I have a number of Chinese students, and they do practise hard! So here are some issues you may want to explore:
1. Is she actually Chinese, that is, born in China and only recently moved to your country? If so, does she understand English? All my Chinese students appear to understand and speak English, but they don’t.
2. If she is Chinese (in a cultural sense) she may have a completely different musical pattern in her unconscious. Traditional Chinese music is very different from Western music. Just to give you an example, my Chinese students without exception have problems with the major scale. They start it, but do not know where to end. The tonality principle (always end on the tonic) is unfamiliar to them. I found that I had to spend considerable time in the beginning getting them used to the “sound” of a major scale. Now expand that to Western harmony, and you may understand that for her it is all like atonal music! The Chinese never joined the equal temperament system, so their melodies are incredibly rich and subtle making use of all the range of fractions of tones, while our melodies are quite rough and primitive (by their standards) jumping as they do in semitones. So she may be very musical, but to her, what we think as nice music may sound atrocious! On the other hand, she may be unmusical. In either case here are a few suggestions:
a) make her play the melody in isolation – she may not have an ear for it! (is the Schumann piece Strange lands and people? If so, isolate the melodic line and make her play it, until she memorises it and can sing /whistle/hum it. Once she has the melody firmly on her mind, put it back in the music and tell her that her challenge is to bring it up. Then show her how to do it, by subduing the other voices). This will show her that practice is more than just finger dexterity.
b) Get her to listen to recordings of her pieces, if possible by different pianists. Ask her if she hears any difference. Most beginners do not. Have her hear the piece sequenced by a computer, and compare with it played by a great pianist.
c) Play the piece for her, first mimicking the way she plays it, then the way you would like her to play it. Check if she can hear the difference. Maybe she can’t (yet!).
d) In short, she may need at this stage more aural practice and not so much finger practice.
3. She may be under a lot of pressure from her family to do well. Criticism form the teacher means that she failed and shamed her family. Traditional Chinese families are not as laid back and liberal as Western families. The family will expect the girl works hard and they will make sure she does. So should you not criticise her ever? Not at all. Explain this to her (make sure the mother hears it too): “I only criticise the students that show promise. If I am picking on you it is because I think you are worth it. If I keep saying that everything is all right and that your playing is wonderful, then you should start to worry, because it means that I do not think I should bother with it.” Then I tell them about my kungfu master (I don’t have one, but it strikes a chord!), who would completely ignore the beginners and pick mercilessly on the advanced students, because he did not know if the beginners would stick to it, so it would be a waste of his energy to concentrate on them. And how proud I was if I got criticised, because this meant that I was now an advanced student! The mother will understand this very well, because this is actually the way they teach over there. Then she will not misconstrue your criticism as dissatisfaction with the student (which it may well be), but rather as an effort to improve her playing, and will therefore not give the girl a hard time once they get back at home.
Do not get too worried about her crying. It happens all the time. If I started worrying about people crying, I would be severely limited in what I can do for a student. If a student cries when I criticise, I immediately say: “What is the matter? It is all right to make mistakes, it is not brain surgery where someone dies if you make a mistake. It is only piano playing, if you make a mistake, try again. But if I do not tell you that you made a mistake, how would you know?”
I hope this helps,
Bernhard.