Notes From an ESOL Conversation Group Leader
Rashi Jain, University of Maryland, College Park, rjain@umd.edu
In 2004 I arrived in the United States to join a graduate program in teaching of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) at a North American university. As I went through the program, I tried to connect the theories that I learned in the program with actual teaching practice. However, upon my arrival in the United States, I found out during the introductory student orientation programs that as an international student I faced some restrictions in terms of the TESOL opportunities. On one hand, during regular semesters, I cannot work off-campus in a position where I would receive remuneration because of my status as an F-1 Visa student. On the other hand, I have to carry a full load of courses every semester in order to complete my program in a timely manner and to retain my status as a full-time student, which essentially leaves me with little time to teach in a realistic sense.
I began my graduate studies and also began to explore the options available for gaining ESOL teaching experience given the restrictions due to my international student status. I found a way out of this predicament by deciding to work as a voluntary conversation group leader in an English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) program offered by the university to its employees and students. However, I found out that there was yet another restriction on my teaching English as a second language in the United States—the job description for the ESOL position asked for volunteers who were native speakers of English. As my few months in the United States had already shown me, I was perceived as a nonnative English speaker by the general populace. I had also found through some first-hand experiences and my readings of the literature that the “nonnative English speaker” tag carried with it expectations of lower proficiency in English and lesser legitimacy as an English language teacher, and that many people subscribed to the fallacy that the ideal teacher of English is the native speaker of English (see Phillipson, 1996). Fortunately, a professor in my program encouraged me to volunteer, and with her support and the force of my own convictions, I went ahead and met the ESOL program coordinator. The coordinator turned out to be a nonnative English speaker herself and assigned me a conversation group. Over the next 3 years, I worked with many conversation groups and learned to become a more effective ESOL teacher.
Lessons Learned and Lessons Imparted
As a conversation group leader, I worked with several different people. Some of the group members had just arrived and wished to improve their conversational English, whereas some had been in the country for a considerable period of time but had not had any opportunity to improve their conversational skills. I met the groups for about 90 minutes every week for 10 weeks during the semester.
When I first started, I made all the mistakes in the book. I spoke too fast in class, and the group members found it difficult to understand what I was saying. I spoke too much, and the group members did not get as much opportunity to practice their conversational English as they should have. I used materials that the group members were completely unfamiliar with, and so on. It was not that I did not work hard; I would spend hours planning the classroom activities—grammar worksheets, pronunciation drills, English audiovisual aids, and other practical ideas that I obtained through online searches for ready-to-use materials. Gradually, I learned to distinguish between what worked in the sessions and what did not—through trial and error, through being creative and exercising mental flexibility, and, last, by backing my activities up with critical reflection, greatly aided by my graduate studies. From my class discussions and the assigned readings, I learned that ESOL instruction (even a once-a-week short conversation group session) goes beyond worksheets, drills, and audiovisual aids. I began to apply the lessons I was learning in my program to my conversation group sessions. I outline some of these lessons below.
First, because I spent only a limited time with the group members, which I believe was inadequate to provide any effective language instruction, I tried to share strategies that the students could take beyond the classroom to acquire conversational skills in English. For instance, when one group member mentioned that she had trouble understanding people on the phone, I suggested that she politely but firmly ask the person on the phone to repeat himself/herself or speak more slowly. When another student mentioned that he had trouble understanding idioms spoken by his American colleagues, I told the students to make note of any American expressions that they came across and did not understand and asked them to bring their notes to class. When they did, I devoted a certain amount of class time sharing the idioms, with me playing the role of an informer and explaining the meanings and the contexts in which the expressions could be used. I also asked the students to think of similar expressions in their home languages, providing them with examples from my own first language, which is Hindi. This often resulted in fascinating discussions on how the same ideas can be found in languages from different parts of the world. My purpose in bringing in the students’ home languages in the classroom was two-fold. On one hand, it acted as a mnemonic device. The students were able to remember certain American expressions and idioms better, having found equivalents and similar expressions in their first languages. On the other hand, at a deeper level, it was my attempt to validate their funds of knowledge (a concept popularized by Luis Moll; see, e.g., Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), their culture, and the languages they are already fully proficient in. I also invited the students to bring cultural artifacts, such as traditional clothes, jewelry, and other accessories, to share their stories and experiences, and to make presentations on their countries and cultures to the rest of the class.
I further used my dual identity as an English language user and an immigrant as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. For instance, during the group sessions, I would ask the students to list the languages they spoke. Yet, surprisingly, more often than not, the students would not include English. Then I would point out to the students that they spoke English as well. My rationale was that they were successfully interacting with others and with me in the group sessions, and the only common language between us was English, which meant that they were certainly speaking this language. The students would react in different ways: Some of them would look surprised, some would laugh, and some would look skeptical. Despite the subtle resistance to claiming ownership of English (see Widdowson, 1994), I would let the idea remain in the classroom by frequently legitimating myself as an English language user, sharing with the students that I spent most of my life in India, speaking English as it is spoken in India, and that I went through my own set of struggles to adapt to linguistic and cultural differences after coming to the United States, and that the process is ongoing. However, I would explicitly tell the students that although English is not my first language and I am a nonnative English speaker, I see myself as a legitimate English language user, and that my goal as I adapt to life here is not to strive to speak like an American but to be understood by anybody who speaks any variety of English.
I believe that the students appreciated and saw values in these strategies. In fact, I would argue that given the limited time I had with them, these were the most effective pedagogical tools I had. These strategies helped me build the students’ confidence in their ability and legitimacy to use English in their daily lives, as they learned it. In addition, when I validated the cultural knowledge that the students brought to the classroom, I found that they participated more actively, they felt a certain amount of “ownership” over the language and content in the discussions that followed, and “performing” the culture-related tasks generated more English language than would otherwise be possible in a “regular” classroom discussion.
The Road Less Traveled
Despite my positive experiences as a volunteer in the ESOL conversation group program, however, I have struggled with many troubling questions. The reality is that my teaching ideology is being shaped in an environment where my ownership of English and that of my (prospective) students could be questioned any time. I wonder, if I am not allowed to draw upon my identity as a legitimate English language user or fail to validate my students’ language use, will I still be an effective teacher? If my students, in turn, leave the classroom and go out into a world where they will always be seen as English language learners, will they ever be able to see themselves as competent, proficient, and legitimate users of English? Will they have to keep “performing” the English language and consciously illustrating their proficiency and competency in the language, so as to break stereotypes and establish themselves as valid English speakers? I am willing to engage in a critical debate on the question of my ownership over English language, and I believe that I am fairly equipped, thanks to my reflective teaching practice as well as my doctoral studies, by means of which I have acquired the theoretical knowledge to support my emerging teaching ideologies. How do I then ensure the same level of confidence for the intelligent, mature, and sensitive students I meet, who may find themselves relegated to the status of “learners only” simply because they happen to have lower proficiency in the dominant language?
Although I constantly struggle with these questions, my experiences have nonetheless strengthened my desire to become a full-time ESOL teacher and researcher, as well as to advocate for all nonnative English speakers. To quote from Robert Frost’s poem titled “The Road Not Taken,” I have knowingly “chosen the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” I think I am on the right path. After having volunteered with the program for three semesters, I felt emboldened enough to request the new ESOL program coordinator to remove the term native speaker from the descriptions posted online and in university newsletters, so that more people like me could come forward to volunteer for the program. When I last visited the course Web page, I found out that the coordinator had changed the job description to “You do not need experience in teaching English or be a native speaker. . . .” She had also made the course description more equitable by replacing the phrase “learn about American culture” with the words “improve your spoken English, make new friends, learn more about others’ cultures and customs.” This incident has put heart into me as I prepare to become a conscious, actively contributing ESOL teacher.
References
Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Phillipson, R. (1996). ELT: The native speaker’s burden. In T. Hedge & N. Whitney (Eds.), Power, pedagogy & practice (pp. 23-30). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Widdowson, H. (1994). The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 28 (2), 377-389.
Rashi Jain is an international student from India whose research specialties include language pedagogy, teacher identity, nonnative-English-speaking teachers, and world Englishes. She joined the program of second language education and culture at University of Maryland, College Park, in 2004 as a masters' student, and is now continuing into the doctoral program. Rashi has been participating actively in the NNEST Caucus of the Washington Area and is working toward enhancing the international student experience within her university department and program. She is a recipient of the 2007-2008 International TESOL Leadership Mentoring Program Award.
