White and Black Time

        I introduced these terms to my EDU students this past week and they were a little perplexed. Obviously, some had not completed their reading assignment.  I just wanted to make a few remarks regarding these terms and their application in education.

        The terms come from the study of "chronemics" which was first introduced in the late 1970s by Thomas Bruneau of Radford University.  Essentially it is the study of human tempo, or in very simple terms how we schedule "time" in our lives.  From a more educational point of view the concept as researched by Edward Hall applies to culture and issues teaching ELL and CLD students.  Most traditional US schools fall into the white time (monochronic) category.  This speaks to the linear and scheduled nature of our school systems.  US schools are run on a clock with distinct periods of time allotted for each phase of study.  There is even more at play than simple scheduling though.  We arrange our curriculum in a very linear manner and many school buildings and classrooms are designed and arranged in monochonic patterns.  One "expert", the teacher is there to present knowledge in a preordained manner; their is little group participation.

        When dealing with ELL and CLD students, teachers, myself included, are forced to understand that their lives, culture, learning style, etc., may be more in tune with black time (polychronic).  This puts them in opposition to all your hard work and lesson planning in the realm of monochronic time. My issues with the apparent laxness of my new students, mentioned in my last blog, is an example of this. These students do value education and are desirous of learning, but they just don't always place the structural emphasis on their schooling as one would want coming from a monochronic background.  Try going to your department chair and telling them you are essentially going to just "wing it" with regard to a syllabus and that maybe your class will end after 20 minutes or it might carry past your allotted 50 minutes.  Who cares if you cause the class following yours to not have a room to meet in as you are still using the room.  One can begin to see the issues that might ensue. And, this is only touching the issues with a schedule.  How does one turn in grades by a due date if the students are not finished with their assignments.

        I like to think that perhaps there is a middle ground ... maybe call it "grey time".  Obviously some compromises have to be made, but the structure has to remain in place due to the bureaucracy of the college campus.  However, maybe a teacher can work a little of the dark into the syllabus and class management style they employ.

Up and Running ... Grammar Class

I got asked to teach a grammar class this semester. I will be the first to admit that grammar is not my strongest skill.  I do well when I look at text written by others, but not so much with my own.  And, if asked to come up with the official term for some grammar points I will probably have to think a bit before giving the answer.  I may know the concept but not the term.  Of course, I am teaching from a syllabus with an associated text and all of the official bits are in the lessons.  Overall I think I will be fine.  I have taught grammar before and I am confident the students will be enriched.

I always learn new things when I meet my ELL students for the first time in a class.  They all have such unique stories. I am sure they think my life is fascinating as well ... err, I hope they do at least. I think the newness or strangeness is what provides the stimulation and interest.  I have seven students from six different countries.  I am looking forward to the semester and learning from them as much as I hope they learn from me.

I do have a few issues with my ELL students that always seem to appear with the new semester as well.  The main issue seems to be the notion of time as fluid.  I always have to take time to really hammer home the point that due dates for assignments are not fluid.  And, it always takes a couple classes before they realize that there is a definite beginning and ending time to the class.  I get the feeling that many ELL students, new to the US, have had to "hustle", so to speak, to get by and that this concept carries over naturally in all aspect of their lives, including school.  Also, it always takes a few class period to work out the tech piece of any class.  Many immigrant/refugee/migrant students may not have had the access to tech that their peers in a college class have had, so it takes some practice before they are comfortable with online school software.

I think as a new instructor, one really has to sort of plan to cover all bases and hope for the best.  I know that even after many years teaching there is always some new issue to overcome, regardless of the students' backgrounds.  Any colleague that I speak with always gets my warning to be prepared to be shocked and amazed by their wonderful ELL students.

Sorry again for the tech issues with my blog and our web page.  Everything seems to be working now.  I hope that you, my few loyal readers, will still visit and read what I write so poorly at times.

Technicalities of life ...

Evidently the server that runs our webpage or stores it, whatever technical term applies, is located in the Houston area.  I have been unable to work the page or anything I linked through there until just today.  I will hopefully be back to blogging again soon.

Communicating with Strangers

While puttering around the last couple weeks on my extended vacation, I had a chance to read through a couple texts that had caught my eye.  I wanted to sort of ease myself back into writing by talking about one of these texts; Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication.The book is written by William B. Gudykynst and Young Yun Kim.  The second edition is dated 1992, so it is an older text.  I didn't have a chance to extensively look for a newer version but I did find a fourth edition from 2002.  Some of the material may be a bit dated. Regardless, I found it fascinating and I plan to read it through again while making more thorough notations.  If I can find a newer version, I would love to include this as a class text for any ESL "train the trainers" type classes.  

 

Although the text was written for a communications course, it serves well for anyone who communicates with people of different cultures; especially in group settings.  The book is divided into four parts.  Part One lays out some conceptual background towards communication in general.  The authors lay out their plan for the text and they discuss the "big picture" of what communication is all about.  They do a really good job of providing a defining structure for communication by laying out eight assumptions of communication.  They briefly discuss uncertainty and anxiety in communication, and they provide an overview of what the term culture means with regard to their plan for the book.  They also break down the concept of "the stranger". And,at the end of Part One they identify their model for the study of communicating with strangers.  This serves as a guide for the remainder of the book.

For sake of brevity, I won't try to over analyze the remainder of the book.  However, the authors take a very systematic to their study.  They begin Part Two by identifying and discussing influences that affect the overall process of communication with a stranger.  Part Three includes a chapter on nonverbal communication.  I found this to be very interesting as it discusses cues and emotion which are always confusing.  Part Three discusses the concepts of encoding and decoding as well, and includes a chapter on language usage.  Part Four speaks to interaction with strangers and details concepts of adapting communication, managing conflict, and dealing with romantic relationships.  I found the latter very interesting as my wife is a non-native English speaker and comes from an Asian cultural background.

The drawback to the book is that it is too old to accurately address communication via cellphone or through other digital means.  I do think many of the concepts transfer though.

In short, I think this is a great book for anyone looking to wards dealing with ESL students or perhaps evening contemplating a stint teach overseas. 

ISBN-13: 978-0071195379

ISBN-10: 0071195378

Apologies Abound!

        I had a chance to take some extra vacation time, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity.  I apologize for my absence and I hope no one will hold it against me; or at least not for long!

        I participated in another interview for an additional teaching position for the upcoming semester.  I love to talk about teaching and I find that sometimes I ramble.... Yes!  It is a fact!.  I hope I was able to convey my passion and experience without turning anyone off of me personally.  I am hoping to have three classes if possible.  Before I returned to Maine, I was teaching three classes for credit and an additional non-credit TOEFL Prep class.  I managed to put them all on a Tue/Thur schedule, so it was a busy two days.  However, I could not argue against four-day weekends every week.  I don't think I will be so lucky this time around.

       I received a second offer to return to Korea and teach again.  I have always wanted to teach at the Korean Military Academy and I sent my resume to them about a year ago.  Circumstances did not allow me take the job when it was first offered, but They have offered again and I am sort of torn.  I would love to return, but the situation is a little imposing.

        Anyway, I wanted to apologize again and I will return tomorrow to actually post some more relevant stuff.  I promise I will finish my thoughts about curriculum as well.

        Thanks for sticking with me.

Curriculum Part 3

        I had a few ideas for changing the class description.  It is always a great idea to review and revise anything you are working on for a class.  I definitely need to add some kind of sentence or two covering the types of class materials; texts, readings, Youtube, etc.  I haven't quite worked out what yet, but expect a change in the statement next time I write.

        Okay, we are at one of the more difficult parts of building a curriculum; determining objectives and deciding on how to assess them.  I won't talk too much on formatting your objectives.  SWBAT works just fine or some other statement of the same format.  Objectives need to be clear.  Have some people read what you come up with and try to tell you what the objectives mean in their own words. If you get a match, you probably have a good objective.  Also, I never want for vocabulary to be an objective on its own, otherwise you get an objective that is not so productive.  For example,, it might sound something like this; "students will be able to memorize fifteen vocabulary words ...." Instead, it is more productive to include vocabulary within in your objective.  Personally, I like to include some vocabulary in every lesson.  I believe it is a natural part of learning another language and your students will always have questions about words they do not readily understand.  Objectives need to be able to be assessed easily.  You may not always be the one presenting your lesson and other instructors will need to understand them in order to assess results.  Finally, objectives need to be attainable.  it is frustrating to not be able to achieve an objective; especially for ELL students.  It is important to also understand that you as an instructor will certainly have some parts of your objective that are implied within your lessons.

        Let's take a look at a simple objective on our topic of employment.  "Students will be able to identify key parts of a standard job application."  So, some questions; "what are the key parts of a standard job application?" And, "what is a standard job application?"  These are the parts of your objective that will be implied from your lesson plans.  So, the answer to the two questions are essentially up to you the instructor, but most adult Americans will have a good idea of what both mean.  You have to convey this generality to ELL students who may have never seen or filled in a job application.

        To ensure the students can achieve this objective, you as the instructor would build a lesson plan that explained what a standard job application looks like and what the key parts are that it contains.  I don't want to get to far down into the minutia of it, but looking over a few sample applications will help you to define these concepts.  As mentioned, vocabulary would included in the lesson and would be assessed as part of the overall objective.  I would try to limit the new vocabulary presented to 5-7 words or terms.  Students will definitely add a handful of additional words/terms as you present your lesson and as they ask questions on what is presented.  The end goal is to have introduced no more that around 15 new words.terms; anymore will be difficult to retain.  In my opinion less is more here. Thoroughly learning 10 words is better than sort of learning 20.

        I think from there you could include a second lesson covering applications, ensuring that you build in some time for review.  Thus, by the end of your block of lessons, you will have introduced somewhere around 20 new words/terms over your two lessons and will have reviewed the other important points of your objective.  All that is left is to then include this objective in some form of assessment.  We will get to that in a few posts.

Curriculum Part 2

        At this point we have had a chance to mull over our gathered information.  I would, at this stage, start to think about any "special" issues I may have in mind for my curriculum to be.  By this I mean things like searching out and inviting guest speakers, any media issues, text and reading selections, and whatever else may come to mind.

Guest speakers could be any employment related speakers.  For example, it might be great to invite someone who does job interviews or who writes employment/job descriptions.  This would be a chance to have the students ask questions. This fits into both listening and speaking skills.  Media can be almost anything, but specifically would include videos you might want to show.  The internet is loaded with practice interviews and presentations about jobs and employment issues in general. These types of things are always works in process, so visit the web frequently. A good rule of thumb is to always pre-check your links at the beginning of any semester and always before each class. Technology is changing and links often disappear and change with little or no warning.  Texts are a hard issue.  I have not been fortunate to find many texts relating to specific ELL topics like employment and especially when the students are primarily adults.  I doubt a search for an ELL-focused text solely on employment will 100% fruitful.  However, there may be parts of texts that do address this topic and certainly there are some articles out there somewhere.  Again, this takes a ton of prep time, but the payoff is certainly worth it in the end.  The students will appreciate your hard work.  As an aside, I have found that Adult ELL students are generally some of the most appreciative students I have ever found.  Other items that may come to mind are things like gathering some real-world job applications (these are fun and informative to practice filling out), collect some links to a few job advertisement web sites (Monster.com being an obvious one), and perhaps collect a few resume templates.

The next step is perhaps one of the most difficult ones in this process; develop a class overview statement.  In this statement you needs to address the end state of your course.  Again, this can be a work in progress.  However, this statement is what people will base their interest in your course upon. It is also a statement of what tools a typical student should leave your class with.  Another word of caution; avoid using numbers in your statement.  Numbers imply specific expectations, and if those exist, then it is imperative that you deliver exactly the numbers you promote.  A better course of action is to try to make a specific, but all encompassing statement of purpose.  An example for this course here might be something like my example below.  As always, this is a fluid statement that will be revised as we go through the process.

        Employment for ELLs can be a matter of the utmost importance.  ELL105 will provide students         with an overview of employment in the United States.  Vocabulary will be focused on                           employment/job-related terms.  Students will be exposed to many aspects of employment such           as; resumes, job interviews, job descriptions, the application process, employment reviews, and           job/salary negotiations.  The course will include practical exercises to aid in the job search and           the application process.  Students completing the course will be better able to successfully seek           out employment as well as understand the process as a whole.

So, now we have a course ready for its next step.  Let's think a bit on what that step is and I will be back in a few days to give you my thoughts.