video assignment

1. Cultural preferences:

I'd say that I definitely have western European and especially American cultural preferences when it comes to both reading and writing. I am very focused on the American experience in my own writing, because for western civilization, the Americas were literally the last frontier--the ends of the earth--for exploration and colonization. I don't condone any of the travesties that were committed by settlers here, but the idea of a "new," lawless, far-western continent appeals to me, and I think that Americans today are still very different from Europeans, and that a lot of these differences grow out of the land we call "America." I see myself distinctly as an organic product of this land, and it has shaped my self while I have grown in its soil.

Besides that preference, I also have a strong interest in Japanese culture, because I lived there for a few years. Living overseas at a young age was a very powerful experience for me, and Japanese culture has some very beautiful and striking differences--and similarities, if yr willing to look deep enough--to American culture.

I also have an interest in American Indian culture, but I cannot call it more than an interest because I have not spent enough time learning about it.

My 5b. is Late, but at Least I am Honest

Exercise 5B - If you couldnt tell by the title
If I am stressed, it will not appear in writing because that comes dead last. The Fall Semester of '07 I didn't have any writing stress, as none of my classes required me to type anything of academic merit. <--- THE EASIEST SEMESTER SO FAR ---> Now...transition to this semester in ENG 391 with an entire class focusing on writing and tutoring of writing... It takes me a long time to get into the swing of churning out papers on a weekly basis, so this is a big switch.
My biggest issue with any form of writing is getting "in" to the subject. Once I have found what issue I want to discuss, then it is the problem of word choice that places a sharp tack in the proverbial writing road. It is a rare occassion when I can swerve and avoid the issue or be able to drive straight through with no issues. It usually blows my tire and leaves me waiting for a boost. I guess this shows my biggest concern of appealing to the audience to which I am writing and not sounding like a complete idiot (which probably would happen anyways). My other primary concern is developing an idea that is strong enough to last for whatever the required length of the paper is. I would have to say that length of paper is the primary goal of any of my academic writing. (On a side note: I do very little personal creative writing, art and music is more of my thing)
As far as relations to ESL students go, and as I have mentioned before I can't imagine being in a foreign country where I have only the education of a school for language. No matter how good your schooling is, you have to have the first-hand experience of conversation with a native speaker in order to gauge the level of your fluency. I went to Germany for just a short time and was very lost in the language. It is in the oral sense that I can relate, as language on paper comes much easier to me. Speaking has major roots in automatic responses and the lack of time to think of a response. I have great respect for those foreign students who are able to speak two or more languages.
Sorry for the rambling and I hope you can follow my ideas. I am sure I am not alone in my concerns.

Writing Across Borders or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Message in the Text Rather than the Technics Without

Let me express my grievances thus: free of form but full of function. I started this assignment with two questions pasted on a word document, attempting to answer these two in sequence, and separately. This didn't work as well as I would have liked. The original questions where #2 and #4, but I realized that it kind of included #5 and parts of #6. I believe all the points I make below answer in whole (or in part, in the case of #5 and #6) the questions raised, and hence, is not an incomprehensible chimera of cluttered... can't find another “c” word. Enjoy.

To start out: a disclaimer. For the past few weeks that I have started consulting on my own, I'd have to say that about three-quarters or so of my clients have been ESL students, particularly students from Korea. Most, if not all the literature we've read so far concerning teaching ESL students would have me believe that this perceived “cultural” difference overrides the individual personalities of these clients and how they respond in sessions when it comes to their participation, submissive/dominant aspects, and intentions to “sound” a certain way (a native American English-speaker). The tendency in these articles, it seems, is to assign native speakers a role as “less complete” in their understanding of what they want to say in English (a valid point), subjugating non-native speakers as inferior (even though this is not the intention) in their “understanding” of what it means to be a “native” speaker. This, I believe, unfairly pegs them into an inadvertent self-fulfilling prophecy of the “superiority” of sounding “native” and being self-conscious of the linguistic choices that they, as both people AND students make. While these studies have indeed made me aware of certain cultural differences that I may face as a consultant, their observations are base at best, and I have found (in my short time, let's wait and see) more evidence to suggest (and common sense to approve) that these clients are, of course, people first, with their own desires and intentions,and ESL students second. They understand WHAT they want to say, and the intention to sound “native”, while understandable, should not simply be swept aside. Instead, this desire should be taken into consideration when the primary intent of a piece is to send a message, which is the purpose of writing in the first place. The very fact that we peg them ESL students is unfortunate; they are fully capable of expressing their ideas, but WE as readers should pick up part of the burden in understanding the cultural differences. It becomes too easy to avoid the responsibility of not understanding and setting artificial “cultural” boundaries that only get in the way of understanding when we WANT them to. Take THAT, pedagogy juggernauts.

It's tempting for some to think that an ESL student's silence or tacit submission to the consultant's will is an example of pedagogy-gone-wrong. In the literature we've been exposed to so far, there seems to be an attempt to make a blanket statement quick-fix on our part, that we are indeed doing something wrong by occasionally “taking control” of an ESL students work. Merely “noticing” a cultural difference is a quaint idea, one I would liken to last century's myth of scientific “race”; the only reason this “difference” exists is because we would like very much to believe it does exist. By coming to a session with the conception that we should somehow “alter” our understanding of both client and text alters the playing field in our favor, not the client's: we are now playing the very hegemonic academia-centered game we strived to quit in the first place by “understanding” on our terms.

The mere truth is this: sentences are the results of thought; these thoughts the children of ideas in our conscious self, and the conscious self emerges from the assembled energies, hopes, and aspirations of the deeper self that indeed makes a self a “self”. We easily understand the ideas that people raise because we ourselves recognize these ideas as part of our own existence, even when these are not expressed in a “technical” way (i.e., art, music, emotive gestures, etc.). Sentence- and idea-level comprehension, I believe, should not be approached with as much pretense and importance with which we usually approach such things. When among our “peers” (both cultural and academic), the distance can easily be bridged between these technical forms of understanding, and hence, we can more exactly apprehend the “meaning” of a text written because we comprehend these structures. But when it comes to those different than ourselves, it better serves to either ignore or assign these structures a lesser degree of importance, as insisting upon them does little justice to understanding the underlying meaning in the text. However, I assign the blame not to those who claim us to be different in our understanding of the human condition, but rather to those who approach the inter-cultural writing process as some vacuous exercise “preserving 'culture' vs. preserving 'voice' and technics”, as if these are exclusive to the other and cannot exist the the same space.

*Phew*. Such is my manifesto.

Writing Across Boarders

by David Tibergien

1) As a writer, I have different culture preferences than a lot of other Midwestern Americans. A lot of the institutions that teach and facilitate academic, journalistic and political writing value rhetorical economy. I like to employ magniloquent phrases, compound complex sentences, and a flavorful vocabulary in my work. While I understand that such writing might not necessarily appeal to a broad audience, it does appeal to those with whom I feel that I am culturally aligned. I don't write for 3rd generation foundry workers or anyone who argues with straight face that NASCAR is a sport, especially Kassidy.

I feel at an impasse when I am asked to employ a method and a style that are typically mandated in academia; much the same way a foreign student might be frustrated when they are asked to adapt to academic English. In the film a student from Ecuador said that she was accustom to putting the main idea in the middle of their writing while all that comes before it builds up to that main topic. A Turkish student said that she was used to using complex sentences and artful language because it produced a pleasing prose. The cultural differences of each of these students are at odds with much of the writing demands that they encounter in the United States.

6) If an ESL student had told me that they wanted their graduate application statement to sounds exactly like it was from a native speaker, I would first examine their motives.

First I would try to find out why do they want to sound like a native speaker, especially since academia usually rewards diversity. I suspect that their concern could stem from a perceived xenophobia or a lack of confidence in their writing skills.

I would suggest to the student that rather than making them sound like a native speaker, that we work to produce a writing that is original and in their own voice while striving to avoid things that might be a barrier to their admittance to the program for which they are applying.

Otherwise, it is unethical to help a client produce a writing that isn't an example of his or her style, voice and sensibilities. For sure, it does not give the admissions officer a sense of how that student will perform in the classroom.

This is the movie transcript webpage

http://cwl.oregonstate.edu/wab/WABTranscript.pdf

Reflections on Eurotrip

I was watching the infamous Eurotrip movie this weekend and couldn't help but mention the problem that started the whole trip to Europe.  Scott is an English speaking American who exchanges emails with who he thinks is a German guy named Mike.  He thinks that this man is making moves on him one night after being dumped by his girlfriend so he shoots him an angry message.  Little did he know, it was actually a very cute german girl. Had he been paying attention to her emails he would have seen that she even used female pronouns!  Her name is not Mike, but rather it is pronounced Me-Kah (The German form of Michelle). This movie shows a classic form of misunderstanding another culture.  I think we could potentially take the lessons learned in this movie and apply it to our jobs.  Do not make assumptions that you know everything about another culture.  Pay attention to DETAILS. That is all. Thought I should throw out this silly comparison.

IMP!

PLEASE GO ON ANGEL AND CLICK ON FOLDER KRISH BY JANET FINLAYSON.