End of week 7 and it is the first time I do not finish a week exhausted by the stress and worries caused by my students! Let's see... This week we worked on summaries. The ultimate goal is to have my students write comparison/contrast papers and reviews of the articles they will choose for their final research papers, but from what I have learned last year, something as simple as writing a summary can become difficult. So I first chose an article from CNN/education that discussed the fact that American high school students really do not have that much homework to do compared to students in other countries, and used a worksheet that another 102 teacher gave me last year (a bit adapted for ESL students and our context). That form took the students step by step through the process of responding to the text, finding its main ideas, finding what support was given to prove the author's assertions/arguments, making an outline, and finally writing a summary. First, we had a great discussion about what should go or should not go in a summary, and then worked on that CNN article. The final little exercise on that worksheet was to write an exactly 100-word summary of the article, and from what I read so far, they all did it very well and in 100 words exactly. I then asked my students to select their own article, something related to their research, and go through the same steps on the worksheet to understand this article they had chosen. It is interesting to notice that they seem to do pretty well so far, and yesterday and today, I read their first drafts and was quite happy with what I saw. The hardest thing to do, of course, is to "step outside" of the text and discuss it from an "outsider's perspective," that is, to not discuss the ideas as if they were our own ideas but to use attributive tags such as "according to such and such..." or "such and such explains that..." but these international students seemed to understand the idea better than my American students. Maybe it is because I explained it better... maybe it is just that it is a different group of students... maybe it is because those students are just more mature... I don't know... but it is nice to see that they understand what I am explaining, at least! I am also having them learn how to ask very specific questions (other than grammar), such as "how should I quote this, is this well paraphrased, etc." instead of asking, "how can I write a better summary?"
This is a little off the topic here, but I am not too happy with the theorists who say that students of the same age should be at the same cognitive level and therefore able to understand and learn the same things and think the same way. I entirely disagree. I believe that education and life experiences make a huge difference in the way people learn, work, think, and perceive the world. My international students have the same age as my American students from last semester, and yet they don't think the same way AT ALL, don't encounter the same difficulties in learning how to write, don't see life through the same eyes, and are definitely NOT able to understand things the same way. I do NOT agree with the people who told me that I was trying too hard with my American students because they were "only 19" and therefore not able to think critically. No, sorry, it is not because you are 19 that you cannot think critically, it is because no one has ever taught you how to do it intelligently. And no, it is not too early to learn, and yes, you will be able to learn, because thinking critically is not something that comes with age like wrinkles, but something that comes with age like knowledge: because you work to acquire the skill. And if no one will teach these kids how to do it, then I will try my best.
On Wednesday, I also explained how to use the different conditional tenses in English, since many of them seem to have difficulties with that: if I had had a choice, I would have done this... I would study if I had enough time... I wish you were here... It is a tough construction! I think even the native speakers of English were interested, probably because they had never realized that these tenses existed as such and were so complicated.
Overall, I am just taking things slowly and in a more relaxed way. I think I will give my students a choice for the next project, because I would like them to do both a review and a comparison/contrast paper, but we don't have the time for these two things if we really want to work in depth with them, so I'll propose either an in-depth comparison/contrast paper or two smaller projects. Then there is the annotated bibliography... which I am not sure I can squeeze in there... too much to do! But so far, so good, I am starting to get to know my students (yes, I know, 7th week, mid-term!) and to appreciate them, and I think it is a mutual thing. The blog entries on the feedback page were not bad at all today, and I know that they are learning a lot because I can see the progress they make and the direct improvement in their writing. I hope that they realize it too. On Wednesday I also showed them my money collection and told them I would really appreciate the addition of money from Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and other countries... I already received something from India (how beautiful it is!) and from Saudi Arabia (how cool!). It is a nice way to discuss about other countries and places we sometimes didn't even know existed! I really wish I had more time to work on culture. I wish we could share our knowledge about our languages (with only 14 students plus me, we speak Tamil, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Sindhi, Urdu, Korean, Arabic, Telugu, Spanish, French, Malay, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some!), because we are such a culturally rich group and could learn so much from each other’s experiences.
OK, that was an easy and fun week, really. No major problems except with one student whose father had serious health problems and who is flying to England tomorrow... We will work through that. I told him not to worry at all about this class and that he should only be thinking about his family right now. I don't know how I could survive such a situation, especially if it were my first semester in this country, so if there is ONE thing I can understand, it is his need to concentrate on more important things right now. So, I worry about him... and hope his semester will not be a complete disaster. This was my week. There is progress. We are all going somewhere. Stay tuned for more next Friday!
