If You Must Choose, Choose Wisely

I teach three ESL classes in the mornings, Monday through Thursday at a private language school. Every day, when I’m teaching my second class of the day, this is what I think of:

Only I wasn’t the one who chose poorly, and neither were my students. The poor choice was made by the previous teacher, who also happens to be the person in charge of choosing textbooks at this joint.

Choosing a text for an ESL class is different from choosing one for your middle school or high school language arts class. You need to take into account the level of language of your students, their reasons for studying English, and whether or not the text will be useful to them in any way. It also doesn’t hurt to choose something that they might find interesting. You should also keep in mind that foreign language skill level does not in any way equate to US school system grade level. Just because you read a specific book in the eighth grade does not mean that intermediate level ESL students – whose level-appropriate grammar text has them learning how to form sentences using “used to” while learning vocabulary such as bicycle, summer camp, subway, and quiet – could gain anything from attempting to read this book. I’m all for challenging my students. I love the concept of i+1 – giving students content that is just a little above their current level – but there’s a difference between challenging your students and, well, torturing them.

The words that I listed above (bicycle, summer camp, subway, and quiet) all come from the grammar-text that my intermediate level students in my second class are using in their grammar class. It’s pretty spot on level-wise. It might not be i+1 (it’s a little more like “just i”), and it certainly isn’t interesting, but it contains incredibly useful vocabulary and useful grammar that will be, well, useful to new immigrants to the United States. I wish I taught from that text book.

Instead, I’m teaching Call of the Wild, by Jack London. Not an ESL version of Call of the Wild, but the original. Like I said, this was not my choice. And the chooser chose poorly. Putting aside the fact that this book is depressing as hell (seriously, it’s all about dogs suffering and dying slow, painful, graphic deaths in forty-below temperatures in the Alaskan wilderness), there are some major problems with this choice of text. 

Remember my short list of vocabulary words from my students’ level appropriate text? Well, compare those to primitive, fang, primordial, mastership, and toil. And I just picked those out of Call of the Wild’s table of contents. Every chapter is bursting at the seams with very advanced level English vocabulary, the kind that students studying for the GRE would study. These words are way out of the league of students who are learning how to say “I used to go to summer camp by bicycle.”

Additionally, not only are many of the words used in this book very advanced, but they’re also pretty archaic. I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “Now, this word is very, very old fashioned. We don’t normally say this nowadays. Nowadays, we would say ____________ instead.” I’ve had students ask, if no one uses these words, why are we studying them? And that, my friends, is my point. This book was written in 1903, and I’m sure the language was spot-on for its time… but this isn’t practical language to be teaching ESL students in 2013.

Call of the Wild would be useful for ESL students who are at an advanced level and who are interested in studying American literature. For recent immigrants – especially those at an intermediate level of English – this book is a waste of time. And I’m stuck with it until April 18th.

ESL Monkey's Paw (Passages 2)

This is an activity I whipped up for class a few weeks ago - and which I spent this morning modifying just a tad. It's designed to accompany chapters 3 and 4 of the ESL textbook, Passages 2. The grammar points that these chapters focus on include ~ing clauses (Ex: Hoping to find proof of life on Mars, NASA launched the Curiosity probe.), active-voice reporting clauses (Ex: Scientists claim (that) they have found proof of life on Mars.), and passive-voice reporting clauses (Ex: It is believed (that) life once existed on Mars.). The main topics of Chapter 4 are superstitions, beliefs, and legends. 

I adapted the short story, The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs to contain language that my students would be able to comprehend. I also changed the sum of cash featured in the story from £200 to $20,000, to make it both American (as my students are studying here in the US) as well as modern. Lastly, I made sure to include examples of the three grammar points mentioned above, as well as to use some of the vocabulary from the chapter. If you'd like to take a look at (or use) my version of the story, you can download it from here. (I have highlighted the grammar points in hot pink, and the relevant vocabulary words in yellow. Also, dropbox seems to have done something wonky to my formatting; I promise everything was properly formatted in my original!)

After reading through the story, I also showed my students a clip from The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II, in which the Simpson family acquires their own magical monkey's paw. Unfortunately, it's not readily available for free online, but you can download the episode from Amazon for $1.99.

This lesson works really well! The students seem to enjoy it, and they get to review the grammar and vocabulary without realizing that they're doing a grammar/vocab review. Also, a big hat tip to my friend YH who first came up with the idea of using The Simpsons' version of The Monkey's Paw as an accompaniment to Passages. 

Summer Kyrgyzstan Update!

As I mentioned before, I will be spending the upcoming summer in Kyrgyzstan. I will spend two weeks traveling around the country, one week in Bishkek, and two months teaching English in rural villages. I knew that I would be spending the month of June in a small village called Kultor... and today I learned that I would be spending July in an even smaller village called Bar-Bulak (which has the advantage of being located less than two miles from the southern shore of Lake Issyk Kul). Anyway, here are some graphics to illustrate pretty much everything I know about Bar-Bulak, which admittedly is not very much.

A marks Bar-bulak, B marks Kultor. The black area at the top is Lake Issyk Kul. According to Google Maps, it should take 23 minutes to drive from one to the other; however, given the state of the roads and the fact that there's a mountain range in between them, it's actually more like an hour and a half.
This is as resolved as Google Earth gets over Bar-bulak.

Reading ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ in Orlando

The first time I read Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran was in 2008, near the end of my stint in Kyrgyzstan. This being the pre-Kindle period, my friends and I read whatever English language books came our way, from dry histories of Central Asia, to entertaining mysteries, to bizarre works of soft-core porn allegedly categorized as ‘romance.’ We read whatever we could get our hands on, simply because our supply was so limited. Some of what we read was pretty awful (the sci-fi story about the aliens and the grandmothers, the aforementioned ‘romance’ that utilized the term ‘pearly essence’ in a way that has scarred me forever, that horrid ex-pat bio I nicknamed Boobs in Bishkek, etc.), but others stood out as really well-written, entertaining and/or educational (numerous Nevada Barr mysteries, Colin Thubron’s Central Asia travel memoirs, tales of reindeer herders in Siberia, etc.). Reading Lolita in Tehran fell into the latter category. I absolutely adored it. Not only was it incredibly well-written, but it provided incredibly in-depth insight into the lives of women in Iran – insights that went far beyond the stereotypical limitations of OMG THEY WEAR VEILS! that permeates our media today. As I was, at the time, living in a predominantly Muslim country, I had so often been asked by friends, family, and acquaintances back home: ‘Do all the women wear veils?’ ‘Do they all hate Americans?’ ‘Is it safe for non-Muslims to go there?’ etc, etc, etc. I can only imagine that these types of questions increase exponentially if one were to go, not to an obscure country like Kyrgyzstan, but instead to a well-known and well-vilified country such as Iran. Additionally, Nafisi’s teaching style (encouraging her Iranian students to connect the events discussed in Western novels to the events in their lives) was something that I wanted to try. While it wasn’t something that I could use in the classes that I was teaching at the time, I had visions of creating a reading list based on the one included at the end of Nafisi’s book and incorporating it into a class of advanced EFLers who were interested in English language literature. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. Instead, 2009 happened.

Fast-forward to 2013. One of the courses I’m taking is on dealing with different cultures in the ESOL classroom. The course really seems to be designed for people who have never been out of the country before and who have never had to deal with people from different cultures before. To be honest, I personally am getting very little from the course. We were given a ‘suggested reading list’ from which we were supposed to select a book about which we were supposed to write a report. (Don’t even get me started on how lame of an assignment this is. A book report? Is this grad school or elementary school? Yeah.) Anyway, one of the books on the list was Reading Lolita in Tehran. Remembering how much I’d enjoyed it the first time around, I decided to go with that. (Hey, I’m working two jobs and taking four classes – cut me some slack for working with a book I’d read before!) I enjoyed the book as much as I did the first time around, and I got to actually formulate my thoughts into a paper on how I would use what I learned from the book inside an actual classroom.

Then, four days before the paper was due, I saw a poster advertising a speaking event in Winter Park – Azar Nafisi would be speaking that very night! Free to the public! I had a splitting headache that wouldn’t go away no matter how much Excedrin I fed it. I was so shaky from taking too many Excedrin that I actually felt dizzy. Normally I would have celebrated the arrival of such a headache by curling up under the covers with a pillow atop my head. Instead I forced myself to drive over to Winter Park. I am very glad I did. Nafisi was incredible – and surprisingly hilarious. Reading Lolita in Tehran is such a serious work that I really didn’t expect her to have such a sense of humor. I video-recorded part of her presentation, and audio-recorded the rest. I missed the very beginning, as I was having trouble getting my audio-recorder to work (which was why I ended up videoing the first segment), but I did get most of it. Sadly, despite the fact that I could have met Nafisi at the end of the program, I had to leave – my headache had reached the point where it was going to try to do me in if I didn’t take it home immediately. But at least I was able to record her for your listening pleasure:

Anyone remember that Verve Pipe song?

I'm in the process on writing a 'reflection' on a chapter in one of my texts on participatory language teaching. Participatory teaching (language or otherwise) involves a lot of power sharing between students and teachers - allowing students to take more of a role in deciding what and how they are going to learn. While there are many aspects of participatory teaching (language or otherwise) that I think can be incorporated into a classroom in a useful manner, I think the teacher/professor/instructor should always be careful not to hand too much power over to the student. The student is still the student for a reason. If he could teach himself, he wouldn't be taking the class. I don't say this because I'm a teacher and want to keep hold of the reins of power in the classroom (well, maybe to a certain extent...). My biggest problem with this concept dates back to some experiences I had in high school. I've been writing about it in my reflection, and I'm trying really hard not to reference the Verve Pipe, but...

Over the winter break spanning 1993-1994 (while I was in 9^th grade), two of my teachers (English and Biology) attended a conference on participatory teaching which really inspired them. During the fall semester, our classes had been very normal and boring. My English teacher spent a lot of time drilling us on parts of speech (which was annoying, as my peers who studied with other teachers were reading Romeo and Juliet), and my biology teacher gave daily science lectures. Normal but boring. After Christmas break, both teachers came back, having attended said conference, full of new ideas on how they planned to completely reinvent our classrooms. In both classes, the teachers decided, would be run as “businesses.” We divided ourselves up into “departments,” and each “department” was supposed to be in charge of teaching part of our Language Arts or Biology textbook. One group was elected to be management, and their job was (ostensibly) to oversee the rest of us and make sure we were on-task. At the end of each grading period, we were supposed to meet with our group members and determine what grades we felt we deserved.

At the beginning of the process, we were all very excited. This was something new, something we’d never done in a class before. However, it was problematic from the get-go. The “popular” kids were all elected to management, and friends formed their own “departments.” The teachers insisted that we (the students) were in control, and that we were responsible for planning and executing all tasks. For the first few weeks, we struggled to do some work – but as our teachers had taken to giving us no guidance, English and Biology rapidly devolved into gossip hour and study hall for other classes. We had to turn in final projects by the end of each grading period, and of course we all scraped something together at the last minute… but as we were deciding our own grades, none of us put much effort into it (especially after the first grading period ended and we learned that our teachers really had been serious about letting us decide our own grades).

I can see some merit to the general way in which my English and Biology teachers attempted to run our classes that semester; however, it is obvious to me that these specific projects were a failure. I did not learn anything in either of those classes that semester, other than how to do the bare minimum to scrape by. We, as ninth graders, were not mature enough to handle the complete responsibility for our education that our teachers turned over to us – and being immature and irresponsible, we took advantage of this opportunity to goof off as much as possible. This is one of the dangers in taking participatory education too far – it expects a lot from students, and often expects more than the students are able or willing to give. In my high school English and Biology classes, things would have gone a lot better had “management” been the teacher, as opposed to the cheerleaders and the football stars. We needed someone to guide us, to show us what we needed to do and how we needed to do it – and to make sure we stayed on task. Instead, our teachers turned the classroom completely over to us, and we took advantage of it in the worst possible way. After all, we were only freshmen.

Valentine's Themed Songs with Phrasal Verbs

Today was Valentine's Day, and my class (adults, advanced level) were still supposed to be working on phrasal verbs. I decided to spice up the lesson by using some songs with which they were all familiar, and which contained the phrasal verbs get back, come true, fog up, run out, settle down, bend over, hold back, look into, turn up, open up, and stay away. The songs I used were Someone Like You by Adele, and I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. In addition to discussions of the phrasal verbs in these songs (including whether or not they were separable or inseparable), we got to discuss words and phrases like out of the blue, time flies, the time of our lives, bittersweet, bend over backwards for someone, aim to do something, and fate.

Jason Mraz's grammar is a particularly annoying and often incorrect combination of cutsey and trashy, but my group was smart enough that we were able to go through and actually correct Mraz's grammar. And now if someone says to them something along the lines of 'I done ate that' (instead of 'I've already eaten that'), they'll know what that person is talking about. 

They also learned 'ain't' from Adele. (Only one of them had heard 'ain't' before.) While I love correct grammar and certainly don't want to be teaching my students to speak incorrectly, my goal is for them to be able to understand and communicate with the average person on the street... and with so many native English speakers using 'ain't' or other incorrect grammar forms on a regular basis, I'd like to make sure my students can understand such things when they encounter them. 

Anyway, the class really enjoyed the lesson, and they were all happily singing along with the songs, so I'd say this one was a success. Below are the lyrics to the songs with the phrasal verbs removed, if you'd like to snag 'em for your classes. (BTW, I'm Yours says 'damn' several times, and talks about nibbling on someone's ear, so definitely keep in mind the age/culture of your students!)

Someone Like You by Adele

I heard that you're __________________
That you found a girl and you're married now.
I heard that your dreams __________________.
Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you.

Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain't like you to __________________ or hide from the light.

I hate to __________________ out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't __________________, I couldn't fight it.
I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead,
Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead"

You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised
In a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days

I hate to __________________ out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't __________________, I couldn't fight it.
I'd hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me it isn't over.

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

Nothing compares
No worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes
They are memories made.
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

Never mind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Don't forget me, I beg
I remember you said,
"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

I’m Yours by Jason Mraz

Well you done done me and you bet I felt it

I tried to be chill but you're so hot that I melted

I fell right through the cracks 

Now I'm trying to __________________

Before the cool done __________________

I'll be giving it my bestest

And nothing's going to stop me but divine intervention

I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some

But I won't hesitate no more, no more

It cannot wait, I'm yours

Well __________________ your mind and see like me

__________________ your plans and damn you're free

__________________ your heart and you'll find love love love love

Listen to the music of the moment people dance and sing

We’re just one big family

And it's our God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved

So I won't hesitate no more, no more

It cannot wait I'm sure

There's no need to complicate 

Our time is short

This is our fate, I'm yours

Dooo, dooo, dooooo

Scooch on over closer dear

And I will nibble your ear

I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror

And __________________ backwards just to try to see it clearer

But my breath __________________ the glass

And so I drew a new face and I laughed

I guess what I'll be saying is there ain't no better reason

To rid yourself of vanity and just go with the seasons

It's what we aim to do

Our name is our virtue

But I won't hesitate no more, no more 

It cannot wait I'm yours

Well __________________ your mind and see like me

__________________ your plans and damn you're free

__________________ your heart and you'll find that the sky is yours

So please don't, please don't, please don't

There's no need to complicate

Cause our time is short

This oh this oh this is our fate, I'm yours!

here we go again. (UPDATED)

My mother has been doing animal rescue for years. Back when she and I were living in the same town (2009), I set up a website and facebook page for her animals, hoping that we could get more animals adopted and maybe even get some donations. We got few of either. What we did get were TONS of people calling and emailing, asking us to take their cats (and occasionally their dogs). We were rapidly maxed out, both space-wise, and money-wise. For the past year, I've had a huge banner across the top of her website, which states "We are currently FULL and CANNOT accept any more animals at this time" in huge red letters. Nonetheless, people have continued to call and email my mom, asking her to take their animals.

And it's usually THEIR animals.

Or a stray animal that they took in months or years ago, and have now decided that they can't keep.

Or the new boyfriend is allergic.

Or the wife is pregnant.

Or it has fleas. (Really. One of her coworkers tried to convince her to take his cats because he couldn't get rid of their fleas.)

Or they're moving. (Oh please. I brought mine home with me from KOREA. Don't even give me that.)

Or it has some medical problem and they can't afford to take care of it.

Or.... or.... or.... We've heard so many excuses.

Most people - despite having ignored the message about how she wasn't taking any more animals - when hearing that my mom was in her upper sixties, working full-time, and caring for roughly 40 animals all by herself, generally stop hassling her. Or they dump them at her gate.

Or they beg, plead, hassle, harangue, and bother my mother until she agrees to take the animal in question.

That's what happened yesterday. The woman couldn't even keep all of her excuses straight: she just lost her job and only had $70 to her name. But she had to be at work by such-and-such time. The cat had an injured eye and she couldn't afford treatment, but the vet said that with some eye ointment it would clear up. So on and so forth. Eventually my mom agreed to take it. The woman assured her that it had been tested for FeLV/FIV (the woman's vet said it hadn't been, but perhaps this was done at a mobile clinic?), that it didn't need eye surgery (the vet says the eye must be surgically removed), and that she would arrange with our vet to pay for its neutering (she didn't). Oh, and this woman is in her twenties and drives a Mustang.

Obviously, this cat will be far better off with my mom than with this woman. That being said, why can't people other than my mom take responsibility once in a while? In what world is it a good idea to unload your problem onto a 68 year old woman who teaches full time and who takes care of roughly forty animals all by herself so that you can continue driving your Mustang and talking on your smartphone?
UPDATE: So apparently when the woman told my mom that the cat had tested negative for FeLV, that was a lie. Not surprising. This was the email I got from my mom: "Had to have the poor boy euthanised.  He turned out to be FeLv+, and Wes (the vet) said it was a 'hot positive'.  Thought  surgery would be problematic, and I couldn't even put him in with Flame -- it would put her at risk.  It was so sad -- he purred right up to the last second." Good thing we didn't just take the woman at her word and let him loose in our house, as he was highly contagious with an often fatal disease. Arrrrgh. 
UPDATE 2: OMFG. The former owner of this cat (the woman who refused to take no for an answer when my mom tried to explain that she couldn't take him) called to say that she would pay to have him neutered. Mom informed the woman of everything I mentioned in my previous update. The woman said that she'd had the cat tested and that it was negative, and that she didn't understand how this could have happened. Then she called back today to bitch my mom out for killing her cat, swearing that she'd had the cat tested and it was negative, and why didn't my mom call her, yadda, yadda, yadda. Obviously, my mom didn't call her because the woman had refused to take responsibility for this animal, and totally relinquished all responsibility for the cat when she pressured my mom into taking it. So here's my mom, spending over a hundred dollars on this cat (for the exam, FeLV/FIV test, and eventual euthanasia), being the one making the tough decisions about what is best for this cat, and being the one holding it in her arms, comforting it as it died... and this woman who refused to take responsibility for her own pet is now blaming my mom? And chewing her out? People suck.