No Method to This Madness

I have "Prof.  Mister Rogers" again for the next, slightly more real-world class in Theories of Second Language Acquisition. Sounds promising, no?  Here we'll find out how our ESL students learn, and plan accordingly.

Yeah, not so much.  It is still very heady and academic, and the field is hotly contentious -- proudly so, it seems.  We spent the entire first class deconstructing every single controversial word of the course title, down to "of," which spurred some valid linguistic defense of Clinton's famous, albeit annoying challenge to "is." Students have incurred the quietly curled lip of the professor, who tersely puts them in their "this-is-NOT- a-methods-class" place, when they dare ask a question about classroom application.  We now usually know better than to attempt to extract any teaching wisdom  from the controversial madness of, say, the Formalists -- who claim that we are all born with the non-communicative grammar of language programmed into our brains -- versus the Functionalists, who insist we learn language much the way we learn anything else, and that it is all about communication.  The class, we are reminded frequently, provides a foundational knowledge of the subject we will all teach, that is, language, in much the way a calculus class would be part of a math teacher's coursework -- and the latter would likely never touch on pedagogy. It seems to me that if the experts are so flagrantly and insistently in perpetual disagreement, that's shaky, headachy foundation indeed.

"Biyey"

But, happily, the real world does inject itself, in the form of bi-weekly papers we write and share about snippets of language use we have overheard, and the possible theories behind them.  So, if you and I have had a conversation recently, or emailed one another, you have likely served as one of my research guinea pigs. Thanks, and no letters of protest to PETA, please.

I won't bore you with many more of the details of the SLA Theories class.  The subject matter and instructional style are so similar to the Linguistics -- apart from the arguments over whether and how native-language principles, even if they were universally agreed on, apply to second language learning -- that I have often been caught doing my own confused academic code switching.

The really wonderful, happy accident about this class, though, is the cast of characters the students represent. They are a colorful polyglot of opinions, personalities and insights, who give our somewhat rigid and less than vivid leader a run for his money, and the rest of us a good, smart time.  There is Biyey* (pronounced B.J.), the Ecuadorean intellect and guy's guy, who expounds on the dazzling circularity of making meaning as "I send a message to you and wait for you to send a message to me that you have received and understood the message that I sent, in a way that I think I understand so that I can in turn send a message to you that I have understood that you have understood my message."  There is Claricia, the stylish and effervescent young African American woman who works at Lincoln Center and regales us with her sophisticated-yet-gigglish tales of precariously negotiated interactions with international visitors. Who could forget Asuman, the young Turkish prodigy, who began the class after only two weeks in the country; who has realistic aspirations of transferring to Columbia, and holds her ground firmly, fetchingly, almost tearily, as she parries with the professor and scientific wisdom?  And I can't wait to have dinner and drinks after our final class with my new and, I predict, good friend Kymm.  She is a language teacher and dean at LaGuardia High School, mixes small-town warmth with Big Apple edge, glows and twinkles with kind intelligence, passes funny notes and stifled snickers about the professor's many peccadillos.

Kymm, in front of a DOE ad featuring her.

A few classmates who've had the professor before tell me he usually brings a couple of bottles of wine to the last class.  This surprises me  -- as people said of John Kerry, he is not exactly the guy I thought to have a drink with. My classmates say they appreciate the potential in him, rose and thorns, and enjoy the puzzle. I guess, and I love them for their sweet, smart capaciousness.  I am glad to toast with them!  There is no doubt that he is brilliant, knows his subject, provokes thought.  I am still waiting to see if I understand his message and can send him a message that I understand his message.

Maybe the spirits will help.

*I have changed the names of, and altered details about, some of the folks who make an inadvertent appearance in this blog.