How is English best taught and learned?
It is facets of this question which are addressed in the lively, illuminating vignettes Saturday Kids (Leah Ann Sullivan) and Language Encounters in Three Movements (Eimile Máiréad Green). These are bracketed around a haiku by Kelly Quinn which throws their answers into sharp relief.
Saturday Kids
(for Yoshiko Shimoto)
Saturday class, three boys with chopsticks
in their teeth map diagonals across the floor.
Not a tango dancer’s long-stemmed rose
nor a school of porpoises yelping for smelt
right, right, right chants slap concrete hard
clang on the rebound. Not a gas station
attendant’s Aw-right, Aw-right, Aw-right
coaxing a car onto the highway. They praise
a word beginning with the English ‘R’
to discern right from light. One soloist sounds it
out the door, telling it right, right through his
newly-shaped smile. Last week in a bar
a thirty-something man recalled English class
turn right, turn right, turn right, repeat. Okay,
we got it, sensei. So, where do we go next?
blackboard and white chalk
square sunlight on grammar books
students’ drooping eyes
spacer
spacer
Language Encounters in Three Movements
I. First Movement – In the Halls
I come down.
He goes up.
Every morning
A stairway exchange.
Every morning
An opportunity.
How are you?
Hangin’ in there.
I’m draggin’.
Stressed out.
Freakin’ out.
No complaints.
All good.
Every morning
A colloquial conquest.
Slang.
Every morning.
He grows.
Expands.
A new expression.
The latest fashion.
He tries it on for size.
II. Second Movement – Before Class
Guzheng.
That’s how you name it.
This delicate thing.
21 strings.
We watch as her lithe fingers
Pluck.
Produce.
DaiMao.
Hawksbill shell.
That’s how she does it.
And when the sounds surcease,
When she caresses the fingertips,
Hardened by dedication,
Callus, I say.
Callus, she repeats.
I spell it.
She writes it.
We smile.
That’s how you name it.
III. Third Movement – Class Time
Twinkie.
You could define it.
Golden sponge cake.
Creamy filling.
Packaged in pairs.
Hostess with a heart.
And that’s okay.
They’ll nod their heads.
Write it down.
Type it up.
File it away
For another day.
But really
They need to taste it.
For the spring 2014 issue contents page for poetry, click here.
For a humorous take on humanist methodology read Taylor Mignon’s Haiku, Hacky Sack and Flux Synesthesia here.
For poetry ‘On Teachers‘ see the fall 2014 issue.