Re: I hate circular definition....

erimess of the Cavern #61 howled:
Ashikaga wrote:

I also suspect erimess's school has no formal ESL programs since usually a
student with severe language trouble would go to a specific teacher that
has linguistics or ESL instructor's creditial.

You suspect totally wrong. My department is under Educational Support
Services, and that's also where disabilities and such stuff is. So we
work with those people. And we have an ESL councelor, and a, er...
well, I don't know that it's really a department. But we have ESL
classes. I suspect that as long as you are enrolled in them, you're
allowed to take anything.

Wrong assumption and I apologize.

(And they made me test out of junior high level math because too many
people get passed through high school -- I guess even with A averages
-- and I might not know what I'm doing, and I'm not an adult who can
figure out whether I can take this math class and skip the stupid
intro algebra class that would bore me to tears, and never mind that I
was even accepted to a college that actually has real requirements to
get in (which includes having already had basic algebra since it's not
a college-level course except at my school) and where I suddenly had
to work my *** off to get C's -- that was a shock -- BUT, you can
come in and not be able to read and not know English and take any dang
thing you want. Which is a little difficult to figure out since you
have to take the English and math placement tests now to even get
*accepted* to the college, and I only got out of the English placement
test cause I had college credits to transfer, and yet these people who
can't read can take anything? But I had to test out of junior high
level math. Well, Ok, it's cause the math test is a combo of
pre-algebra and algebra put together and they don't split it apart,
though they grade it apart, so I still had to take the junior high
level part of it....)

Are you teaching at the junior college level?

But I digress with my rampage...

ANYWAY.... yes, we have an ESL "section" we'll call it. It was even
once discussed about maybe having group enunciation sessions in
tutorial for foreign students, and I was a candidate for running it
cause of my phonetic training from theatre. I once had this
Vietnamese student and we'd spent the last 15 minutes working on her
phonetics. Very soft language. They have zip hard consonants.

You guys need to have linguistics people to explain all those
transitive/intransitive verbs, subject-verb agreement stuff etc., to
(especially) Asian students. That's the only way they can make sense of
English, because their languages are too different. Pronounciation is just
one small tip of the iceburg, and totally unrealated to grammar. In other
words, you are bringing too much work to yourself. We cannot do
everything.

I am taking Japanese right now and the teacher keeps using linguistics
terms like transitive verb, causitives, particles and stuff that native
English speakers just don't understand and confused. If I didn't go
through ESL programs, I wouldn't be learning English with such formalistic
approach. (can you imagine when teacher keeps saying a transitive verb is
a verb that takes on an object, and everyone gets that clueless face and
thinks "what do you mean by 'object'")

Likewise, back in Taiwan, we never learned grammar, just like Americans
here never really learn grammar (except for run-on sentences and mechanical
errors and stuff like that rather than part of speech) but it's just
something within them. My point is, the teaching approach can be vastly
different between teaching English to native speakers and foreign speakers.
Let your department chair know about the challenge (without offending him)
and design the course core-structure over. But knowing how an education
institution can be such a pain in the ass and bureaucratic to the extreme,
I wouldn't want you to get into a mess of full-blown politics....

I digress again.... the councelor who works with the foreign students
on the cultural end of things, is a jerk. I've met other people like
this and it just really irks me. He's SOOO accommodating to these
other cultures and ideas and religions, etc, etc., as long as they are
foreign. But if you are American-born, you're supposed to be exactly
like him and no room for any differences or anything. Which is even
more silly considering he's British.

British people are more liberal than people are given them credit for.
They after all, had a multi-culture empire until it fell, and I suppose
they learned the hard lesson. I watched a lot of BBC dramas lately and so
I am picking up a lot of background info of (late) Victorian era and try to
understand how people felt when they began to realize they are no longer
the biggest and the best. A couple of the stories were dealing with Jewish
people in British gentry society, and how they interact with each other.
"The Way We Live Now" is one, and I finished "Daniel Deronda" yesterday.
We have no such history in the U.S. (because this empire is probably the
only empire exists today which hasn't fell yet), so we tend to be a little
more harsh on people who couldn't help themselves but fail to achieve what
we expect of ourselves.

Things do fail for various reasons. There is no way you can correct that
Vietnamese person's accent (the language is just way too different, and
they got a lot of that silent ending S sound from French). My accent is
pretty bad myself, but sometimes I cannot understand people with Vietnamese
or Hindu accent myself. I am pretty sure they'd want to correct their
accent if they can, so they can save themselves from lots of embarrassment.

Back to the main topic. While sometimes way too accomodating is really
annoying (it can be annoying even to people who is being accomodated), but
I'm guessing he wants to do his job right but doesn't know what he could do
to make those foreign students excel. I bet you are frustrated too, but
you take things in the other direction. It's just a matter of how people
react to difficult tasks. Most of the British people I know are more
liberal than an American of the similar class. Vast majority of Europeans
also tend to co-mingle better with Asians than their American counterpart.
I suppose immigrant experience is something one cannot share but empathize.
Imagine how you would feel when you carry your FASB accounting skill to
Europe only to find it's not applicable there, so they assume you are kinda
dumb and feel sorry for you (but can't do nothing about it). I'm not going
back to Taiwan for similar reason. My finance skill is not applicable
there, and I am too old to start everything over and be treated like a kid
again.

I'm not going to talk about religion, because I'm very accomodating to
people of different religions too. Especially right now because we have a
war of religions going on, and talking ill of any religion is just not
helping but brew hatred (be objective is the key here). Sometimes there
are bigger issues than we initially think, so it's better not to touch it,
because I wouldn't want to be responsible for it.

--
Ashikaga -a29
.

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