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[22 Sep 2006|01:21pm] |
It's been over a year since I posted in here, and most of a year since anyone did, so I'll keep it alive.
I'm now a full-time ESL teacher. That is to say, I have two part-time jobs as such, and no other. And after my first full week dedicated to my new career, I'm ready to give you the behind-the-scenes look to which this community is dedicated. But only in a flash; only in one story.
I teach mostly conversation; three of my five classes are called Speak American (which always reminds me of something an ignorant American would tell an immigrant. It's like labeling your class "Learn Some Damn English, Level 2"), and one is Conversation. The other, though, is Reading I. It's reading in name only - in actuality it's about evenly balanced between reading and writing.
So my students have an ongoing assignment: at the end of every chapter (once per week or week and a half), they write a journal entry. Journals are all the rage in my field, as well as education at large, these days because it de-emphasizes evaluation of the final product(s) and allows the teacher to assess the overall progress of the student at the end of the course. As such, individual journal entries are not always assigned a grade, but rather the entirety of the journal is graded, principally on participation and effort. It may seem a little feel-good new-agey to get away from traditional A's, B's, and D's based on how well the language is used, but that kind of thing is what I use the unit tests for.
Anyway, here's where it gets (debatably) interesting. The journal entries are an opportunity to reflect on the chapter, write about their thoughts on the difficulty, enjoyability, or relevance of it, or to write about something related to the content. For instance, last chapter was about Brasilia, so they could write about a place to which they had traveled and describe it. The grammar focus of the chapter was adjectives, so they were encouraged to use as many as possible.
As you read ESL students' writings, you develop a sense of their linguistic capabilities. You know who will write expressively, but with many flaws. You know who will write relatively short, but relatively good (grammatically speaking) entries. You can even tell who goes over their work meticulously, checking for every error, and who writes in a stream-of-consciousness, sometimes producing entries five times the required length. You also get to know their repeated errors: lack of articles, misuse of the infinitive, overuse of -ing, lack of paragraph format.
So it is that when you're reading an entry that suddenly goes from halting and awkward in language use to beautiful, flowing and natural, your suspicion may become aroused. Alternately, as you read a paper, if the only correction that you can offer is that "your commas look too much like periods" - a handwriting issue! - you may think something is up.
Yes, two of my students plagiarized. So far as I can tell, neither used a resource specifically made available for cheating. That would be silly anyway; I was looking for a descriptive paragraph, not a term paper. But one used a paragraph from a travel brochure website as part of her entry, and the other took his paper completely from an on-line city description that was written simply, but probably by a native-English speaker. Both looked entirely out of place.
Next week I'm going to have to explain to them why each received a zero for the assignment with no chance of make-up, and explain (as my school swears has already been told to them) why this is not acceptable in an American classroom. I make that distinction because this may be an acceptable practice in some cultures. In some, the sharing of information is seen as generous and noble, while the refusal to do so is seen as selfish. "Cheating" is culturally relative, and while they may know better, they may not. It's not something I'm looking forward to, but it goes with the territory.
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stressed
creative