[Teaching_Composition] NEW MODULE

[Kathy Fitch]

I come from a CC teaching background.  I had no specific training in working
with either ESL or Developmental writing students when I began working with
both--sometimes in the same course--and though this is maybe a shocking
thing seen on some levels, it is common, and I do wonder if, in some ways,
it might have been a blessing, because I really *did* see all of these
students as writing students, with no preconceived notions at all about what
they could achieve.  Sometimes, my ESL students were actually fairly
skillful at written usage--often more so than their non-ESL peers. Then,
too, it wasn't uncommon to have ESL students who had been in the US for only
weeks before the course started, and clearly had trouble even following the
in-class activities in the opening days, though they fared far better with
written materials they could take home and study.  Now, of course, I'd have
as much as I could either unfold or be reiterated online in, so students who
needed or just felt more comfortable with spoken discussion and directions
being reinforced by written versions might gain quite a bit of confidence
from that. 

Chris's comments reminded me that I was always somewhat in awe of students
who came to us while still learning to speak English.  I always tried to
imagine being plopped down in the middle of some other country, and trying
not only to communicate in basic ways, but to take *college courses* in that
language--trying to listen in it, read in it, think in it, and write in it
*all* at that sophisticated level.  Everyone who supports English First or
English Only movements should have to give that one a try.  

When I was still an undergrad, one of my dorm mates was from Sweden, at our
school on a swimming scholarship, and doing great in all of her courses,
which she could have managed in at least three other languages, as well.  I
wonder, sometimes, what it would be like if, in passing over our State
boundaries, we encountered a new language every time.  Also, it kills me
that we tend not to start instruction in other languages until high
school--exactly at the point when that little section of the human brain
that grooves happily to language variety is starting to shut down.  Hah!
Lack of use, no doubt!

Flitting around, here--one last thought:  I've had many deaf students.  The
"flatness," I think, is sometimes literally a lack of voice.  Not that deaf
students lack that skill, just that they haven't discovered how to attain it
in written English, which is utterly different than sign language.  Now,
we're talking not only about moving from one written system to another and
one spoken system to another, but a system really wholly unlike other
languages in lots of ways.  Gesture *is* tense, for instance, and strength
or softness of gesture plus expression are tone.  Even a student with the
most flawless usage, then, is still left with the challenge of how to assert
her voice in this other system of signs.  A similar sort of thing can happen
with blind students when they work with visual metaphors.  I recall one
student who was a marvelous writer, but whose attempts at visually oriented
figurative language always seemed a bit off.  For her, there was no echo,
even, of the concrete in those attempts, and I expect that had a lot to do
with it. She could model the forms, based on her reading, but not model the
sensory experience those forms grow out of when they're original.  Metaphor
employing other senses wasn't as much of an issue for her--she was actually
quite the poet.

Kathy (rambling . . .)