2015 report
OK, I'll be the first to admit it. I got one foot into retirement (I am now teaching 3/4 time, writing 1/4 time), and I realized how tired I was, after about thirty years of teaching. I still have lots of ideas. I do lots of things in my class. But a lot of times, I come home from teaching, and all I want to do is rest.
Part of the problem is that, having ten children, I never get that rest, whether I do extra ESL stuff or not. In fact, the ESL tends to be kind of a break from the children, an enjoyable, academic kind of break, like having conversations with interesting people I know, but I don't have time for it. I'm taking kids to their sports practices, or to the dentist, or getting groceries, etc. But another part of it is that I really
love writing, and I also
love music, and these are sides of me that went undeveloped for many years. So, when I apologize for failing a little at this end, just consider me as backing off a little. I can't possibly keep up the pace I kept for many years.
Nonetheless, here are some interesting things I've been doing in 2015.
First, I became almost entirely a writing teacher, so I had two advanced writing classes. My students are very high level graduate students who are trying to maintain and improve what they consider their weak point. The stronger ones take the class on their own, knowing that there's always a lot to learn. The weaker ones are pressured to take it by their departments, where they really don't want to teach graduate students writing, but just want them to crank out good useful dissertations and articles regularly. It's high-level; the students are bright. I had one do a blog on
gay marriage (their choice) and the other
campus carry (gun control, also their choice). We published everything we wrote, and it was good, and interesting. I helped teach them formatting things online, as well as the usual writing things - citation, reference, etc. I had the usual run-ins with plagiarism. I taught a lot of students a lot of things.
One of my graduate students became interested in the concordance movement, so I became reacquainted with it. The first step was learning more about it as a tool, how to use it, whether it really works. I am genuinely interested in the process of learning how students integrate tools into their writing process - how, why, how easily, etc. They are not especially forthcoming about the tools they use, being convinced, I guess, that so many of them are illegal. Nevertheless, as a class (both of them, really), we discussed opening up the concordance, seeing what it can do, applying the simplest of grammar problems to it, etc. It was interesting. My Graduate Assistant was fascinated. And, interestingly, even the students found one aspect of it interesting: they are stats people. They like to run the numbers. To be able to run the numbers on the words you use, that's an interesting concept. They are still shaking their heads.
We have a conference in the spring; there is some doubt about whether we'll do it this spring, with its main organizer gone now. Last spring, I was caught unprepared, and didn't even present. There are many things I could present, but I presented zip, I didn't even go. I believe I was out of town, but I don't even remember where; perhaps New Mexico. But I
did present at TESOL, the usual, and I could have presented on various subjects of interest, if I could keep from being drawn into the world of personal fiction publishing.
The first would be on cultural flexibility as a requirement of good language learning. I feel that the characteristic of cultural flexibility, being able to unhinge your self-image from its cultural trappings, is measurable, and crucial in the process. I'd like to define it better, and work toward writing about what I mean. I gave a presentation at our 2014 spring conference, and very easily could have given another. But I was interrupted, and, I'm sorry to say, I dropped the ball.
In the course of doing that one, I became interested in Order of Acquisition as a given construct in Language Learning. Actually, I'm more interested in proving that there
isn't one; it's part of my constructivist belief that each learner decides for himself/herself what order to acquire anything in, and each learner has his/her own idea of what is crucial, or what should go first. And, it would be possible to manipulate the system. For example, one could convince a learner to learn all the religious words first (salvation, heaven, savior, etc.) and skip the ones having to do with cooking, if that learner were proselytizing ten hours a day, and never cooking. One's viewpoint determines what one acquires, not an innate natural order. But I'd like to prove that, if I had time.
My TESOL presentation is basically about how grammar programs have messed with people's heads. That's putting it lightly. But something has come up that is tangentially related to this. The War on Passive is something we researched, and wrote a little about, and learned how to teach. In essence some departments, specifically social sciences, dislike the passive intensely; others, namely the hard sciences, still cling to it. There is a wide variety. Read about it on this blog. I could easily ride this one to another TESOL, but I haven't...why not?
Finally, there is the language-as-a-self-organizing-system project; this has been dormant for a while now, and is beginning to fossilize in its dormant phase. I have written voluminously about it. I haven't given up on it. It needs to be published before I give up altogether. Hello?
Meanwhile I help out at the office. My classes are full. I enjoy teaching, and I also teach American students these days; I like that too. Texas Tech is benevolent and enjoyable to me. I avoid politics. This year, due to wife's surgery, mother's near-death health experiences, and family issues, I avoided all office parties, poetry readings, etc. as well. I am in demand at the poetry reading, as people like haiku, and believe it or not, one
can write bilingual haiku that pulls on both language universes in seventeen short syllables; I am one who could do it as I've been literally immersed in poetry for months now. However as I said,
I was busy. Life is full here, the nights are beautiful, and there are lots of stars out, even in the city. And the mountains are even better; the 9000 feet woods beckon. I am, in the end, partially retired.
Labels: creative, krashen, personal, plagiarism, self-organized systems, tesol, ttu, weblogs, writing
e pluribus haiku 2015
Labels: creative, personal
May report
So what have I been doing with my life? Several things. My semester of work is over here; I worked half-time, partly in an ITA class, and partly in the University Writing Center, but I will teach full-time in the ITA Workshop in mid-July, so that counts to bring my appointment up to the 3/4 time I am paid for. What is annoying about working half-time is that whenever you teach
anything, your worrying expands to fill up the space, so you
might as well be working full-time, because you're worrying full-time. I try to put time into other things, and do; I've been writing, I've been working on my music, but above all, we have two new children and have to fit them into our family routine, and this has all been quite draining. I turned 60, and some days, I feel very old.
But, before I give up, I have a couple of things I want to do. I've been collecting essays about acquisition, and I'm thinking of publishing them. I've also been writing about language as a self-organizing system, and I want to collect that writing as well. These, as I envision them, are two separate books, hopefully published this year, as I've already done the vast majority fo the writing. The first has this running title:
O to be estar: Essays on language acquisition. The second has this running title:
Language as a self-organizing system. That second title is rather boring; it might need some work. But that's where it stands. These are both collections of writing that put my work out into the world. Having them on google docs, or blogs, doesn't seem to be doing it for me. Not that anyone will read it in its CreateSpace form, either. But it will make me feel like I've put it out there better.
In fact, I've become interested in the process of putting things out there in little home-made books, if only because a book is something you can hold in your hand, and bonk people on the arm with. Lately I printed my most recent
e pluribus haiku, 875 poems in a single volume which is still only $5 (+ shipping), and I find that quite awesome, sorry about the plug, but basically if I make a string of these, and put out the writing that I do, it gives me a feeling of being an author that I don't quite get from being a teacher, or being a fiddler, or being a father, all of which I am being, but which reward me in different ways. Applying this to my ESL career, there are things I've learned, and I want to say them; I want to put them out there. If I have a single book, I have a place where I can point that encapsulates my philosophy. This blog, obviously, is one place. But this blog is fading into obscurity. The best thing about it is its pink and gray (very stylish) appearance, and even that, to tell you the truth, gets old. I hate the font. I can't keep up the links on the template. I'm getting impatient with it as a mode of communication.
I missed TESOL this year, and might even miss the one in Toronto, if I'm not careful, and I
love Toronto, cold as it is in March. There are people I love who go to TESOL, and I miss them, even though they are busy integrating technology into classes, and I am not. I have gone this far and not mentioned at all how I"m on the cutting edge of using EdModo; I'm not. I've lost the desire to tell the world to get with the program and get students to use the language in new environments. To some degree, this will happen on its own, with or without me anyway. There is one more book in me, though, and that's how technology has influenced the language, the grammar, and the way people learn language and grammar. It has, in fact, created a new world, and I'm in a better position to expound on this than most people, so I should, and perhaps I will. This, you'll notice, is a distant third, it doesn't even appear in my top two. Alas, either it'll happen or it won't, what else can I say?
Stay tuned. Here's hoping this blog doesn't go the way of the wooly mammoth.
Labels: creative, ita's, self-organized systems, tesol, webheads
cd's for sale
I encourage everyone to come to
our band's cd release party- at the Yellow Moon Cafe in Cobden, IL, Wed. May 16th 7-9 or so. You don't have to buy a cd to show up! It's a nice place, out in the country, worth the drive!
Labels: creative
odds & ends
It's a busy time, and I've barely had time to report on what I've been doing, much less what everyone else is doing. So, here is a little from here and there.
TESOLTESOL? I forgot to give an overview of what I saw. TESOL is at healthy numbers again, over 9,000. Seattle was rainy but nice. Weblogs were big; so was plagiarism; so were all things dealing with an influx of Saudis in American intensive English programs. There were more k-12 teachers there than I remember in the past. Next year's TESOL will be in New York City; will not start until Wed. night; will go through late Sat. (to better serve the NYC metro area's thousands of ESL teachers, no doubt, and maximize use of NYC's convention facilities)...
SIUC.EDUI'm looking forward to a new
SIUC web page (system). I don't know what precipitated this change, nor do I have a clue what to expect. We at CESL have an important issue with regard to the SIUC web page. Can an international, with limited English, find what he/she is looking for, with straightforward navigation clues and roadsigns? Can they make sense of what they find when they get there? Does the system give them a welcome, friendly feeling even when they don't know what a page is about? Does SIUC
feel like a place that is international in character, friendly to internationals?
TOM 2.0In the web world, people have started referring to 2.0 as a metaphor for the future. My hometown, Cleveland, has a "Cleveland 2.0" website that envisions what Cleveland should be like in the future. So, I'm embarking on my own campaign. Look for CESL 2.0, SIUC 2.0, and Carbondale 2.0 soon.
APA in REAL TIMEMy new research interest- what people who present things online should do about APA style guidelines. APA has always made these hard to find. I am the impatient, democratic type- don't want to buy an expensive manual that is definitely out of date, and don't want to chase APA as it continues to hide its own rules. Several questions: Why should ESL/EFL writers be obliged to use APA for anything other than a teaching lesson anyway (since ESL is not sociology, psychology or any of the other academic fields that require APA)? How would the world respond to an online style guideline that was similar to APA, but always available, clearly written, and updated according to the needs of the online community? Finally, do writing teachers believe in the tyranny of holding obscure and hard-to-find style guidelines against their students, or do they do this, just because they feel it's their job? I put quite a bit of stuff online, and honestly, don't know the answers.
CLASS TO BEAT ALL CLASSESThis was a TOEFL (optional) class Tue. at 4, a week ago. In a class with a wall of windows and about 25 chairs, 32 people showed up at the beginning, and a steady flow of students brought chairs in from one side, one at a time, putting them wherever they could, and filling up the room, up over 36, 37, 38, most of whom had never seen weather as we know it. On the window side, the sky turned light, then very dark, then lightning cracked, thunder, rain, downpour, water slamming against the windows, then finally a siren and I threw up my hands and led everyone downstairs to find safe harbor. But it didn't end there. A lecture on tornados in the museum auditorium, perhaps given by a geology/weather student; an interpretive tornado dance; a woman dancer appearing on the weather map shining on the screen in the auditorium, at the same time. Beat that. Better than your average writing class.
BLUE STICKERwas stolen off of my '68 Ford truck today. I guess someone saw that truck and said, this guy's got a sense of humor. I did file a police report though. What can you do? I've got to get another one.
YOUTUBEis the topic of our
Newstalk class. Should be good. Lots of issues in the news with YouTube.
My students said something interesting the other day: "Around here, you can experience all four seasons in one day!" This was after it had snowed, in early April. I think we locals were able to relate to that.
Labels: creative, personal, siuc, youtube
Abstract and Concrete
One of my stories has been published in Yemen, in the Ibb University Newsletter, English version.
Leverett, T. (2007).
Abstract and concrete. Short story, Ibb University Newsletter, Ibb, Yemen.
I don't know how to make a reference for a short story; this will have to do. Ironically, it's about life in Faner Hall- what it's like to walk around in a building with all concrete walls and stairwells, etc.
I put out the story originally in 2004, and sent it to a friend in Yemen, Anil Prasad, who is now putting together the newsletter. He may print more, I hope!
I'll have a following in Yemen, maybe.
Labels: creative
article
Leverett, T. (2007, Jan.). Same world, different glasses.
Global study magazine, 4, 2, pp. 70-71. London, UK.
This one has not made it onto the web yet- and, I've lost my computer, so I can't put it up on this end, yet.
This is an extremely well-done, professional magazine, by the way. Very nice! And, the title of the article is the title of the magazine, this month. I will share the article, however, if I get the chance.
Labels: creative
My band, the
Parsley & Sagebrush Band, is playing at the
Yellow Moon Cafe in Cobden, IL, only about fifteen miles down the road. Cobden is a small, peaceful town with a lot of stars and a Mexican grocery store. Hope you'll join us- Saturday night at 8:00 pm!
Labels: creative
