This is the roughest of rough drafts. I'm hoping for some feedback.
I don’t remember the joke, nor even the punchline. Just how
Dad said the first line:
“So, dere was dis black doot. . .” and the joke goes on. But
many people stopped listening after the joke’s sixth word. And some were shaky
at the second.
He told the joke everywhere. And once – only once, to my
recollection – did anyone ever interrupt the joke to ask the vital question:
“What’s a ‘doot’?”
The problem: Dad’s native language is Dutch, not English.
Even after forty years in the United States, his accent persisted (though he
denied it by saying, often “It’s does Germans who have trouble wit de ‘T-H’”).
Most people understood Dad pretty well. (Doot, by the way,
is how he says the word ‘dude’.)There were times, however, where it was a good
thing I or one of his other sons were there as he discussed a construction job
with a potential customer. We had to interpret. And sometimes others have to
interpret for us. With practice, for instance, we can pronounce the word cat
with the nasally A English requires. Otherwise, we pronounce it the way Dad
did: ‘cot’ as in the thing you sleep on, not the thing that sheds fur on your
clothing.
Dad had many friends in the same linguistic boat. He and a
neighbor would use their native Dutch to cheat at Pinochle. One fellow, Tony
Lanzio, made the best chicken cacciatore in the world but was, generally,
incomprehensible, as his thick Italian accent was also punctuated with French
and German words he knew. (I was lucky enough to serve a mission in France;
upon my return, I found Tony at least one-third easier to comprehend.)
And my French: A lot worse, I’m certain, than Dad’s or
Tony’s English. Most of the people I met in France were kind in listening to
the American speaking his pidgin French, and I did manage a French minor at university
for my bachelor’s, but I know were I to take a full college course in French at
a French school being taught by a French native, I would be intimidated beyond
all reason.
So now I’m teaching students at an English-language school.
Many of these students, depending on the semester, are from as far away
geographically and linguistically as Russia, Ukraine, Ghana, and Brazil. They
possess varying levels of English proficiency. How am I, as an English
instructor, best to help them progress through the course and on their journey
to greater English proficiency without crushing their spirits or giving them a
free ride?
That’s what I’m hoping to find out.
So far, this has been the most helpful resource:
It’s a site sponsored by the Frankfurt International School,
an English-language school with grades (in the American equivalent) from
kindergarten through 12th grade.
What impressed me the most is how closely some of the advice
they offer mirrors the BYU-Idaho learning model. To wit, their answer to the
question “What’s the most important thing I should know about the ESL students
I teach?”:
Who they are! It is essential to
know which of the non-native students in your class are ESL students and what
level of ESL they are in. This will give you some idea how much English they
know and will help you to have realistic expectations of what they will be able
to understand and do in your lessons.
I like to think their “who they are” is more than just
matching up names with English proficiency, but rather it’s knowing them on a
personal level so they become Paulo or Vasily, not “that ESL student from
Brazil or Russia.” In learning a different language, they’re working to break
down a barrier. We should not allow a label to put up a different barrier than
the one they think they’re tearing down.
Principle Five of the BYU-Idaho Learning Model states: “Learners
and teachers at BYU-Idaho love, serve, and teach one another.” We are further
reminded in the learning model pamphlet that “when learners and teacher view
one another charitably, they create safe learning environments where all can stretch
and stumble without fear. All learners – students and faculty – serve others
through diligent preparation, cooperative effort, and teaching one another;
thus charity replaces competition.” The foundation of such learning, charity,
and love, is getting to know each other. When we learn who our students are, we’re
better tuned to the spirit and begin building an environment where we can get
past some of the defenses and roadblocks we all put up when we enter a new
situation.
As we gain each others’ trust, we’re able to teach, be
teachable, and learn. We should strive to develop relationships with our
students where we are mutually perceived, as was Ammon, as being “wise, yet
harmless.” We encounter this phrase in Alma Chapter 18:22 where Ammon’s
underlying goal is to preach the gospel. Rather than marching in with the
scriptures in one hand and fire and brimstone coming out of his mouth, Ammon
spends much time gaining the trust of King Lamoni and his servants, by becoming
a servant to them and by getting to know them through service. Even after Ammon
has the king’s attention by defending his flocks at the waters of Sebus, he maintains
his efforts of “servant leadership” by going first to feed the king’s horses –
following the king’s instruction – rather than following the servants into the
king’s chamber to hear their bragging about his feats. “Surely,” King Lamoni
says in verse 10 of that same chapter, “there has not been any servant among
all my servants that has been so faithful as this man, for even he doth
remember all my commandments to execute them.”
Trust gained, Ammon can then be that wise, yet harmless
teacher, who teaches King Lamoni and all his household and where none worry
about making mistakes or being laughed at. They’re all learning, being taught
by someone they know and someone they respect and love.
A tall order for teachers?
Maybe. I know I struggle with getting to know my students.
But those I do get to know on a more personal level, they’re the ones who write
to me after the semester is over and thank me for being their teacher. Maybe
the struggle is worth it.
The Frankfurt school does, of course, offer other important
information as teachers work with ESL students. But I like to think that these
suggestions work in concert with teachers getting to know their students and
helping them to feel comfortable in this teaching environment.
Firstly, the school recommends this: “For written work, it
is important that feedback is concentrated on the content quality of the answer
rather than on its grammatical accuracy. It is discouraging for students who
have worked hard to give a good answer to have their work covered in red ink
for mistakes that are peripheral to the main purpose of the assignment. There
is also the danger that they may get the message that surface accuracy is more
important than conveying ideas or showing understanding.”
“However, written work can generally be corrected without
causing the student embarrassment in front of his or her peers, and you may
well wish to draw attention to one or two of the grammatical mistakes that
could interfere with understanding. It is also not unreasonable, for example,
to expect the verbs in a piece of writing about a historical event to be in the
past tense.”
Let’s look at how we might follow this advice once we get to
know our students.
I have a good friend who, late last year, worked as a beta
reader for a novel I’ve written. A beta reader reads a novel as it’s being
worked on, to help the author get a sense of perspective on the book, to see
its strengths and weaknesses. The author then takes the feedback from the beta
readers to continue editing the book. As a rough draft, I knew the book likely
had grammatical errors in it. But I wasn’t interested in having my grammar
corrected. I wanted, rather, to know whether the story made sense, and whether
it was worth the effort to continue working on the book. My faithful beta
reader sent back some critical, yet constructive feedback that led me to
re-write the book in a radical way, taking it through an additional two drafts
before I sent it back to her and to other readers.
Had she focused on grammar and punctuation without making
many comments about storyline, character, pacing and plot, I might have assumed
the book was ready to go to agents after I fixed the grammatical mistakes.
However, I have built a relationship of trust with this reader, and she was
kind enough to reciprocate with the honesty I needed to fix the book (at least
I hope I’ve fixed it; we’ll see what she says this time around). She gave me
what I needed: a look at the bigger picture.
That’s the kind of feedback we can offer our students after
we’ve gotten to know them and know what kind of feedback they want – this goes
for ESL students as well as English native speakers.
Oh – how do we know what they want? Well, let’s go back to
the Frankfurt school, which says: “Consider asking the student what kind of
feedback he or she would like. Some students may welcome the chance to focus on
their grammar mistakes with a view to eradicating them in future pieces of
written work. Other students, however, will just completely ignore your
corrections - and you can save your precious grading time!”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We can knock ourselves out to
offer constructive suggestions on a rough draft, and some students will take
them to heart, while others will correct the grammar and just turn in the same
paper. That’s their right as free thinkers. But knowing what kind of advice or
feedback our students want, whether they’re ESL or not, will help us get to
know our students better and give them a more valuable learning experience at
BYU-Idaho.
Those people who got to know my father eventually got to
understand his Dutch accent, and could laugh along with the jokes he told even
if he pronounced the words in odd ways. Learning French helped me and my sister
better communicate with Dad’s friend Tony Lanzio, who mixed many languages
together as he spoke. And just as getting to know these two men helped those
who interacted with them gain a better understanding of their lives and
efforts, so too can we get to know our students better to be better servant
leaders to them.
