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 240 ERML, MC-051 1201 W. Gregory Urbana, IL 61801 Phone: (217) 333-1965 Fax: (217) 333-4777 [log in to unmask]