Many English teachers have asked if I plan a “culturally sensitive” version so Compelling Conversations can be used in more countries.
For instance, China censors not only their classrooms, but has created a great electronic fallwall so its citizens can not find information on Tibet, Taiwan, democracy, or free speech. China’s educational leaders, perhaps the most important market for many English language programs and books, simply wants “harmonious communication”, not discord, goes the argument. Likewise, Saudi Arabia – where women are banned from driving, Islam reigns as the one and only religious faith, and free speech is forbidden – wants books where relations between men and women go unasked. Why not accommodate the local rulers and pander to the prejudices of the powers to be? Sales will surely increase.
No doubt, sales would increase. Yet I prefer not to censor myself or support local tyrants. Consider me a “live and let live, speak and let speak” teacher. As Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence declared, “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Asking simple questions and sharing personal experiences, without worrying about what some government official might think, seems reasonable. Freedom is still a good idea.
Originally written for immigrants and refugees coming into the United States, Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics allows students to share, candidly, their personal stories. Some fled to avoid persecution, some escaped civil wars and economic poverty, and some sought more free to just be themselves and create a new, usually better life.
I’m even a bit flattered that my tiny little website is blocked by a few governments addicted to censorship and trying to stop their citizens from asking questions. My book simply asks over 1400 questions, shares a few hundred proverbs, and demonstrates how brilliant women and men have disagreed on many issues through out history.
Conversation matters, especially during times of war and hysteria. I’m trying to help English language learners develop their conversation skills, reflect on their experiences, and exchange insights with other fellow human beings. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes powerful people abuse their authority. Sometimes little people suffer because of the mistakes and decisions of the more powerful. If some government or authority feels that these questions are too dangerous, uncomfortable, or impolite, than so be it.
Asking questions and simple conversation help us clarify and understand our world. I’m perfectly comfortable with every question that is asked in this book, and emphasize many times that students can just decline to respond if they feel less comfortable. (Learning how to say “no” is also a good conversation skill to master!) Yet it’s a very different situation for a student – an individual – to choose to pass over a question and for a censor to block a website, ban a book, or prohibit a question. I prefer to treat all adults as adults.
Sorry for the long rant, but that’s why I have declined to create a “censor’s version” that would eliminate questions of elections, corruption, women’s rights, or double standards. Freedom, including the freedom to ask simple questions, still seems like a good idea to me.
English has rapidly become the international language for business, as a lingua franca. “That is to say, it is used as a medium of communication by people who do not speak the same first language,” explains Andy Kirkpatrick in his controversial book World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching (2007).
In fact, some linguists claim that an estimated 700-800 million individuals speak English as a second, third, or fourth language. That is almost twice the estimated number of native English speakers, usually estimated at 400 million! Isn’t that amazing!
The power of English to transform lives in the developing world, including nations where English is an official language, deserves more recognition. The Washington Post published this an excellent article on April 6 called In India, Dreams Unfold in English: Boom is Driving Languge Classes . Read it!
Praise, especially from an experienced colleague, on a difficult project feels satisfying. In the last week, I’ve received three emails from Joan V., an ESL teacher and tutor, praising Compelling Conversations: Questions and Quotations on Timeless Topics – the book that I co-authored and self-published. Her experiences mirror my own experiences with the material, and validate the book’s premise: engaging students in sophisticated conversation helps build their vocabulary, leads to memorable conversations, and deepens relationships.
Here, in Joan’s own words, are excerpts from her strong recommendation for the unorthodox ESL book.
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I am an English tutor working with Japanese adults in Jackson, Michigan. I was a public school and ESL teacher for many years, retired, and now my retirement job is tutoring. A few weeks ago I purchased the PDF of your book and then this week I bought the hard copy which just arrived from you this morning. I want to tell you what a marvelous book this is!
I’ve always used questions as a conversation stimulus, and now I have this whole organized around topics book to use with my students! As you probably know, Many Japanese arrive in this country with a fair understanding of English grammar and quite a lot of vocabulary, but are initially unable to engage in conversation. This book is the perfect answer to this situation!
Thank you so much for putting this together!
Teachers and tutors should know about Compelling Conversations. I was a classroom ESL teacher for many years, went to conferences with book displays shopping for books, and was usually disappointed by the books I saw. There were a lot of boring books out there!
The book needs to on display at ESL conferences if they are still being held. ESL teachers and tutors working with intermediate and advanced level students would choose this book over almost anything else if they knew about it. Also many community colleges have ESL programs using traditional materials focused on grammar and repetition rather than real meaningful conversation which your book provides.
I happened on your book accidentally on the internet and looking at the sample lessons, I quickly knew that this book would work for my students.
I wanted to add one more thought regarding Compelling Conversations. It is saving me a lot of time! I have been tutoring Japanese adults (businessmen and their wives) for nine years after retiring from almost 30 years of teaching in public
schools. I’ve spent so much time gathering materials from various sources–textbooks, my own materials, bilingual dictionaries, etc.
Now I’m finding that printing out a chapter of your book provides plenty of conversational focus for at least two hours or more of tutoring time. Even more important, our conversations are at a deeper level. For example, in
chapter two there are some questions about childhood. A couple of weeks ago a student bordering on fluency was able to tell me about his childhood dreams and that now he is living that dream! I was thrilled!
Thanks.
Joan
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Wow!
Thank you, Joan! You made my week!
Check out sample Compelling Conversations lessons for yourself at:
Hopefully, you will have the same satisfying experiencesthat Joan and other satisfied teachers and tutors have had with Compelling Conversations. Enjoy!
As the price of rice, corn, and other basic food staples increased daily and food riots return to the headlines, we might want to reflect on ways to help the world’s poorest poor. One way that English teachers, dedicated students, and idealists can make a small contribution is by visiting www.FreeRice.com .
This outstanding educational site asks a wide range of vocabulary questions that often appear on standardized exams. Are you studying for the TOEFL, TOEIC, SAT, LSAT, or GRE? Are you trying to expand your English language vocabulary? Do you know relatives, friends, or co-workers in poor countries? Are you an English student, an ESL teacher, a language school administrator, or a global citizen? FreeRice provides practical assistance to adult education students, ESL teachers, immigrants, test takers, and refugees. FreeRice is a powerful vocabulary resource with 50 levels of vocabulary questions, and its addictive too!
Whether you are a word lover or a world lover, this site should appeal to you. For each correct answer, the site sponsors donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations Food Program. Check Free Rice out, test your vocabulary skills, and make a small – yet significant – contribution today. Thanks!
“The satiated man and the hungry man do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread.”
Beats me. One size fits all philosophies often seem a bit strange to me. Can anybody really answer this question for every international student and ESL (English as a Second Language) college student? Really? Don’t circumstances, needs, and desires differ?
On the other hand, college and university administrators, ESL teachers, future college students, and current international ESL students constantly face this common question. What should every ESL student know?
Fortunately, braver and more confident souls feel comfortable answering this reasonable question. That’s why a small green and purple book, What Every ESL Student Should Know: A Guide to College and University Academic Success, caught my eyes at a recent English teachers’ conference in California. Kathy Ochoa Flores, the author, has both more confidence and deeper insight into this essential, yet puzzling, question. In 119 pages, she displays considerable wit while dispensing practical advice to international students and immigrants preparing for college.
“My students always want to know what they should do to learn English,” notes Flores in chapter 2. “I tell them to marry an American – one who is a native speaker and rich. That way, they can have someone to practice with every day, and they won’t have to worry about working and studying at the same time. Unfortunately, this advice does not work for most of my students.”
So Flores goes on to advocate, since many students are already married or too young to get married, to at least make some American friends. In bold print, she argues: “Native English speakers are everywhere. Use them. They are like free tutors.” How? Take the bus, sit down next to some nice looking American, and start talking. Seek out the elderly since they tend to have both more free time and might be lonely. Talk to children, meet a school counselor, and ask many questions. “Talk to the telemarketers who call you during dinner time, and ask them lots of questions about their products.” I completely agree.
This affordable book provides dozens of these imperative statements followed by detailed advice. Written in a clear manner, the concise format and friendly style make this book a wonderful book for newcomers to both the United States and American university classrooms. Easier to read, smaller in scope, and less than controversial than the popular book What’s Up, America?, this book serves a slightly different purpose. Both titles help international students adjust to American college campuses, but What Every ESL Student Should Know focuses more on survival skills. International counselors, university orientation coordinators, and even private intensive English language schools (IEPSs) could provide a real service to their international students by including this thin book in their orientation sessions and pre-college materials. The minimum cost will pay for itself by reducing ESL student stress.
Meanwhile, future international students should find it and buy it. This “one size fits all” work offers enough tips to satisfy almost all ESL students – and even a sceptical ESL university teacher!
Negative Headlines and Trendlines for ESL in California’s public schools
The dollar continues to decline in value. The national budget, seldom balanced, has zoomed deep into mega-debt during the Bush II era with two expensive wars, a deepening recession, and record tax cuts for the wealthy. The California state budget runs at least a $14 billion dollar deficit. Cutbacks in public education, therefore, seem inevitable.
In California, the governor has pushed for a 10% across the board cut in government programs. Adult education, almost always a step-child to K-12 programs, has been hit exceptionally hard as school boards try to minimize the impact. Of course, many adult education students do not vote so elected officials find cuts easier to make. The growing anti-illegal immigrant sentiment has also helped made ESL programs a natural target for budget cutting. The acute need for far more effective, modern, and well-funded programs to restore some standards to public education gets overlooked – again.
These abstract concerns about cutbacks took a very visible shape at the statewide California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages convention last week. Total attendance was officially down by more than 25% since school districts had few available funds to send administrators, let alone teachers, to the conference. Yet I suspect the real numbers are far, far more dramatic than the reduction from 1600 t0 1200 attendees. Here are some signs of pervasive cutbacks:
only a single school district recruited teachers
the exhibition hall seemed like a ghost town
publishers and vendors were eager to talk about the freezing of public education spending in many districts
vendors expressed hope that teachers would buy even more supplies from their personal pockets
many workshops collected rather sparse crowds
the few job board postings were for summertime Intensive English Programs that attract private, international students
the mood, despite many fantastic new educational resources and software programs, seemed very downbeat
Perhaps it’s unfair to juxtapose a very hectic, chaotic international teachers’ convention in New York City with a far smaller state teachers’ convention in Sacramento. Yet this year the two ESL teachers’ conventions occurred on consecutive weekends. The contrast could not be clearer.
Teaching English, on a global level, continues to dramatically improve and expand. The development of new software for English language learners, better teaching techniques that respect students and encourage authentic communication, and the increase in international educational point to a better tomorrow. Meanwhile, the news from California’s public education system, always troubled, seems to worsen almost daily – especially for immigrant students and ESL teachers. The draconian cutbacks will, again, disproportionately fall on English language programs. Instead of helping immigrants join the national family and learn English, lawmakers will maintain low taxes on the wealthy and eliminate vital educational programs for low-income children and adults. Perhaps improved educational technology and the exceptional efforts of ESL teachers will preserve the under-financed system, but the trends seem to be running in the wrong direction.
Teaching at an elite private university, I could pretend these cutbacks don’t matter to me. Yet that’s a dangerous illusion. The collapse of public education, especially for immigrants, will have both immediate and long-term consequences. The expanding gap between the wealthy who can afford a truly wonderful 21st century education and the expanding number of under-educated, over-stressed poor indicates a worsening future for too many Californians. As a stoic philosopher Epictetus noted so long ago, “only the educated are free.”
As an American, a Californian, and an English teacher, I don’t like the trendlines and headlines for American public education. Do you?
