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Beside the Point: Close Encounters in the Global Classroom - Softcover

 
9780996619806: Beside the Point: Close Encounters in the Global Classroom
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In this funny and moving memoir, an English teacher interweaves stories of his encounters with adult students who came to the San Francisco Bay Area from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Peru, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, Turkey, Venezuela, and Vietnam to study this "foreign" language

"Teaching English as a Second Language is a good gig. It's satisfying to sharpen one's understanding of a linguistic point and then present it to a class with lucidity and life. But getting that point across is not what this book is about; it is about what happens in the endlessly unpredictable world beside the point--where surprises spring from the quirks of languages (theirs and ours) and, of course, from the quirky humans who speak them." -from the author's prologue

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About the Author:
Philip O. Chomak was born in Brooklyn, New York and taught English to international students for thirty-eight years, in Oakland, San Rafael, and Berkeley, California. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Chomak studied story writing with Nobel-Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer. He lives with his wife in the Bay area.
Review:
KIRKUS REVIEW A teacher of English as a second language recounts a rich career.
In 1974, debut author Chomak came to the discomfiting realization that his master's degree in English literature was no guarantee of a university job. He stumbled into a position teaching English as a second language part-time at Holy Names College in Oakland Hills,California, a post that became full time in 1976. He would remain there until 2003 and continue as an ESL teacher until 2012, a career spanning almost 40 years. Over the course of those decades, the author taught students from countries all over the world, including Japan, Iraq, Qatar, Switzerland, and Argentina, among many others. Chomak's memoir divides into a series of generally brief anecdotes--many of them uproariously humorous--that explore the misunderstandings that can arise from cultural and linguistic cleavages. For example, the author's first name sounds an awful lot like the Arabic word for elephant. Many of the stories are almost vaudevillian, revolving around the comedy that issues from terminological misunderstandings and mispronunciations and the untranslatability of jokes. Some of the tales involve drama in the classroom--when a Brazilian student failed to earn the much-sought-after Certificate of Proficiency by one exam point, she threatened Chomak with a knife. Others are more serious--a Saudi student found himself attacked by his peers in the wake of 9/11. Despite the generally lighthearted tone of the book, the author repeatedly returns to the theme of cultural difference and what it means to properly understand its nature: "Teaching, for me, has embodied the paradox of relating to a group while trying to connect to each individual in that group." Chomak writes informally and jocularly, like he's taking readers out for a leisurely drink and some friendly conversation. Despite his eagerness to skillfully share lessons learned, his remembrances are never didactically delivered. In addition, this is a valuable resource for teachers since the author thoughtfully reflects on his pedagogical practices. Finally, Chomak shares considerable insights into the character of the English language, one riddled with its own peculiar practices and colloquialisms.
A companionable recollection of a life interrogating culture through language. - Kirkus Reviews

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  • PublisherLouisa Street Press
  • Publication date2015
  • ISBN 10 0996619801
  • ISBN 13 9780996619806
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages368
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