At 10:45 AM 8/9/99 -0700, you wrote:

>I am undecided whether or not I wish to obtain an ESL endorsement.
>While assisting in the classroom, I have noticed the students
>circumvent giving fellow students "advice." In the classroom we have
>tried the "may I suggest" or
>you "should" . . . with little success.  I am looking for further
>"grammatical" suggestions that will help ESL students build rapport >with
colleagues and fellow employees in their technical writing.

I would suspect that the problem is not in the way you word the request,
but rather due to the request itself and cultural differences which you
have not yet learned to cope with.  I can't tell you how to approach it,
except that you need to be sensitive and respectful of your student's
cultural background, and explore the reasons behind their resistance rather
than trying to remove the resistance itself.

I don't remember exactly what or where I've read about the issue, but would
suggest you look to sources on the cross-cultural issues rather than trying
to figure out how to word the request/imperative.   Perhaps Ulla Connor,
Contrastive Rhetoric, or Carol Severino and Juan Guerra's collection on
_Multiculturalism in Composition_ .  I haven't seen the second one, but it
may offer some useful thoughts.  Connor's book focuses more on writing
styles, but (if I remember it correctly) does offer some information about
teaching and learning styles.

 Differences in attitudes towards authority, attitudes about face and
criticism, and differences in learning styles all contribute to this kind
of "problem" in a cross-cultural and multi-cultural classroom, and even
some sub-cultures inside the U.S.

Susan Mari Witt



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