Today I really felt great—all kinds of energy I was missing when I was weakened by the common cold this past weekend—and I directed the energy towards some good things like talking with a leader-colleague about the ESL Department’s speaking –listening courses and handing out flyers on The New Priority Campaign (www.NewPrioritiesCampaign.org ). But I also directed it towards being imperious and demanding in one of my classes, and I was mean. First of all, I insisted that they listen. I insisted that they put away the preparation they were supposed to have done at home and listen to me and then to the speakers. But this is a class that never listens. I’ve taught on and off--mostly on-- since 1970, and this is the most passive-aggressive group of students I’ve ever met. So I was aggressive, with no passivity at all.
I told them that, above all else, I wanted them to make their presentations interesting by speaking to us, not reading. So when someone started reading, and I really couldn’t understand what she was reading, I interrupted her to ask. I almost never do that. I just let them drone on and give them a D. But I had hope of getting the message across early—on our first day of presentations—so I interrupted her. The problem was that she couldn’t really put the reading into her own words because she didn’t understand what she was reading. This is what it was:
Mexico has one of the world's largest economies, and is considered both a regional power and middle power.[14][15] [16][17] In addition, Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (since 1994), and considered an upper-middle income country by the World Bank.[18] Mexico is considered a newly industrialized country[19][20][21][22] and an emerging power.[23] It has the thirteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity. The economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners, especially the United States.[24][25] Mexico ranks fifth in the world and first in the Americas by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites with 31,[26][27][28] and in 2007 was the tenth most visited country in the world with 21.4 million international arrivals per year.[29]
Straight from Wikipedia but all highlighted in a dazzling yellow. This was a presentation assigned on March 22nd. She hadn't mastered that downloaded section in those three plus weeks. She hadn't done anything with that information except color it yellow.
The student who hadn’t prepared at all did better than she did because he spoke, and even though he gave us only what five minutes of work on his iPhone had provided (at the beginning of class after he’d come in late as usual), he understood what he was saying about the President of Mexico—his name—and he understood the meaning of the not-quite-accurate information he was giving about Jalisco, Michoacan. (He said the rich people there help the poor.) He didn’t know how to pronounce Catholocism.
I showed them how to Google pronunciation of Catholocism. Pronunciation of economies. After the presentations (and I don’t think it was my imagination that the students were glaring at me with the “mean teacher” stare), I let the other students work on their upcoming presentations with their teams and I sat down with the student who had read her Wiki. That paragraph she understood not at all was full of a lot of good information. I suggested that she give just a little bit of it. Mexico
One of the world’s largest economies
Economy linked to NAFTA
She could make an 8 ½ x 11" sign with NAFTA and explain that it’s the North American Fair Trade Agreement
(We’ve studied continents so that would bring in the continent of North America: Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Never mind that some of us are critical of NAFTA)
31 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Places listed by the United Nations as of special cultural or physical significance
Show pictures of some of the 31 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Mexico—1st in number of UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Americas
5th in the world in number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites
The best-prepared of the three speakers today said that Mexico was to the North of the United States, but I know he didn’t mean that. We’d worked on North, South, East, and West. We'd even turned our bodies in those directions.
I asked the student evaluators to take notes, and of course they didn’t. That would mean having to understand something that was said. I remember when I first began teaching ESL 79, the most advanced speech course for ESL students, the evaluators would say “Great. Clear and strong.” But when I asked them what the speaker’s main idea was, they’d say, “I didn’t quite get that.” They really didn’t quite get anything at all.
Today I had too much energy to be defeated by their faking it. I made demands that they say less but say it clearly. My non-negotiable demands weren’t met, but I’m not sorry that I made them. I don’t want them to fake it, and I don’t want to fake it for them either.
Now, in closing, I acknowledge that public speaking is what people fear more than death. After all, if we're dead, we don't have to do any public speaking. I'm not unsympathetic to the nervousness. But there are ways to deal with the nervousness that don't involve reading uncomprehended downloaded sentences, which is what I fear more than death.
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