Sensationalist Nudity among CCSF Student Fears

Do you want to know why some ESL students lack the skills they need for academic success?  It's because they're distracted from their studies by sensationalist reporting like that about nude men walking around San Francisco.  Since I'm now brain dead (too much beating my head against that brick wall), I'll just copy and post what I was sharing with three friends:

      I'm now responding to a new set of essays, and the topic is the harmful effects of sensationalist reporting on us the public/society, so it's interesting to see what the students come up with.  One student wrote that he worried needlessly about all the naked people walking around San Francisco everywhere.  Instead of studying English, he kept asking his Korean friends how he was going to deal with this problem of nudity that was obviously so prevalent.  Then he came here and didn't see any naked people at all.  He'd wasted his time and energy trying to figure out how to deal with a problem of hour-to-hour confrontations with naked people when he could have been learning more English!  (But what about all the women in slacks instead of skirts!!!!  Wasn’t he warned about them?)  Of course, because of all the time nudity kept him away from English, his way of expressing this problem goes like this:

I read an article that it was a lot of naked people walk on the street every day and everywhere I go in San Francisco.  I felt scary because I had couple days to go San Francisco so I asked to my friends how I overcome and understand their culture...I felt anguish about the culture.  When I came San Francisco, I realized which was false.  When I turned back, I was silly and I wasted my time,  If I have a chance to turn back, I will study English instead getting an answered about naked people.  Thus, sensationalist reporting makes readers to waste time.

     

I still love their turns of phrase:

Dear Tina N. Martin

Good afternoon Professor Martin ! Im sorry being late to reply to you . If I awared that this was our assignment , I would sent it to you delightly...

      For the past few days I've been conferring with a counselor at DSPS (Disabled Students Programs and Services) as well as the previous teachers for a student suffering from Parkinson's as well as a student who has skeletal problems that make it difficult for her to carry a textbook.  What courage they have to come to campus, though the student with Parkinson's is more regular.  The other student stands up both DSPS and me when she's made appointments. 

      I'm working hard on an article on helping students in distress, but it's getting much too long because there are so many students in distress, and there are so many steps to take as well as brick walls to run into and bang my head against.  People say there’s no use banging our head against a brick wall, but they’ve overlooked one benefit:  It might render us unconscious!