This article chronicles an ESL tutorial between a woman from
Niger, whose first languages are French and Fulani, and her
teacher, a native speaker of English. It highlights issues in ESL
teaching and research. The teaching issues include: (1) identifying
the most useful focus and pedagogical sequence for advanced ESL
instruction; (2) the gap between what teachers "mean" and what
students apprehend; (3) cross-cultural differences in the rhetorical
requirements of expository and persuasive writing, including
argument, proof, cause-and-effect, and summation/judgment. The
article considers whether these requirements should be made
explicit and who benefits from explicitness; (4) the political and
economic conditions under which international students study at
U.S. universities, and the effects of these conditions on quality of
education, student resistance to education, communication among
students and faculty, and the attitudes that international students
develop about their experience in America.
The major research issue broached is the value of the chronicle,
sometimes called action research in Britain, case study in the
works of Bruner, Merriam, Clark, Nieto, and portraiture in the
work of Ashton-Warner, Lightfoot, and Sayers. Chronicles
offer not sample populations but examples of language learning
that may 1) spark theory building and quantitative research, 2)
allow teachers to assess research findings for classroom use, and 3)
become authentic texts and task-based activities for language study.
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