This semester I am working with a world literature class that is composed solely of ESL students. It is the first time such a section is offered, so it is sort of an experiment. The content is the same as for a native-speaker class, but the class is smaller, so students get an opportunity to participate in class discussions more often, and they are not in the “ESL-minority”, so they don’t feel shy about leading conversations in English. They also have an additional 1,5 hour tutorial, where they learn about writing techniques, some ESL-specific writing issues and get an opportunity to practice writing. I believe this format is beneficial for many ESL students, but it seems that it still does not alleviate all of their problems.
After a recent discussion of thesis statements in general and potential thesis statements for their paper, their instructor came up to me and said she was shocked at how little they had understood of the texts. This was surprising for her since she knew that these are smart students. I started pondering about it, and about the comments the students made about the text. I think that now I see what might be the problem. When you are learning a second language and have not mastered it yet, there is a period when you feel that you are using it as a child, which is very frustrating, because you know and understand much more than you can express. And when you are reading in your second language, the amount of unknown words bogs you down so much that you can hardly appreciate the depth of the argument or the style of the author, even if you would have grasped it in your native language. It seems to me that this is what might be happening. The amount of reading in that class is quite substantial. A native reader probably does not need as much extra time to go from the ’surface reading’ to the full picture, with cultural allusions, undercurrents, etc. But for many ESL students it is long and exhausting enough to trudge through the plot, so they have no time or energy to go back and deconstruct the text. I don’t know if there is a perfect solution for this, but maybe it would be better to reduce the amount of reading in such classes, and spend more time during class on going from the ’surface’ of the text to the possible deeper readings. Would you agree?
I recently faced a related challenge in a class I am teaching this semester, Yana. It is not an ESL course, but I assigned an article that turned out to be quite difficult for the students in my class. I had used the same article once before, but toward the end of the semester rather than the beginning. I am also trying out the method suggested in “Teaching With Your Mouth Shut,” and so the students really set the pace of discussion. (They do this by coming up with a list of questions about the reading, together as a class.) Thus, when they didn’t understand the article, it became immediately clear because they did not have any questions to pose. I was taken aback, because they had decided to read the first half of the article (about 8 fairly dense pages) and it was the only reading required for that class period with a weekend to prepare. When I sort of chided them for not reading, one of the students said, “Ok, I have a question, ‘Did anybody really understand this article?’” The class laughed, because 2/3rds of them had not. However, once I encouraged them to include their confusion in their questions, they came up with a list and began to discuss them. We ended up taking three class periods to talk about this one article, Mary Louise Pratt’s “Arts of the Contact Zone.” We did discuss the article slowly, and in many cases read the text together in class again, stopping to define difficult concepts. I actually think it was extremely productive. We talked about her strategy, why and how she could connect ’stories’ that seemed completely disparate, who her audience was and how it differed from us as a class, how her educational environment was different from ours, and whether they thought her ideas would translate into the classrooms where many of them work as teacher’s assistants. However, I have a lot of anxiety about admitting to spending three class periods discussing one article that was less than 20 pages!! Should I have selected a more accessible article? I chose it because when my class read it last time, it provoked many good questions from them, in fact that’s why I moved it up earlier in the semester. As it is, my syllabus already contains far less than the 2-3 articles a week that seems to be sort of standard. However, I feel that we as a group discussing the article, gained so much by going at the slower pace needed in order to understand it, so I will probably risk it again.
Reply to Deborah Gambs
Hi Yana,
It seems like an interesting attempt to create an ESL section. I do agree with you in that ESL students need much more time and energy to process the readings, and therefore, giving them the same amount of reading as the native speakers can result in less comprehension and more frustration!:)
I guess it would be great if the professor could reduce the amount of reading for them in order to focus on having quality discussion on at least some of the readings. It is important, however, that the instructor is realizing that they need more time to process readings than native speakers and (importantly) that this does not necessarily reflect the degree of their ’smartness’.
Reply to Yukiko
Reading some of the recent posts made me think of the perennial debate between advocates of teaching writing using grammar instruction and stressing errors in order to correct them, versus those who concluded that teaching grammar does not improve writing (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer, 1963) and may in fact be counter-productive. John C. Bean brings this point in “Engaging Ideas”. He advocates an approach where instructors tolerate some grammar mistakes in multiple drafts in order to arrive at (hopefully) an improved final version, an approach emphasizing ideas and organization, and holding students responsible for finding and fixing their own errors.
I wonder how this pedagogical method holds up in an ESL setting. I never took an ESL class (or taught one) but I was often in classrooms where second language speakers were a minority. One very clear example of the benefits of teaching/learning grammar was my experience with learning how to structure an essay. In my native language, I was taught that to state my main point clearly, precisely and early on (in the first paragraph) would be crass and offensive to the reader’s intelligence. Instead, I learned to build meandering labyrinths of meaning and lead a reader on a journey through long, colorful sentences. Then, in the last few paragraphs, I would reveal what my main point or intention was. Much to my surprise, this approach did not serve me well in my college composition classes. I remember the feeling of shock and revelation when one of the professors took me aside to tell me that I have to tell a reader from the beginning what my point would be. Where is the fun in that, I thought? But this pedestrian dose of “straight-up grammar” clearly changed my (English writing) life. On the other hand, no amount of composition instruction was as beneficial to learning English, as my attempts to decipher rock and roll lyrics.
Reply to Agnieszka