Poetry has become our choice of reading for our English Language Assistance and Support (ELAS) group at Gannon University. We meet once-a-week at One Green World Cafe. The cafe is a student-run entity.
For my own assessment, I keep running records of pronunciation as Sukeina and Ali read Robert Frost's, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snow Evening." The function of this selection is to help with fluency and is read by each participant every week. This selection also introduces how the North's weather is aesthecially pleasing and valued by some people, such as Frost and his audience. Other Frost poems are read by Sukeina and Ali, though reading is not recorded in these selections. While reading Frost's "The Pasture," Ali made a connection to date picking in his country, which he explained with drawings until I had enough understanding to give him the English words he was looking for. Ali mentioned dates again, while discussing the Arabic river poem. It's the not-knowing and questioning of the meaning in the poetry that leads us into meaningful discussions of each other's cultures while it reinforces language acquisition with the practice of speaking and listening to the English language. This practice is also solidifying and creating a base of common knowledge and dialogue by scaffolding shared meanings.
The Bahktinian sphere influencing the Arab college students' utterences during our encounters are mostly social. However, there are policital influences over education and religious references as well. If I were to draw Brofennbrenner's circles and create a taxonomy of domains, it would be obvious the political is the cornerstone. Without the policial structure the students would not be here and they are well aware of that.
My former classmates, my friend from Saudi Arabia and another friend from Libya, needed the support of families to be here and some family members came with them. With them, casual conversations were a constant, since I drove them home after class. We discussed food, family, hobbies, and religious practices in addition to discussing meanings of words and phrases, and pronunciations. I also proofread their college papers to help them improve in the areas of verb-tense, comma splices, spelling, subject-verb agreement, and plural word endings. Time constraints didn't allow for many suggestions to thesis development or paper organization, but for the most those areas were well developed. They knew what they wanted to say, but just needed the words, our English words, to say it. The social pressure of class peers drove many conversations and helped with the success and completion of English with Master of Arts degrees. In other words, just like exceptional learners such as gifted students and students with learning disabilities, it appears these students were well served in a mainstream environment.
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