Click on the link below to download a copy of the syllabus for my Advanced Pronunciation course at Drexel ELC.
Prior to starting classes at Penn, I had been warned by previous students of the program that I might be one of the only Americans in my cohort. It is true. I counted perhaps five at orientation yesterday (+- a few), and one peer made the comment that she felt like she’d moved to China to study English, not America. Her remark, along with those made by our predecessors were all most likely uttered by open-minded individuals who’s minority status was threatenting to frustrate them in the midst of their academic journey. The bottom line I sensed was this: how can we learn to be better teachers of English when half the time we feel as if we’re in ESL classes ourselves?
In response to the somewhat valid fear of the native speakers, I have to say that I am thrilled about studying alongside so many international scholars. As a white woman in the field of Education, it’s not often that I’m blessed with a minority experience. It is true that I have taught in schools where all the children’s faces were a different color than my own, but the teaching staff, my equals, mostly looked like me. And I have found that there is no experience more optimal for learning than the minority one. I must listen more closely, be more attentive to context and cues, and choose my own words more carefully. The stakes are raised when I am a minority, and the intensity of my teacher training has just been turned up a couple of notches. I see several opportunities for understanding my current and future students better. For example, when new students come to me from Korea and Thailand, I will have deeper insight into how they have been taught back in their native country from listening to and observing my classmates at the GSE.
While it will be tempting to dwell on the negatives of the native-speaker minority in my program (We’re going too slow through the material! It’s not my responsibility to correct your English! Why does no one else speak in class?), these frustrations are not relegated to merely international-dominated classrooms. I am truly excited to work with my cohort and explore teaching English to speakers of other languages with so many non-native speakers.
This is the birth of TESOLexplore in Philadelphia, a blog written by a teacher-scholar in a culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse city. Your comments, insights and critiques are welcome. Let the journey begin.
“In a multilingual world it is obviously more efficient and rational to be multilingual than not, and that truism increasingly applies to the whales, as well as the minnows.” Joshua A. Fishman
