program, composed of 75 volunteers and a

small staff, helps adults improve their reading and writing skills

through one-on-one tutoring. Sessions occur weekly and are typically

one to two hours.

“It’s a flexible program. We want them to develop skills that they

are looking for first and along the way we put in skills we think

they should have,” Cooper said. In the case of his student, Takako

Okano, “We changed our format to make it more work oriented.”

Okano came to the U.S. with her husband and two kids and is

working in the office of a Japanese doctor. Cooper has aided in

making her job a little easier by helping her practice the words and

phrases used in different phone communication scenarios.

They have also worked on giving people directions, using both

textbook and creative approaches. For instance, if she tells him

about a restaurant she ate at, he’ll ask her for directions from

there to the library.

Reading books has been another method of gaining greater

understanding of English. While the book “Holes” wasn’t easy to get

through, their current book presents even greater challenges.

“Willy Wonka is a little bit difficult in that there is so much

colloquialism,” Cooper said.

Before a student can enter the program, they must go through an

assessment session so that the tutors can decide which issues need to

be addressed and how. Cooper is one of five assessors and tries to do

one or two assessments week.

Cooper explained that through this part of his job, “I really get

to meet a lot of different people. I ask a lot of questions about

lifestyle, anything to get to know that person. I use that also as a

forum to get them to feel at ease, to get them to talk about

themselves.”

In tutoring, the student isn’t the only one who reaps rewards.

“You know, you really feel like you are doing something,” Cooper

said, adding with a laugh that, “You’ve got to pay back sometime.”

-- Story by Tom Forquer,

Photo by Don Leach