Jamie Does TESOL

I attended the TESOL International Conference (Big TESOL for short and for TESOL’s annoyance) last month. Below are highlights and running commentary from some of the workshops I attended.

“Power in Students’ Hands: Test Creation” (got handout)
In what would work better in a session longer than seven weeks (hi Bridge!), the instructor has the students completely deconstruct and sort through material covered in a class and then take that material and create not just a test on the material, but an answer key as well. The tests require multiple drafts and are time-consuming, and the instructor must revise the material. The instructor can also offer incentives, such as the best (read: most creative) test gets a prize, though that’s a bit subjective and takes some of the power away from students, right? (It does.) Such an undertaking must be started very early in a session or semester and maybe would work best as a build-up to a comprehensive final exam or it could be the final exam. For a twenty-minute presentation, that’s a lot to digest.

“I Want to Write a Book! Getting Published with TESOL” (got handout)
I only stayed for part of this presentation, but that was long enough to get the basic gist of the process as well as five tips from an up-and-coming writer (read: darling) of the TESOL publication brotherhood. Current topics for publication include: focus on teacher training, resources, more current issues in the field, teacher materials, activities that have advanced from theory to practice, oh, and just about anything else anyone wants to submit. Regardless of what you’d like to submit, you must still submit a formal proposal. The golden child of the presentation then went on to talk about the “proposal-contract-schedule-finish-publication” timeline as well as offer his five basic suggestions:

1. Work to align your and the publisher’s goals as much as possible, the more communication you have with them the better. Talk before you just go and pitch a random proposal, even if they are willing to look at any and all proposals. (Confusing.)
2. Get an opportunity to view other titles/publications in the series (I think they used/confused this word with publisher or genre) you want to publish in.
3. Talk to other instructors about their needs and what could/would help them: “What do you find lacking in ____?”
1. suggested ELC-inspired titles
• The 400-Hour Work Week
• Just Because I am in My Office Doesn’t Mean I’m Having Office Hours
• Teacher to the Stars: The Jamie G. Sturges Story
• Ugh, MLA Again?
• Yes, You Can Park a Car on the House and other English grammar hacks
• Seriously, I’ve Asked for a Minibar Like 100 Times—Where Is It?
• Go See David
2. Establish concrete deadlines for chapters in the process.
3. Take advantage of useful feedback you get from reviewers throughout the entire process. You and the publishers should act as a team.

“Technology Techniques for Improved Writing” (swag bag, Hunger Games analogies)
This was one of those publisher-pusher panels, this one backed by Oxford. The swag bag included a dictionary and a catalog! The dictionary included a CD of Oxford’s iWriter program. Don’t get excited. The presenter had a lot of charisma, but by the end of his presentation I found his Hunger Games analogies contradictory and frightening. Anyway. The instructor asked us to remember our days as students, wandering in the academic wilderness, and then to share our experiences with our partner. My partner didn’t know what wilderness meant. After that, the presenter launched his iWriter campaign, which, compared to the amount of essays and types of essays we do in our IEP, is very lacking. But the presenter, in all his charismatic ebullience, swore by it. I can’t help but wonder what kind of stunted curriculum he works from in his IEP out in California; he had a demonstration the next morning at the Oxford booth and I had a growing list of questions, but there was a problem with the demonstration: it was in the morning. I do wonder how much he relies on this program, though.

iWriter has a limited framework. The only essays it features are argumentative and compare/contrast. Granted, it has multiple types of those essays, but no cause/effect, description, definition, reaction, problem-solution, etc. It does have other practical types of writing that we don’t cover in our IEP: business letters, cover letters, etc. It shows students model essays and gives them a framework to brainstorm, outline, and draft their essays in. It does not auto-check the work. It works best as a supplement outside of tutoring and in-class instruction. It also works best with that Q Skills for Success Series that is very, very colorful and also very, very shallow. iWriter looks a lot like Google Docs but with way more bells and whistles. I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for a student to hack the program and plagiarize one of the model essays. Anyway, I have it in my office if anyone wants to play with it.

Finally, the Hunger Games stuff: spoilers? If the students are Tributes set to make their way through an essay wilderness, does my helping them make me a sponsor? Or does the fact that I assigned the essay in the first place make me the Gamemaker, a pawn of the Capital? And if the essay process is like the Hunger Games, then shouldn’t only one student pass? If more than one passes, wouldn’t that anger the Capital, I mean, me? “May the odds be ever in your students’ favor” indeed, presenter. Indeed.

“L1 in the Hallways” (no handout)
In all seriousness, this was the most interesting presentation I went to. The first leg of the presentation discussed the many failed attempts this ELC experienced. They tried to stop the L1-ness with punishment (like erasing all the pencil markings on the desks), loss of privileges and participation points, red/green cards; then they tried propaganda, which also failed. The next strategy was to focus on the positives of using English: “Why do we speak English?” “Progress, respect, honor.” By reminding students of the purpose, the positive approach satisfied motivation. Unfortunately, it was not enforced or consistent. Students didn’t understand it. It became old quickly. The ELC decided to survey other IEPs to see how they dealt with this problem. Some of the inspiring responses they got back were
• “unresolvable [sic] question”
• “legislating language doesn’t work”
Students do know the positives, but they have bad attitudes. And it’s not just effectively pushing English; it also depends on the teacher’s approach. Students want conditions of the rules, not hard-and-fast rules. When the ELC surveyed some of its own students, the student feedback fell into the following categories, with examples:
1. sociocultural (they can’t betray their native culture; there’s peer pressure to use the L1; respect for the elders and English violations of L1 honorifics—“You can’t address grandfather as you”; friendship is greater than English)
2. linguistics (proficiency, translation, self-expression constraints, comprehension of assignments)
3. psychological (lack of confidence, stress, loss of identity in L2)
4. individual (motivation, personality type)
5. institutional (class size, teachers, curriculum, administration, marginalized and lack of opportunity to see native speakers)
Additional feedback included
• “We all have bad days” and enforced English only compounds that
• compliance should become educational—“abundantly and redundantly clear”
• teachers can’t be seen as language police
• L/S content doesn’t help with interaction students want. They don’t want to talk about artificial topics all the time.
Student wishes
• abandon “only”
• hallway should be extension of classroom
• maintain motivation
• change teacher attitudes about L1
• L1 as facilitator is better than viewing it as an obstacle (especially with linguistic problems)
• give students autonomy in the hallway (locus of control)—though we all know if you give a student an autonomy, he’ll take a mile, am I right? Wait, that doesn’t sound right.
• English without cultural norm violations: maybe adapt a new identity in the classroom (suggestopedia)
Perhaps the most compelling thing I took away from this presentation was something said at the end: This is a curriculum issue, not a policy issue. Maybe instead of having it listed under both our goals/objectives and classroom policies it’s only under the former?

“English Learners’ Pause Patterns: Pedagogical Implications for the Classroom” (got handout)
So, the Praat transcription software sounds like a fun program. Aside from the handout, the entire presentation can be summed up in the image below.

“ESL Students’ Comprehension of American Humor” (didn’t get a handout)
Either you get jokes or you don’t. Funny thing is, non-native speakers do actually get a lot of jokes but lack the metacognitive abilities to explain them. Universal humor (shame, pride, falling down all over ODU) is easy, linguistic humor is not (knot?), but cultural humor is extremely difficult (lawyers, am I right?). The presenter surveyed his students, who are predominantly Saudi, as the presenter is from Michigan (ha!) and used multiple-choice questions about what the funniest line for an incomplete joke is, like this gem below.
• Jenn: Jamie, what time did you wake up today?
• Jamie: At the crack of noon!
• Jenn:
• a: Wow, you’re lazy.
• b: Woah, that’s early!
• c: Well, Saqer’s been waiting outside your office for you since 11 a.m.
• d: To get to the other side.
The presenter wanted to find out if there was a correlation between length of residency and getting humor. There isn’t. So he thought maybe proficiency mattered. It does, but not in any significant way. I mean, Basic students laugh at everything and they’re Basic. In the end, the presenter really didn’t have any groundbreaking findings on the topic, but encouraged us to keep being funny, use humor early and often, don’t be afraid, know that jokes can soften the impact of correction and face threats, and understand that cultural jokes are teachable moments. And teachable moments are a laugh riot.

“KEITH FOLSE HAS PUBLISHED 56 BOOKS AND I HAVE PUBLISHED ZERO BOOKS” (no handout, but free copy of a textbook I think we already have, and that’s not the name of the panel)
Keith Folse says it’s okay if you deceive your students. He’ll take home a stack of essays one night and not even look at them. He’ll come back to class the next day and say, “I noticed these essays have a lot of problems, so I’m giving you all ONE MORE CHANCE. Add three Academic Word List words to these drafts.” Keith Folse is all about keeping students doing something, and teachers can go so far as to assign a bunch of things throughout the week but announce at the end of the week which ones will actually be graded. A bunch of little assignments are okay. Just keep them working!

When assessing, Keith Folse says second language acquisition problems are greater than writing problems—don’t just find mistakes for the sake of finding mistakes. Remember, the gatekeeper (for us, a freshman comp teacher?) and his/her goals and objectives are more important. How can we best align our students with the gatekeepers’ visions?

Keith Folse asserts that nothing done in a classroom is natural. Find indirect ways of showing writing errors (i.e.: no agreement of topic: no unity!). Keith Folse says, “to learn how to write, you have to start unnaturally BEFORE you become more ‘natural.’” Keith Folse suggests that it is best to put students in groups of three and choose the leader based on birthdates. I totally did this last week and it was amazing. Keith Folse says, “You can’t just say ‘combine’ [sentences] because students will go for the easiest and choppiest and most awkward method. Don’t intervene while students write on the board. When all the group leaders have put their combined sentences on the board, ask how many sentences are actually on the board (capitalization and punctuation count!), and usually seven groups are narrowed down to maybe three good sentences that are different but good.” Keith Folse went on to say that you have to get Saudis to write, not talk. Don’t comment in the group work—make students do the commenting. Don’t favor a sentence. Make sure every student gets a chance to write and “own” his sentence. Multiple sentences are correct depending on the content of the paragraph the sentence would go in. Each student is like an individual class.

Keith Folse is a rock star. Did not get a chance to ask if an updated edition of Blueprints will ever be done.