As I leave here (retiring as of tomorrow) I just want to vent one more time. This is where I vent. You want to read negative stuff about teaching ESL in the USA, read here. It's not just, everyone copies, even the president copies, vice president of the USA, they all do it, no it's not just that. We have a problem with our students from the kingdom. In short, the whole language approach isn't grooving with them. They find it easier to get answers without learning to read, and they do, and pretty soon you have this guy in my office, fairly high level class, flunking the heck out of it, doesn't have a prayer of being able to read the textbook. And it occurs to me, it's not only that it's now an academic textbook, with academic words and long sentences, he's never read anything like that in Arabic either. He doesn't have the words, doesn't have the tools. He listens carefully to what I say but can't read the questions on the quizes or the listening exercises. He doesn't know where to start.

How did he get this far? At the next level down there were only maybe three, for big readings in a term, a few small ones, you could get by by memorizing. The kinds of questions and answers were more limited, and the answers were all out there. He might even have looked at his neighbor, if his neighbor had the answers, and got away with it. That was his approach to writing too. Grab something that worked once, try to make it work again. If they passed it a term or two ago, they'll pass it again. Do anything to avoid actually writing it yourself.

A lot of this cheating seems to be a heck of a lot of work, but that's easy for us to say, who can write a whole sentence any time we sit down, and when it's not a whole sentence, it's because we're running our mouths intentionally. It would be harder for us to cheat than to actually write. But it's easier for them, not only easier, but actually the only option, in some cases.

Heck of it is, I kind of like the guy, this particular one, and it weighs on me that now, probably, he'll have to go back to KSA. Another dream dashed on the rocks of our insistence that people do their own work. Or, our intolerance of pure inability to read, that we can't manage (in a higher classroom), or treat, or work around easily.

Another student did work around it. He too couldn't read, and had no intention of trying to learn in the short course of a six-week term. But he had been at this level twice already; had already flunked it twice, very well could have even had the same chapters I was assigning. Determined to muscle his way through, he played his cards well; got the maximum points out of everything, and learned enough key words so that he could know what the questions on the exam said. Sometimes he challenged me: was this really in the book? To me that made it more clear that he'd never opened it. When I pointed out that I'd mentioned it in class, he looked at me quizzically as if surely he would have known if I had. Yes indeed his listening was good. But the first time, he had no frame of reference; after reading about something, he may have remembered what he read. But listening to me talk, he didn't necessarily catch what it was about, and now he was having trouble placing the reference. I got angry that he got this far without opening the book. But it's not unusual. He'll pass too. He was intense in hauling in the answers, going over old exams, knowing enough to get by.

I'll be grateful to get out. The picture below is a wall where I work. You can mark it as you wish, with chalk or whatever, the gray still wins. The drabness permeates. It's concrete, baby. Concrete support.