How can I meet the students expectations while maintaining good teaching practices?
American teaching methods were “foreign” to Mikal. Unaccustomed to student-centered instruction, he misunderstood my intentions. Mikal did not recognize my questions as the typical teacher talk that American writing teachers use to prompt student revision. But I had to realize that his task (approaching the assignment and applying skills) was far more difficult than that of a native writer. With a short time remaining, I addressed what Mikal had come for. As I read quickly, noting key grammatical errors, he replied, “Good! Now you’re getting it!” I tried not to abandon good teaching practices and focused on one type of error that affected the reader’s understanding. I encouraged him to analyze his own mistakes and think about self-correction after I had given him an example sentence. When Mikal’s paper read, “The employer’s rule was not acceptable in the culture that women cannot be supervisors.” I pointed out the misplaced adjective phrase and asked him how he could state it more clea
