Teaching English 101 to low ability student, Part Two: English Punctuation is Important

In my last post, I described how I had come to teach English 101 at a for-profit vocational college that specialized in taking first generation college adult, often minorities, often with low academic ability and poor academic background and motivation, and hooking them up with loans and then enrolling them in its programs. What I've been told is that people like these programs because they often feature good good hands-on training in skills needed for different vocations. Unfortunately English 101, despite my attempts to make it relevant to real life, really didn't fit that bill particularly when many of the students were at the end of their programs, thereby making English 101 nothing more than a requirement to finish the program.


STEP ONE --THE PLAN

So what did I do on the first class? First, I decide to emphasize that one important aspect of good writing is that it is clear in meaning and comprehensible.

And one key to making English writing comprehensible is to use proper punctuation. Therefore, I did some google searching and found some entertaining.

I am offering these here for the benefit of others.


Domestic Examples:

20 Images That Prove Grammar and Punctuation Are Important


A Humorous Look at The Importance of Punctuation

29 Photos That Prove Punctuation Is VERY Important



Foreign examples

31 Brilliant examples of Engrish fails...


There was also this example from the humorous website Engrish.com that deals with Japanese and Asian examples of badly used English.



Having used some examples of bad English produced by Asians, I decided to avoid or reduce the likelihood of charges of racism (or "culturalism"? or "Anglocentrism"? Although I admit it is problematic and potentially offensive when one makes fun of usage of one's own language by non-native speakers, it is not necessarilly "racist" by the strict definition of "racism" now is it? Just saying.) by providing some exampes of bad Asian language usage by Westerners.

The most common example of where we see this is in tattoos using (or misusing) Chinese characters (or weird squiggles that are supposed to be Chinese characters). Since this is a subject that has interested me for years, it was easy enough to throw these in.


Google Search on bad Chinese tattoo fails


These presentations were followed up with showing a Cambodian language pop music video and asking students to write about it and a homework assignment. Before the next class, the students were to find one example of good writing and one example of bad writing.


STEP TWO --ASSESSING HOW THE LESSON WENT

This is a bit more problematic, but, of course, just as important if not more important than the actual lesson itself. What I often found, must to my surprise, was that many of the students read at such a low level that they were not able to grasp the lesson.  In other words, their knowledge of punctuation was such that the students were often unable to tell if a sentence were ambivalent or not.

I'm not sure how this should have been dealt with.

The obvious two solutions were to either assign homework that would focus on remedial punctuation or begin class with a lesson on remedial punctuation.

However, neither of these solutions worked well because the students who needed it the most, did not arrive in class on time nor did they do homework.

A hard nosed approach of "Do your homework or I will fail you," was tried and the administration was quick to tell me that they did not approve of this approach. (This is a common criticism of for-profit schools. Student happiness and retention of return customers is valued over academic rigor or standards.)

Teaching low level, low motivation students is not easy. It's an area where I hope to improve and am making efforts to improve and develop my teaching skills.

An Introduction to Teaching English composition to low level adults -- My experiences.

In January of 2017, I was given the chance to teach English 101, Academic Writing and Research, at the local for-profit, vocational college. Although accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, this is one of those places that specializes in recruiting from often first generation, often minority, generally low academic level students who would not do well at other institutions, arranging for federal and other loans for them to enable them to complete their studies, and then running them through various programs focused on job and vocational training. The college also offers two year programs and, although English 101 is being phased out and replaced with a course oriented towards vocational and job needs than academic needs. 

At the time, however, not only did it exist, but it was a required course for some students who needed it to graduate in their programs. Curiously, unlike a normal college where students take English 101 first semester to develop the skills required to complete their studies and finish their program, at this school the majority of my students were in their last semester and had already completed the majority of their classes. This was particularly interesting as many of them showed serious academic deficits.  

At the last minute their previous English 101 instructor was unable or unwilling to continue and I was hired as a last minute replacement. In fact, they came to me, unsolicited, without my ever having applied to work at the school. 

Over the next few months, I found myself teaching academic writing to a small group of usually college age adults. There were ten students in the class, at the start, although one was later expelled, reducing the student load to nine. These students were all first college and their background proved a challenge to teaching. 

Over the next semester, I learned that in my class none of the students were aware of what a master's degree was, what a standardized test was, what the SAT's were, or who Steve Bannon, the controversial adviser to recently elected President Donald Trump, was. Nor, generally speaking, did they consider it abnormal or unusual that they didn't know these things, and generally had little interest in learning who or what they were.

Clearly, this was not the typical group of college students. And they had special challenges.

Most read at a low level. In many cases, they were not able to comprehend texts and newspaper articles unless given assistance, assistance they would often not ask for or seek out. It didn't help that the assigned textbook, as well as the verbiage on the syllabus, was far above their reading level, thus making the (quite expensive) textbook virtually useless for teaching. Although I can't discuss the exact rationale behind the inappropriate textbook or the syllabus, they both seemed to have been written for someone other than my students (and probably was). 

Why? It's difficult to say. Ability to use and write in standard English was also a challenge. One had a non-Western, South-West Asian language as his native language (he was also the hardest working and most studious student in the class.) Two others were Hispanic and although their English was at a high conversational level, I suspect one had problems stemming from his bilinguality. (To achieve in an academic setting, a student must be able to write and communicate at a sufficient level in the language of instruction, in this case English. This level is higher than that required for must mundane, day to day, workplace and social interactions. If a person has this level of ability in one language, for instance, most Chinese who come to the USA to study, they can often acquire it through education and study in a second language. With some bilingual students, they function at a non-academic level in two languages and then bringing them up to an academic level in either is a challenge that should ideally be addressed before placing them in a classroom. However in this case it had not been addressed.) The other attended class so rarely that I never did get a chance to really assess her English level thoroughly.  Another, although a native English speaker, spoke a "non-standard" Caribbean dialect of English as her native tongue,  

Which left six students who were native English speakers, but even these often showed problems. For instance, when I began my class with an assessment I like to use ( see: Assessing students writing through using Cambodian language pop music ) , two students, both White, native English speaking American women who spoke "working class English" turned in papers that included the line "Her and her friends were dancing." (as opposed to the more "standard"   "She and her friends were dancing.") 

For the next 15 weeks, each Wednesday for three hours I taught my class. Although I think my instincts were good, and I adjusted as time went on and I became more familiar with the expectations and restrictions of the administration and the abilities and level of motivations of the students, it was not an easy teaching assignment. 

To add to the challenges, while at most colleges English 101 -Academic Writing and Research is required in the initial semester or year so that the students develop an introduction to the skills that they will need to use to acquire their degree, in this case the course was being taken by many students near the end of their degree, students who expected to be entering fields where they would not need to do much academic research or writing, and who thus felt they had little practical need for the skills that were taught in the course.

Classes were often skipped, often attended late if at all, homework left undone, and the administration's approach to the problem was keep the students happy, do not confront them, and if they fail, well, they can take the class a second time --and be billed for it twice.