TESOL report

The following is my honest impression of the discussion that took place at TESOL in Seattle, March 21, 2007. Laurie Moody and I showed up, gave out our handouts, and put chairs in such a way that we could all see each other speak. I can't remember exactly how many attended; it seems it was about twenty, but could have been more.

I started by saying that Discussions were a way for TESOL to open up to its members and find out what they needed, and that the better we could verbalize those requests, the better TESOL could serve us in future conventions. People seemed to jump on this suggestion. We had a brief discussion of how universities could establish a policy against plagiarism- about what Turnitin is, and how it can be used; about reasons people plagiarize (not having the language skill, not really having the mindset that it is wrong). Somewhere in here I got an alarming picture of a place where people do Google searches in internet cafes and copy out entire articles to hand in as assignments (for a Master's program, no less), or pay someone to finish it; these assignments are never actually read very carefully, so in effect people get an entire education without actually writing anything. Rather than pounce on the speaker for distorting reality, other members of the audience verified the account and said that it wasn't even cultural, it was more universal- a tendency to do what's easiest, and get away with what one can. This in turn, however, made students of such systems utterly unprepared for higher education programs where original thinking and writing was expected, required, assumed. Speakers described the horror and shame of having to start at virtual ground zero with their own writing when, in fact, they were sincere and hardworking students in every other way.

So then, the problem, according to an EFL practitioner, is that we are trying to change their ideologies, since, if we do not allow plagiarism, we are up against an entire system. And how are we to do that? We need help from TESOL to say loudly and clearly what plagiarism is, and how we are to fight it. We need practical exercises that orient students toward doing their own work and help us teachers with the process of teaching how NOT to plagiarize and how to make it impossible for students to do it.

Discussants represented a diversity of situations- a boarding school where students did their writing (cutting and pasting) at night (in desperation), a place where a writing center was opened at night, a log kept so that teachers could learn more about students' struggles to produce good writing.

One teacher said that her problem was in defending her ESL students against a school that was stubborn and rigid in its policies, unable to adjust to the fact that her students simply hadn't been trained to know what plagiarism was or how serious its consequences were. She needed help in explaining to administrators why they should be more tolerant of people who simply had not learned what was expected of them.

Here are some comments that I heard:

"I remember being a language learner, lifting phrases because I liked them...it was a stage of language acquisition..."
"Let's be realistic- writing is not their most-loved thing to do..."
"Writing for them is punishment..."
"If students are terrified they'll do what they have to..."
"We should establish a better dialogue with English departments...we need to end the blame game"
"A lot of people are not aware of what they are doing..."

There was some discussion about the integration of skills, so that writing skills, which go along with thinking skills, are developed together with other skills and not isolated to the point where students' writing cannot match their other skills. Not all discrete skills classes are isolated skills classes, it was pointed out. One could integrate the skills on one's own. I pointed out that I was putting writing fluency work into my own classes (see my other TESOL presentation) and made a blatant plug for myself. We also discussed discrete-skills program curricula (and their prevalence compared to content-based curricula) and the ability of programs to adjust to varying skill levels by placing students across levels. In general, they can't. I'm not sure if content-based curricula are going down in number, or holding their own. With such a variety of programs represented in the room- high schools, graduate programs, etc., I'm not sure it was worth pursuing.

One speaker lamented the theoretical bent of preparatory classes, and said that, frankly, the field needed more practical training. As masters and PhD students in the field of TESOL, we come out of these classes with theory but without knowing how to make a test, for example. With plagiarism, stop giving us the theory and show us, walk us through the process. This is what TESOL can do for us. Set up a resource center, give us some tools.