Communication Perspectives for an ESL Community

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Post 3: Genre Based Teaching

Brief Summary

I am going to examine genre through the lens of a teacher, me, who teaches with a genre based syllabus. I will first explain the definition of genre that I will be using, which is a combination of linguistic and rhetorical definitions. I will then explain the syllabus I teach with and then examine a specific assignment that ESL (English as a Second Language) students struggle with, which is known as the Rhetorical Analysis of News.

Linguistic and Rhetorical Definition of Genre

In linguistics, genres are features of texts that are pervasive throughout many similar texts, such as ‘once upon a time’ in fairy tales, or ‘sincerely yours’ in letters. Many of these features occur only once in the linguistic definition of genre, but automatically trigger background knowledge in the audience when present. Below I have a table that explains the linguistic interpretation of genre based upon the book Register, Genre, and Style (Biber & Conrad, 2009).

Type of Analysis	Genre
Textual focus	Whole text
Linguistic characteristics	Conventions; e.g. what determines this is a newspaper article vs a letter
Distribution of linguistic characteristics	Single indicator/markers that mark that genre (presence/absence) e.g. one newspaper headline; ‘yours truly’ in letters;’ this research demonstrates’ in academic papers
Interpretation	We can identify members of a genre through these shared features, even when some features are absent.

Bazerman (2002) has a similar definition in the field of rhetoric, which will be worked into my discussion, where he describes genre as socially situated “structure and orderliness” (p. 20). Thus, genre, in my use, is the specific features in and around reading and/ or writing a text that signals context and background knowledge from an audience.

Description of My Teaching Context

I work at something called an IEP, or Intensive English Program. To be an IEP, a program must have students in English study for a minimum of 18 hours of classroom contact per week. IEPs are common at universities for students who do not test well enough in their English skills to attend the university. Students test into various levels in an IEP, and progress through them. Once they have completed their intensive English study, they are often given an exit test, and if they pass, they can begin to take regular university course work. IEPs add anywhere from 1 semester to 3 years to a student’s time in university, depending on their English level.

To describe the specifics of my own IEP, I will give a brief description of my employer; the PIE at NAU. The Program in Intensive English (the PIE), is Northern Arizona University’s IEP with the letters switched around a little bit. The idea was that students are learning English a slice of pie at a time, but the essential meaning of IEP is the same.

In my IEP, there are 6 levels of English EAP courses for students to enroll in before attending university. Students test into a particular level, which can be seen in table 1 below, and progress through the IEP one level at a time after the initial placement test. The students take various exams to move through the IEP and must pass all IEP courses with a grade of 70% or higher to move to the next level. The TOEFL and IELTS are international English language tests that all students take before studying at English speaking universities in the U.K., the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, or other English speaking countries.

Table 1

Description of proficiency levels at the PIE (PIE, 2020)

Level 1Not currently offered	Beginner level students.
Level 2	Low intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 16-31 TOEFL score or a 2-4 IELTS band.
Level 3	Intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 32-44 TOEFL score or a 4-5 IELTS band.
Level 4	Upper intermediate level students; students are identified as having a 45-56 TOEFL score or a 5-5.5 IELTS band.
Level 5Students have the opportunity to take the university composition class and earn 4 units of university credit.	Lower advanced level students; students are identified as having a 57-69 TOEFL score or a 5.5-6 IELTS band.
Level 6Optional for students who qualify for university but feel as if they need more English practice.	Advanced level students; students are identified as having a 70+ TOEFL score or 6+ IELTS band.

I teach in level 5. Here, there are two writing courses; the IEP writing course or English 105 (my course). Taking English 105 costs an extra $4000 for that semester at the IEP, so students are typically wealthy. Additionally, students enrolled in English 105 can earn 4 units towards their degree at NAU through passing this course. In addition to teaching English 105, I teach another course titled Reader’s Workshop. Both courses are described below.

Description of Class Contexts

To begin, I teach two classes in level 5, and am in the process of course revitalization for one class that I am teaching (see my blog 1 for more information). Thus, my students are upper-intermediate English learners.

For one class, as mentioned above, I teach a first year composition writing course titled English 105: Critical Reading And Writing In The University Community at Northern Arizona University, which will be, and has been, referred to as English 105. I have taught this 15 week course for four semesters, and have spent the past two semesters teaching the course to English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Before this, I taught American students the same course as part of a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA).

Additionally, I teach a class titled “Reader’s Workshop” (RWS), which I am revitalizing with three other people. The class is intended to support English 105 in the context of the IEP, where all students are ESL students. As English 105 is not designed for ESL students, RWS is intended to act as a support course. RWS is failing in this regard, but that is a topic for another time (like blog 1).

This semester, my class size is 14 students. I teach two classes, each with the same 14 students, and feel blessed for the class size. My students are between 18 and 20 years old and are all from China. Some students completed time at the IEP in level 4, some students took level 5 last semester and are repeating after course failures, and some students have just moved from China. A few students are freshmen, but a majority are sophomores in college and completed college credits at home universities in China. They are in a 1+2+1 program where they spend their middle two years in the United States, and their freshman and senior college years in China.

In English 105, I have a given syllabus with strict major assignments. I lesson plan and give out minor assignments, but each student taking English 105 does the same major writing assignments. For RWS, I have control over the syllabus and content.

Where Genre Comes in

It is widely accepted in the NAU writing program that different disciplines require different types of writing, so English 105 has a genre-based syllabus that is intended to teach many genres of writing. As Kress mentions, my students must be active participants in genre (2003) to be successful, so this is built into my new syllabus. The syllabus is designed to help students learn a variety of genres and how to decode a variety of rules for their future writing in their discipline. The English 105 syllabus is also designed to have Reading-writing integration (you learn to read and write critically), which is even challenging for native-speaking students (NS), and is an area that requires extra efforts for non-native students (NNS) (Grabe & Zhang, 2013).

For ESL students in English 105, they must learn the specific genres while learning how to write academically and while improving their English very quickly. The genres chosen are all rooted in American discourse and culture, so an added layer of assimilation is part of my English 105 course for ESL students.

In addition to the specifics of the genres in the English 105 course, first year writing courses at American universities in general are seen as different from other types of ESL writing (Grabe & Zhang, 2013), so students who have English as a second language often struggle in courses such as freshman composition. In the course at NAU, the struggle has become so stark and significant that many ESL support courses have been created both inside (RWS and free tutoring) and outside the IEP (English 100, English 107, and free tutoring).

For ESL students, the genre-aspect of the syllabus leads them into a world in which they cannot navigate through hard work or intelligence. As Kress states, “we need to understand that meaning is articulated in this way in a specific mode, and in this other way in another mode” (Kress, p. 39), which means that my students must begin to build a background knowledge that they do not have. They are at an inherent disadvantage simply because they are not American and lack this background knowledge of ways and modes where meaning is incorporated.

The Most Challenging Essay in My ESL Class

“But Ms. Clark, I just got here. I just learned the word ‘president’. I don’t understand the news and it is too hard for me. How can I write this paper?” – a student of mine this semester.

I have a challenging essay for my ESL students in this context; the dreaded rhetorical analysis. My English 105 course has 5 major essays, and the rhetorical analysis is the second major essay they write after about 4 weeks in my class. I have included the prompt here for those who are interested.

This paper requires that students have several types of knowledge at the start of the paper, which I will list below from my own experience. Even though I am listing them, and you are welcome to read each item, part of this list is to show you the sheer monument of a task that this paper is for any student, but especially for ESL students. If you get the picture, feel free to scroll or read carefully.

Requirements of the RA for any student

The students must:

Have at least a basic understanding of the divides in American political culture, especially in respect to republicans and democrats.
Be able already to analyze and critically observe written phenomena.
Be able to read a newspaper or news article online, ignoring advertisements and other elements.
Be able to recognize fake news.
Be aware of what is left unsaid in news articles through having read, heard about, or understood recent American culture.
Have at least a prior knowledge of U.S. history in the topic that they read about.
Be familiar with American search engines.
Have at least an implicit knowledge of bias, and that writers have opinions that show in their writing.
Be familiar with quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing and how these are different from plagiarism.
Be familiar with connotations of certain words.
Be familiar with common slang likely to be understood by Americans.

When teaching the paper titled The Rhetorical Analysis of News to Americans, I had to teach:

Rhetorical terms like ethos, pathos, logos, fallacies, arrangement, tone, bias.
1. Students were familiar with these concepts but had not heard the words. I would have 1-4 students in a class of 24 who had no background knowledge of these ideas and they would come into my office.
MLA format and quote choice.
Thesis statement reminders.
How to identify fake news.
The difference between their opinion and analyzing the writing style.
How to use BBLearn.
Editing and revising techniques.

Extra Knowledge Required of my ESL Students

Now, when teaching the paper titled The Rhetorical Analysis of News, I teach the following in this order:

How to use American search engines like Google.
How to use Microsoft Word and Google Documents.
How to attach a document to turn in work on BBLearn.
How to send an email on American email services.
How to write paragraphs where one sentence connects to the other.
How to write an introduction with a hook and a thesis.
How to write transition sentences.
How to create a paragraph structure that can be understood by American audiences (we use the Point, Example, Explanation, Analysis structure in the beginning).
How to find news articles.
What democrats and republicans are.
The basics of the American political system and our divides, which color the news.
Aspects of popular culture and knowledge that are important for understanding the news, such as what Twitter is.
That the news in the United States is biased, and what biased means. As Chinese students, they are taught that journalists are truth tellers who are fired or imprisoned for lying. It takes weeks for them to understand that American journalism has no such penalties.
How to analyze. The students are strongly discouraged from using analysis or their own opinions while writing or speaking in school in China, and instead use the words of others to express thoughts.
The idea that people here loudly and openly disagree with government officials.

How I Teach My ESL Students

Then, I teach # 1-11 above, as they have no background knowledge or culturally situated knowledge of any of this information. Finally, I teach them what I typically teach American students. This is all taught while the students are learning English, and are nowhere close to the English levels required of this course (think it takes an hour and a half to write a paragraph about a time that they felt happy level).

In addition to teaching these aspects of writing to ESL students, I also teach them to read critically. Stoller and Robinson (2018) advocate the importance of reading in teaching writing, especially in genre-based classrooms, and this is an idea that I have followed whole-heartedly. We spend time in my classroom reading together and learning to pick apart texts in the ways that American students (upper middle class and white usually) are trained.

The difficulty that my students have is that they are learning a genre while also learning easily 15 other concepts, and it is so hard for them to keep track. To help my students, I utilize a word wall around my classroom (two full walls are covered in cork board), where I hang up important vocabulary with definitions or pictures. For example, I hung up the pictures below:

My students usually come quite far in the rhetorical analysis, and I create some buy-in by telling them that they should know the basics, at least, of any country that they’re living in. We talk about their visas, and how to keep track of news regarding information that impacts them.

Also, we talk about racism, discrimination, title XI, and other challenges that international students are more prone to. These students, as mentioned in my blog 4, come from very different cultures where students have different rights. It is important to me that I can use the rhetorical analysis essay to help my students become aware of not only the news and genre, but how current events impact their daily lives, and how to navigate this new knowledge.

References

British Council. (2020). IELTS Home. https://www.ielts.org/en-us. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Center for English Language Learning. (2020). Best Practices for IEP. https://www.aieaworld.org/assets/docs/Conference_Materials/2018/session_materials/best%20practices%20in%20esl%20oversight%20.pdf. Accessed Feb. 16

English Testing Services. (2020). TOEFL Home. https://www.ets.org/toefl. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Grabe, B. & Zhang, C. (2013). Reading and Writing Together: A Critical Component of English for Academic Purposes Teaching and Learning. TESOL Journal. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tesj.65?casa_token=jrZtjRQfXwMAAAAA%3AqKiTypyEXbM11c-Om8zjducL8gzjaAA5Ci0UEDpGfVnrk4Kuk1gdYUH0eaQZnegXPEEoqyT4kULOdb4. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.

Northern Arizona University. (2020). Program in Intensive English. https://nau.edu/pie/

https://www.ets.org/toefl. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.

Stoller, F. & Robinson, M. (2018). Innovative ESP Teaching Practices and Materials Development. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-70214-8_3. Accessed Feb. 16, 2020.

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Post 1: Revising an ESL Course for a Modern Age

Introduction

Recently, I began the final semester in my contract as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Northern Arizona University. Unlike many GTAs, in my department, we are the teachers of record. I have been teaching in some capacity for about 5 years, and this GTA position has been both a challenge and a blast. My contract is to teach a 6 hour load per semester. I have been teaching English 105, or the freshman composition course, at NAU, for 4 semesters now. I initially taught this class to American freshman students, and we focus on writing mechanics and rhetoric through the lense of projects.

I recently had a job change from my original contract of teaching American students. For the past 6 months, I have taught in the Program in Intensive English (PIE). You can see my students below! They are all from China, and this version of English 105 is ‘sheltered instruction’; essentially, the students are removed from a main university class and put into an ESL, or English as a Second Language, classroom. The course isn’t altered, but the teacher has ESL expertise and there are no native English speakers in the classroom.

Click here for more information about my student’s curriculum in the PIE for the semester.

I am now teaching my traditional ESL version of English composition, to an entirely ESL class, in addition to a new course for me that is titled Reader’s Workshop. It is a support course for ESL students taking English 105 PIE, the ESL composition class at my university. The administration at the PIE fought for me to teach this class AND the composition class, which is a program change that they have been pushing towards for years. This is because Reader’s Workshop, the Reader’s Workshop, is intended to be a support course, but thus far, it has been a failure.

At the start of the semester, I interviewed the founder of the PIE, Dr. Fredricka Stoller, who is also a mentor of mine. She is aiding me in the course revitalization for the Reader’s Workshop course, and urged me to begin with the students, as “students are key stakeholders… we are often doing research and writing to improve the classroom for students” (Stoller, 2020, personal communication). I will explain the course revitalization below. Dr. Stoller is also pictured below.

Reader’s Workshop Course Description

In Dr. Stoller’s words, in my field, we write because “we want to share what we have done and question what other people are doing” (Stoller, 2020, personal communication). Here, I am going to write about the past of my current course, and how this will inform my course revitalization.

In the past, a supplemental instructor taught Reader’s Workshop based upon a strictly controlled curriculum in the PIE and worked with the main composition teacher to best support the English 105 composition class. English 105 is made for native English speakers, and is quite difficult for ESL students, so this ESL version of the course was made with a supplementary course. Despite this idea, which should be beneficial for the students, the supplemental Reader’s Workshop course has faced several issues, which I gleaned through a meeting with the program administrator, Jessica Sargent:

Contracts for the English 105 instructor and for the Reader’s Workshop supplemental instructor do not allow for extra meetings, so the courses have been largely independent.
The English 105 course has been updated each semester for years. The Reader’s Workshop course has not been updated since the early 2000s.
The Reader’s Workshop course has no space for digital literacy.
There are many opinions and differing thoughts on how the Reader’s Workshop course should operate, which leads to poor communication and a lacking course (Sargent, 2020, personal communication)

Due to these issues, students do not see the merit in the course and often do poorly or barely perform. Thus, the course must be revised. I, and one of my colleagues in the same position, have been asked to revise this course in whatever way we see fit. The PIE has assigned us a supervisor, but the arguments are being quelled by the suggestion that the program goes with our suggestions, as people teaching the course.

The Course Revitalization Goals

I am revising this Reader’s Workshop course with a coworker, a supervisor named Jessica Sargent, my professor, Dr. Stoller, and a former supplemental instructor of the course. For a course revision, we are focusing on four central ideas:

The course should focus on building digital literacy in a global community.
The course should build student strategies for transitioning from reading to writing.
The course should teach students to read in different disciplines and genres.
The course should be designed to support English 105 rather than being an independent course.

As I was reading this week, I noticed that my course development for PIE fell into many of our topics. For example, Starke-Meyerring talks about helping students to meet the global pace in our society today, especially through digital communication and literacy. Drawing upon these ideas, as well as ideas from my own field such as promoting multicultural literacy and examining English and its role in global communication. Additionally, many scholars examine the current practice mentioned by Cameron of promoting the western, and especially American style, as correct. I want to shape this course to fit into a global, and digital community, rather than into an American university community.

I am maintaining principles of good readers, which are found to be applicable across many languages and cultures. Students need to be able to tell fact from opinion, to identify main ideas and details, to select important points that they wish to remember or use, and to read a lot to develop their skills. NAU is lucky enough to have a world-renowned reading instructor named Fredricka Stoller (pictured below), who has taught at NAU for 35 years and founded the PIE in the 80s.

The Process of Course Revilitization

To begin this process of changing the Reader’s Workshop course, I am taking a cue from Starke-Meyerring and am adding digital competency requirements to the Reader’s Workshop class. The students are keeping a digital journal where they respond to readings, practice writing skills such as summarizing and paraphrasing, and develop their own place in a digital culture. Students are expected to find readings of their choice and to read assigned readings to promote class goals, but also to practice use of the internet and internet based communication in many different ways. My students must write in English, but are also allowed to use whatever writing styles that they wish, including culturally based styles. Although myths and narratives are culturally based, as Smith suggests, I find that my students benefit greatly from the incorporation of their own cultures and narratives into their journals. The use of metaphor, even when it is something that I don’t have background knowledge for, makes my students’ writing rich and personal. I am blending ideas of individuality, cultural, and digital literacies so that my students have agency, learn to write in digital spaces, and perhaps even grow to like (or at least not hate) writing in English.

I am additionally including issues of genre in my description, as Millar suggests that students must read frequently and read in many different genres to be successful. Genres are an important part of learning to be a communicator. Although many ideas of academic rules and writing come from a white, middle class, western bias, the rules of genre are different. Learning how to write fiction, or how to write a blog, or how to write an American introduction versus a Chinese introduction, all follow rules of genre. Students must be made aware of rules to be successful. Even more fun, students must be taught how and when to break rules to make rhetorical points. This aspect of genre will come into my class as we read news articles written in different countries on the same events. We will also read academic articles from their countries that are translated into English, and compare these articles with American academia. Overall, this exploration of genre will help integrate my students into a global community where they can recognize, mimic, and break rules according to conventions that they understand. Finally, I hope that my students recognize the way that I teach writing as one way of many, rather than the ‘correct American way’.

Finally, I am fighting against a stereotype that is brought up by Dr. Stoller on the topic of myths that my students will face in the university;

The myths are that students are not intelligent if they cannot write well. In fact, we have students who are doctors and physicists. Poor writing skills do not mean a lack of intelligence. It is an iterative process. We shouldn’t be distracted by grammatical errors, but in fact there is a lot of good and interesting information if we can see beyond grammatical mistakes. There is not one way of organizing ideas; sometimes we read things that don’t make much sense to us, but in fact it doesn’t fit with our assumptions. . Every language has its own set of norms and expectations. We must respect their way of thinking while teaching them the advantages of doing it an English way to be successful.

Conclusion

My students are smart and incredible; I think about them constantly and I love teaching them. Despite their brilliance, they still need to be set up for success in the PIE and beyond. My students face an uphill battle in this climate, and in order to be successful, they must be able to articulate themselves clearly on a variety of platforms and across a variety of genres. This is our motivation for fixing a broken course that they must take known as Reader’s Workshop. With the help of Dr. Stoller, Jessica Sargent, a former instructor, and a partner, we will make Reader’s workshop work for our students and will bring the course into the modern age.

Outside References

Millar, D. (2011). Promoting Genre Awareness in the EFL Classroom. English Teaching Forum.

PIE. (2020). “Program in Intensive English Description”. https://nau.edu/pie/. Accessed Jan 21, 2020.

PIE. (2020). “Level 5 Courses”. https://nau.edu/pie/programs/intensive-english-courses/level-5/. Accessed Jan 21, 2020.

Sargent, J. (2020). Personal Communication.

Stoller, F. (2020). Personal Communication.

Stoller, F., Anderson, N., Grabe, W. & Komiyama, R. (2013). Instructional Enhancements to Improve Students’ Reading Abilities. English Teaching Forum.

Post 4: Culturally Responsive Teaching for ESL Students

Culturally Responsive Teaching for ESL Students

Culturally responsive teaching is the idea that our students come from a variety of backgrounds, and have a variety of stories. To be a culturally responsive teacher, you must not only recognize this, but endorse it and make space in your classroom for unique behaviors and literacies (Gay, 2018). I am reminded of the importance of bending the ‘traditional academic classroom’ to benefit my students each day.

This morning, I was chatting with a fellow teacher about challenges in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) students. This teacher, David, is frequently being pushed past what he considers polite or reasonable by their students, so we traded stories, ideas, and solutions. In this blog I will examine some common issues that are manifested in the classroom which come from globalization and the influx of needing to accommodate many students from many different cultures and continents in both our writing and teaching. Similarly to Dopson (2018), even though we aren’t talking about social media, we need to be clear, interactive, and current in order to be successful ESL teachers. By the way, David is my fiance (pictured below).

Our Teaching Contexts

David and I both teach at Northern Arizona University (so, adults). I teach at the Program in Intensive English (PIE), which is a sheltered instruction program for ESL students (sheltered instruction meaning that the students are ‘sheltered’ from American students and are in ESL only classes). I teach English 105, the freshman composition class, to these ESL students who are all from China. I also teach a reading support course for ESL students at the PIE. My class size is 14. In English 105, I have a strictly controlled course where I am given major assignments, rubrics, and my syllabus. I am required to follow these items, but the day-to-day teaching is up to me. In my reading support course, I made my own syllabus, grading criteria, calendar, and assignments. To learn more about my teaching context, please see my blogs 1 and 3. See a picture of the 100 year old building that I teach in below!

David taught in this same program last year, but is currently teaching a one-on-one tutoring class titled English 107, which pairs with the university freshman composition course titled English 105 that I teach. In English 107, David works for 1 hour a week with ESL students who are getting help for their English 105 courses. He has complete control over each lesson, and negotiates with the students on what the topic of the lesson should be. The goals of David’s English 107 class are to help the students succeed in English 105 and to build writing skills in general. David additionally tutor’s Chinese children online through a program called VIPKID in a very strictly controlled environment. Both of David’s contexts will come up in my blog.

In addition to the differences in our class structure, our main difference is that David’s students are not in ‘sheltered’ instruction; they are ESL students in classes with American students. This is because their test scores were a bit higher than my students, and David’s students were deemed able to perform with American classmates while mine were not. In theory, David’s students should be more prepared for English 105, and should have higher proficiencies. David’s Chinese children through VIPKID are a vastly different audience and customer.

As ESL teachers, we must adapt to a variety of global expectations and cultural norms to be successful and reach our students. Additionally, we have to constantly negotiate our roles in the classroom with our students as each culture has a vastly different definition of ‘teacher’, and how to treat teachers in general. I’ll discuss a few cultural issues that David and I have had and weave these stories in with class readings and outside research.

Story One: The Student Who Wants Too Much

Any time I speak to a new ESL teacher, especially one who is teaching students from China, Taiwan, Japan, or Vietnam, there is a common conversation that occurs. I call this conversation ‘the student who wants too much’.

The student could be from a range of proficiencies or grades. I’ll begin with my most current story and will bring in the story that David told as well.

Allie’s Story

I was at home, preparing for a nice Saturday morning. As a graduate student, I have tons of work to do and just thinking about it was making me anxious. I was thankful for the clause in my syllabus that I do not respond to student emails on weekends.

My phone buzzed with the single vibrate tone that signals an email. I check it quickly, as I still have to respond to other types of emails, and see a student name. The email is labeled “URGENT!!!!!”. I roll my eyes and open it. The email says something like this:

“Hello Ms. Clark, I need to meet you today to go over my paper. I am worried about my grade. We should get coffee so you can read my paper tonight at 6 PM”

I immediately get angry. I waited to respond to the student until I calmed down a bit. It’s not like I was angry, but I wasn’t happy. Perhaps shocked is the word?

Anyway, I told the student kindly but firmly that this is not appropriate behavior, and to NEVER email teachers with this type of request. I explain that I am happy to look at their paper in office hours. The student apologized profusely over the next week and brought coffee to my office.

I don’t even drink coffee, but it was sweet.

David’s Story (as paraphrased by me!)

I was getting some work done yesterday when I got a really frantic email from a student. They had attached their entire paper for English 105 and emailed it to me with a long list of instructions for what I needed to fix.

They gave me a due date of 6 PM that day, and emailed me the paper at noon. What, do they think I am an editor? This is outside of my job and I don’t get paid for weekend work.

I get that they are stressed about this paper but it was just so rude and condescending that they would even try this. The deadline made me so angry. Why would they treat me like an employee? I am their teacher!

I haven’t replied yet because it made me so upset. I’ll reply later when I can be a little nicer.

How Globalization Impacted and Informed Our Reactions

In both instances, our students performed what we call a high cost of imposition (Geoffman, 1975). The students had asked for something that was very last minute, very time consuming, and outside of our job descriptions, all while adding no mitigating language or options for us to refuse. This type of communication gives the requestee a feeling of anger, as it violates our cultural norms and is seen as rude in America.

With an American student, this would have indeed been rude; they should know better. Even if they didn’t, there would be a very different response from most teachers. However, both David and I had this interaction with Chinese students who had only recently immigrated here for university. We knew that something was up.

As people who have taught ESL for about 5 years, we discussed the cultural differences and calmed ourselves down. We always begin with the little emperor syndrome that is pervasive in Chinese college students in this generation. These students are all only children, remnants of the now repealed one child policy, and their upbringing was very different from many other international students. They are used to being spoiled.

Another issue that we discuss is that in China, parents are highly involved in their children’s education, even into college, and many schools are forbidden from giving failing grades. In college, students are all but guaranteed to graduate as a cultural norm (although this is shifting).

Finally, we discuss the immense respect that teachers receive in China, which was the highest of any country in the world in 2019. We know that most of our Chinese students would never intentionally anger us, so our anger was likely stemming from our own cultural values clashing with Chinese cultural values.

Socio-linguistic relativity (Folse & Vitanova, 2006) is the idea that what we consider polite and appropriate is culturally created, changed, and situated. As teachers, we must be aware of this phenomena. This doesn’t mean that we cannot consider interactions outside of our own ‘accepted’ ideas to be rude. This is an intrinsic and nearly unchangeable cultural phenomenon (Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2015). However, teachers must be aware that students do not intend to be rude, and to respond to situations like this as a teaching moment rather than an offense.

The next day in class after this email, I did a 10 minute activity with my Chinese students. They listed everything (verbally) that was appropriate to ask a teacher to do, comment on, or answer, and I wrote these on the board. I then crossed out the speech acts that were inappropriate for American teachers and had them write these down. This semester, I integrate appropriate conversation into my lessons and haven’t had a problem yet!

For David, he is addressing his issue today. He is going to talk to the student in person, and will write down a list of his obligations as a teacher/ tutor. Then, he will give this list to the student so that they can keep it for future interactions with other people.

Although we were both initially quite angry, some global perspective really shifts our opinions. Ryder similarly states; “when communication is set up right on the business’s side, it should encourage audiences to engage and return the favor” (Ryder, 2017). As teachers, if we can communicate effectively and kindly, our students return the favor. Even more, if we can turn ‘rude’ moments into teachable moments, our students benefit greatly.

Story Two: The Student Who Has Never Failed

David and I frequently come into contact with another type of student; the student who has never failed. This student is typically shocked at any grade below their standards and takes the time to argue with teachers about their grades. I’ll tell a story from only myself this time and reflect on it.

Allie’s Story

I am getting angry. I have told my class easily 10 times that the assignment they are doing today is worth points. I have explained its value in understanding their next essay assignment. The students should know by now that I don’t assign busy work; every assignment is intended to build understanding and knowledge.

So. Why. Aren’t. They. Doing. The. Assignment.

I consider making the assignment homework. But, I don’t like using work as a penalty. My class is difficult for them and I want them to focus on essay writing rather than punishment. I know that the students are used to punishment in their Chinese schools for not completing work, like jogging, standing against walls, and detention. Even though these punishments are illegal in China, they still happen frequently.

As I’m thinking about what to do about this behavioral issue, I vividly remember the Occasional Papers (a 3 minute personal story read aloud to the class) my students have read about being beaten by teachers. Even though I couldn’t do anything about this, as this doesn’t fall under my jurisdiction since the beating happened overseas, I think about how each student ended those stories by saying how much they liked American teachers. They didn’t like being punished. They loved the freedom.

So, I decided to do a check where students showed me how much they had finished. I decided that the best way to honor the students’ freedom was to leave them to their choices and grade accordingly. I gave 7 students zeros that day. Instead of thinking of some punishment that would require additional time and effort, I just gave them a 0 for doing no work. I felt that this was fair.

Several students immediately came up after class, knowing that they had gotten a 0 for today (maybe 0.3% of their overall class grade). They wanted to know why they hadn’t gotten any points.

“You didn’t do any work. Why would you get points?”

The students tried to bargain with me. “I’ll do it tonight! I’ll email it to you later”. Three students looked at me angrily.

“No”, I said. “I gave you 45 minutes to do this assignment today, in class. You made an adult choice to not do the assignment, and you are getting the adult consequence of getting no credit. Do better tomorrow.”

The students were generally shocked, and began muttering in Chinese. I reminded them gently that Chinese is my second language, and that I am happy to discuss complaints in office hours. The students begrudgingly accepted their zeros and never blew off class work again.

However, I found myself furious. Why did this conversation even happen?

How Globalization Impacted My Reaction and Thoughts

When I was reflecting on this issue, I discussed this day with many colleagues. I hated teaching this day. My students ignored me, and decided to just goof off. They couldn’t see the value in an assignment that I had assigned to many different students. To make matters worse, they had actually argued with me about getting points for work that they hadn’t done.

From my own background research and conversations with coworkers, I know that in China, lessons are teacher centered. Students are expected to be silent participants who receive information and then reproduce the information on exams. The entire idea that there would be work to do in class is foriegn and unusual to them. These students had somehow misinterpreted the class work time as a break and treated it as such.

Additionally, as I mentioned before, education in China is well respected but is also a service industry. Students are almost never given failing grades.

Finally, we have a few Chinese scholars at NAU this semester who teach in China. They told me that in addition to these issues, Chinese classes and exams are just different. Students are expected to study independently from 6-10 every night to do well in their classes. They just aren’t expected to go to classes in the way that American students are. Participation is never part of their grade, and the idea of many small assignments seems silly. They would rather learn the information and take a test. So, my class, which has 5 major assignments that are 60% of their grade, is a completely strange model that the students are not adjusted to.

The next class day, I put the grading breakdown onto the board. We spent 10 minutes of class time talking about what is different from and similar to Chinese university. The students participated actively, always excited to share part of their culture with me, and took notes about the differences. I explained the importance of attendance, participation, and completing assignments (30% of their course grade).

I made sure to say, “I’m not angry with you all. However, each teacher at American universities has different rules. Even if the rules are strange to you, you must follow them to earn a good grade. This is part of being a student here”.

Overall Reflections

In sum, teaching ESL students is a little bit of a battle; you want to be culturally responsive, but there is also your own culture to consider. There are behaviours that you consider rude or inappropriate, and your feelings are difficult to change. You will be confronted with your own desire to be culturally responsive and ‘oh no you didn’t’ moments. In these moments, you will grow as a teacher and as a person. You will have students who bring you gifts, something my American students never did. You will have students offer to drive you places, and treat you with the utmost respect in ways that you haven’t experienced. You will also have the students who have never failed and the students who want too much. That is the life of an ESL teacher (so far).

Outside References

Chen, Q. (2019). Chinese colleges want to fail more students (that’s a good thing). https://www.inkstonenews.com/education/chinese-colleges-want-fail-more-students-thats-good-thing/article/3034603. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Coughlan, S. (2013). Teachers in China given highest level of public respect. https://www.bbc.com/news/education-24381946. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Dopson, E. (2018). Social Media for Nonprofits: How to Make an Impact with Little Budget. https://www.sendible.com/insights/social-media-for-nonprofits. Accessed March 1, 2020.

Folse, K. S., & Vitanova, G. (2006). Sociolinguistic Factos in TESOL: The Least Teachers and Teacher Educators Should Know. TESL Reporter, 39(1), 48-58.

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. United States: Teachers College Press.

Goffman, E. (1975). Role-distance. Life as Theater: A dramaturgical sourcebook, 123-132.

Ryder, K. (2017) “7 Qualities of the Best Social Media Managers”. Sendible. https://www.sendible.com/insights/best-social-media-manager-qualities. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J. M. (2015). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Hoboken.

Xue, X. (2015). China’s little emperors – the children without siblings. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/23/chinas-little-emperors-the-children-without-siblings. Accessed March 1, 2020.

Post 2: The Discourse of My Time at NAU

The Discourse of My Time at NAU

A discourse community is socially situated and rule governed, and relates to both participation in and learning how to be a part of the community (Swales, 1993; Gee, 1999). Discourse communities are co-constructed (Flowerdew & Miller, 2005), moderated, and ever changing. For linguists, our seminal text on discourse communities (Swales, 1993) explores this topic on discourse as it relates to teachers, MA students, and ESL students. As a part of all three of these discourse communities, I will explore my own experiences in them and compare these experiences to my time as a composition teacher in the field of rhetoric.

The Discourse of a Master’s Degree

As a recent graduate from my bachelors degree, I was confident going into my MA program in TESL, or Teaching English to Second Language speakers. I had a TESOL certificate already (click here for the difference between TESL and TESOL), and had a minor in linguistics. I graduated with a 3.93 GPA and had been the assistant director of the tutoring center. I had designed tutoring curriculum, taught political science, English, and rhetoric, overseen hiring, and was a very qualified candidate for my MA and for my GTA position. I received acceptance into my program a week after submitting my application and was given the GTA scholarship, so I felt ready for the world that I was entering.

During my first semester at NAU, my confidence was destroyed. I had to rewrite a class paper for the introduction level class seven times as my teacher couldn’t understand my writing. It was a 20 page paper, with 30 sources, and I barely slept for weeks. I was teaching American students composition, a class that I was extremely unfamiliar with, and had very difficult students. I had been used to teaching in California, but I found that teaching in Arizona was extremely different and had to adapt. Additionally, I had never taught rhetoric before and was learning as I went with teaching AND with school. My prior schema was useless and I felt like a freshman again at 23 years old.

Swales refers to this process as being inducted into the discourse community of an MA student. I was learning the rules and procedures of this new discourse community, and had failed initially due to my reliance on old communities and knowledge (Swales, 1993). I was reminded of the experience while reading through Gee’s (1999) discussion of discourse communities. Instead of trying to be a ‘real indian’, or a ‘real physicist’, I was trying to be a ‘real MA student’ in my TESL community, and was not being recognized. I did eventually learn, but it was only through working with current members of that community, namely teachers and experienced upper classmen, that I was able to produce a dialogue that was recognized by my teachers and peers as a ‘real MA student’. In my second semester, my writing was good enough as a ‘real MA student’ that I presented at 4 conferences, and finally became a part of my MA community and ended with a 4.0 for the semester. This idea that a discourse community is co-constructed, and acceptance is determined by other members of the community, reminds me greatly of my difficult first semester as a student (Gee, 1999).

The Discourse of an AZ Composition Teacher

In addition to learning to be part of the MA TESL community, at the same time I was becoming part of the ‘AZ composition teacher’ community in my first year. This was a difficult transition that my years of prior teaching experience should have helped. However, my experience hindered me in ways I had not expected.

I was trained as an ESL teacher and additionally specialized in working with low income American students as well through my work in the Chico State EOP program. I worked with low income students throughout their first year in college (beginning in the summer before they began) and taught digital composition courses. I was very familiar with teaching analysis, argument, and free thought, and then showing students how to transfer these skills to a public and digital platform. I was well-loved by my students and enjoyed teaching immensely. I went by my first name, Allie, when I taught, and always had a healthy blend of respect and empathy between myself and my students. So, when I found out that I was teaching freshman composition as part of my assistantship at NAU, I was thrilled. I knew this stuff, and I was ready to impress. I designed a calendar based upon the syllabus I was sent, and arrived at training on my first day ready to go.

However, I was sorely mistaken for comparing my old course to what I would be doing here. My calendar didn’t fit their curriculum and my teaching was strictly monitored. In California, students are expected to be self driven, and have a large amount of control over what they turn in. We focused heavily on intertextuality (Porter), and strived to teach students where their position was in a larger discourse community. They were given general topics such as ‘craft a digital argument about a political topic’ and had complete freedom (I have a sample below). In Arizona, students have no control over their learning at my university. The assignments were tightly structured, rigourous, and allowed for minimal creativity. Intertextuality is largely ignored, even between assignments, and students are not challenged with respect to creativity or recognizing larger contexts.

In my new job, instead of teaching students how to write, I was teaching them how to complete assignments. Instead of teaching students tenants of being adults, I was teaching them the basics of being freshman college students. It was a very different atmosphere where I could not rely on any of my prior knowledge. I dreamed of the free thinkers who aren’t “foot soldiers to be ordered around” (Chouinard, p.1) that I taught in California, and was shocked by the immense amount of classroom management that I had to do with these 18 year olds. They were, in theory, no different from my students before; their ages were the same, they were from a variety of majors, and this was a composition class. However, these students were completely incapable of independence and responsibility. And I, as their teacher, did not know how to teach them. I was not part of their discourse community, and had to learn how to be.

If I didn’t remind students of homework 4 times a day, have a calendar in 3 different places online, and even send email reminders, half of the class wouldn’t do their work and then would blame me and demand no point deductions. As a new teacher in this environment, I found myself negotiating with students not on creativity or possibility, but on what ‘doing the bare minimum’ meant in my class. I was too easy, went by my first name, and was very unprepared for the Arizona higher education culture. To say ‘culture shock’ would be an understatement for me.

I had to relearn how I thought about these students. I was initially frustrated by what I perceived as laziness. However, as I taught, I realized that my students in Arizona were just as wonderful as my students in California; they just worked differently. The day that I realized this was when a student chose to do an assignment as a rap song. Their initial assignment had been a ‘review’, and they talked about Cane’s Chicken. For another assignment, they made this review into a rap. I felt at home for the first time as a teacher in Arizona as I watched the coordinated rap performance, complete with a beatboxer, hype boys, and a hook. It was full class participation.

My first semester went as well as it could have. I had only one student who hated me, and got good reviews from the students. I changed my teaching persona completely, and became a much more strict teacher than I ever had in my four previous years of teaching. I now have few classroom management problems, and really enjoy my job. To become a part of this discourse community, I had to stop comparing these students to my old students and give them what they needed to be successful; structure and discipline. And, I had to let them rap about chicken and become fully happy and accepting.

Click here to view a student’s 10 minute digital essay on immigration, where they used ethos and pathos heavily to persuade their audience.

The Discourse of an ESL Teacher

The final discourse community that I needed to learn was how to be a ‘real ESL teacher’. In the second year of my job as a GTA, I was moved from teaching composition to American students to teaching composition to Chinese ESL students. Again, not having learned from my prior experiences with discourse communities, I drew upon background knowledge of teaching composition in Arizona, teaching ESL students in California, and having completed the first year of my MATESL degree. I was again shocked to find that I couldn’t perform in this discourse community with my students, and had to largely start over.

To begin, the methods in which these ESL students were placed into my college level English only classroom were terrible and unfounded. I had students who couldn’t answer basic questions like “how are you today?” and took an hour to write 3 sentences in English, and I had students who could write 5 page papers in a night and could hold full conversations. At midterm grading time, half of my class was failing. It wasn’t thorough laziness, as I had experienced with my American AZ students, but through inability and the course being far too advanced for their comprehension. This was well above the recommended i + 1 in my field (Krashen), which suggests that language and English learning should be just a little advanced for what the student can currently do to challenge them. If the language is too challenging, our brains can’t handle it and we will learn little to nothing. If the language is too easy, we learn nothing new and do not advance. I wrote a paper on this phenomenon with my students that I am presenting at an international conference next month (see PDF below for abstract).

Thus, I was having to create a discourse community with these Chinese students to help them succeed in the realm of my class, and in their future imagined discourse communities. I spent hours making lessons and materials for the class that I’d taught for a year. I worked with the students constantly. Eventually, I burned out. My bosses told me to let the low level students fail, and that their failure was not my fault. It was difficult; I had, at most, failed two students a semester and was now looking at failing 9. I began to focus on the students that I could help, and started having the hard conversations with the ones I couldn’t. This discourse community became a ‘we are struggling together’ community, where students helped each other, and the conversations were of a different caliber than my previous classes.

At the end, 4 students failed and are repeating their time in the program. I learned how to be a better teacher to these students, and am now working with the administration to ensure that students are placed fairly and correctly into classes that allow them to be successful.

Reflections

Are you finding yourself relating to my experiences? If so, here is a graphic that I’ve made to help you become part of your own graduate discourse community:

Overall, I have learned that each discourse community is unique. In order to perform, sometimes you have authorities who must approve of you and your style of participation/ communication. Other times, you will have to take the lead and create the community for your peers or students. Either way, there will be rules, expectations, and constant change that will ultimately make you a more rounded and educated human being.

Outside References

California State University Chico. Educational Opportunity Program. https://www.csuchico.edu/eop/. Accessed Feb. 2, 2020.

Gee, James. (1999). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method.

Go Abroad. (2020). TEFL, TESL, TESOL – What’s the Difference?. https://www.goabroad.com/articles/tefl-courses/tefl-tesl-tesol-whats-the-difference. Accessed Feb. 2, 2020.

Flowerdew, J. & Miller, L. (2005) Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.

Krashen, S. (1991). The Input Hypothesis: An Update. Georgetown University Press.

Northern Arizona University. (2020). Awards for NAU Graduate Students. https://nau.edu/graduate-college/awards/. Accessed Feb. 2, 2020.

Swales, J. (1993). Discourse community and the value of written text in Languages, communication, and social meaning.