Writing Lesson: Don't Use Hard Sell Techniques Unless It's a Paid Advertisement

Although I've been away for a while, it does not mean I've forgotten or abandoned teaching. And, as always, if something holds legitimate interest for you, reach out to me and send a message or leave a comment.

Today we look at an issue that's been itching at me for a long time --the best way to explain educated norms to low academic ability, first generation college or other adult basic education adult learners. While all of these students have made an important first step to get ahead and improve their lives, anyone who has interacted with or taught them knows that in many cases the obstacles to their advancement are many.

Many of these students come from backgrounds where poverty and low education is the norm. Poverty is a difficult, unpleasant thing, and the feeling of being trapped in such a condition makes it worse.  If you've never been there, imagine this. You've got a bad toothache and no way to pay for the dentist, sitting on the front steps is frightening because you live in a high crime neighborhood, you're overweight, the doctor says to watch the sugar and lose weight, and not only can you not afford good nutritional food, the best supermarkets with the lowest prices and freshest vegetables are a long bus ride away and it's not easy to carry groceries on a bus. And people look down on you, sometimes for reasons you understand and sometimes for reasons that make no sense to you at all.

And sometimes the best thing to do is to just trudge along, tell yourself it's not your fault that life sucks, and ignore the people who say things that make you feel bad.

Which, if you read the last sentence carefully and think about it, precludes and denies and reduces opportunity for growth, learning, and positive change in a person's behavior. If it's not your fault that your life is in this state, then why should you change your behavior? If the behavior is not related to the situation, then how could changing the behavior affect the situation? And so it goes in the lives of some people.

As multiple people have noted, the traits that often enable a person to survive poverty emotionally and physically are often the opposite of traits that enable a person to escape poverty. 

Which brings me back to teaching such students, It's a challenge (and, honestly, not one I think I'm terribly good at it but I try and I learn as I go. Sometimes that's the best we can do. And, sometimes, when I learn something useful, I try to share it here.)

A few years back, I was hired by the local proprietary college to teach English 101. This was one of those places that specialized in recruiting first generation college students, hooking them up with government loans, placing them in classes, and then trying to keep them happy so they came back semester after semester using the loans to pay them for tuition. Sometimes they got educated in the process, but my impression after dealing with the management is that this was basically incidental to the process. The keeping them there and getting the loan money seemed to be the priority. The students who did like it said they liked it because several of the classes taught hands on skills taught by professionals in the fields where they wanted to work.

And that's what I tried to make English 101 be. I can't say I succeeded but I tried to make it practical and relevant.

Therefore my first real writing assignment after a basic (but widely ignored yet very necessary) grammar review was to have them write a cover letter for a resume.

I taught how to do this. I shared videos on how to do this. I assigned links on how to do this. And I gave them homework on how to do this.

But when the results were turned in, I was surprised by some of the results.

One was plagiarized. I told the management, and the student claimed she hadn't understood that original work was expected. I'm not sure I believed her, but whatever . . .

Another, a student who spent most of the class under the impression that my class and every other class he'd ever taken was not useful in any way and that he knew things that he clearly did not know --it was a great challenge teaching him that not only were citations required they were required because his papers often included ignorant misinformation. For instance, he turned in a paper that stated most terrorism was committed by Muslims, a statement that was both unsourced and false. When I told him this his response was "Are you calling me a liar?" I forget my response, but as I'd already been told not to give the students blunt reality checks, it was most certainly not what I considered as my first response.

In this case, he showed his lack of interest in the project by stating in his cover letter that he had a degree from the local community college when in fact he'd failed out and then come here. I never did get a good reason as to why he included obviously false info in the cover letter. (As for why he was in this school, someone had convinced him that if he wished to be a security guard, he should go to college and study law enforcement and I think he came from a background where his parents expected him to be in college. This degree was completely unnecessary as most security companies do not require such degrees. Last I saw him, he was wandering the halls of a shopping mall dressed in a rent a cop uniform.)

But others showed a completely unexpected problem. The students basically put sales slogans in their cover letters. In other words, although they tried to follow the standard three paragraph cover letter format they were shown, they'd use language like "Why take a chance on an unproven employee? Hire me. I'm the best and my record shows it." This, paraphrased from memory, came from an adult student with a good work history, and it surprised me.

Yet it was not uncommon. And it shows a lack of familiarity with norms of behavior among what I shall call "the educated class" by those who I will refer to as "the uneducated class."

One of the challenges of advancing in work or society, at times, is to brag but to do so without appearing to brag. In other words, one must let people know of your great accomplishments without appearing to want to impress people of your great accomplishments. This is, as many recognize, one of the skills or modes of behavior that one must assume when using linkedin (which exists almost entirely for self promotion) or one of the other social media forums where people try to let others know of their greatness without bragging. This is just the way it's done. I mean, anyone with an ounce or more of social awareness knows everyone is doing this but one can't just let it be seen that you are doing it. You must keep things subtle. Why? Because that's the way it's done. (Unless, of course, you're donald trump, a man who seems to delight in breaking rules)

Yet it's tough to explain this to people who do not normally travel in circles where this is not the way that things are done. Why not brag? Why not boast? Why not even go so far as to exaggerate and if you think you can get away with it downright lie?

Well, just because you don't. It's unseemly. Inappropriate. Gauche. Vulgar, and lest one forget, for what it's worth, "vulgar" comes from the Latin word for "common class."

Yet how does one not just explain this concept, but sell it to the audience who needs it, in this case, the students who need to learn to write cover letters that are acceptable and ordinary to whatever human resources people might happen to receive it?

It was not easy for me to find the perfect, succinct way to phrase this without sounding smug, judgemental, and even classist. 

Or worse finding oneself trapped in increasingly circular and convoluted explanations as some of the students, as some of the students tended to do, seek to argue with the instructor for no other reason than to reinforce their view that the instructor could not possibly have anything to offer them and that nothing in their life is their own fault and therefore there is nothing to be gained by changing their behavior as there is nothing to be gained by changing their behavior because their lifestyle and its problems, and their behavior is unlinked, and the worse we can the instructor look, well, the more we can reinforce this view that we are, in fact, smarter than him and he has nothing to offer us.

And thus it was when I found myself, years later, confronted with the perfect answer.

"Don't use hard sell techniques unless it's a paid advertisement."  

It's that simple. And if the students ask why, tell them because human resources people get exposed to enough blatant, in-your-face advertisements outside of work and do not need them at work. They wish to meet job candidates who are sincere and wish to work and wish to fit in to their organizations or companies. They do not wish to meet slick salesmen who will try to manipulate them, They wish to judge credentials and experience and character, not slogans.

And if you can get that idea across, well, you've got your students writing better cover letters and made them more employable than they were before they met you.

"Don't use hard sell techniques unless it's a paid advertisement." 

It's that simple.

writing good sentences

More than once I've been hired to teach writing to students who often needed help with the basics.

This is a collection of materials I've found on the basics of writing good sentences.

This second one is good too, but it's worth mentioning that Mark Roberts is Canadian and pronounces the word "pasta" differently than most Americans would. (We would say PAH-sta,  with an "a" like in "taco" but he says PA-sta with an "a" like in "cat.")

Sentence fragments are a big problem with many students, both foreign and native speakers.

Run on sentences are another big problem.

If you'd like to practice corrrecting sentences and check your understanding of grammar, here is a collection of sample quizzes and practice sheets you can use.

http://www.englishforeveryone.org/Topics/Sentence-Correction.htm



This video teaches types of sentences.

This is a video on how to write better sentences. It assumes a good command of grammar.

Not so great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpoZBnXHg3E

Teaching English 101 to low ability students: developing a research topic

Because students often did not attend class, and the text book was not appropriate to their reading level, I made an effort to provide the materials required in a way that the students could access them any time and any place they might wish. Fortunately youtube offers a wealth of such materials.

Since part of learning to do academic writing, or any sort of writing for that matter, is to choose an appropriate topic and develop it in an appropriate way, I devoted a class to that topic.

When it comes to research paper topics, there's a lot of fine materials out there and here are some of my favorities.

As with most writing topic, the Purdue Owl contains useful materials:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/03/

But youtube has many materials as well. 

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.