OK here's the story. Now I'm seventy, looking back on a thirty-year career teaching ESL. I'd like to use this site to talk about everything I learned and know; after all, I'm a perpetual loudmouth and have always been vocal about my opinions. But lately I'm putting it all in a book, or maybe two.
The main book will be Vowels in an Elevator: Language as a self-organizing system. I might have it done by the end of the year, if I'm lucky. I use this site to talk about my thinking both about the book itself, and about the topic. It has been a lifetime of gathering information and evidence. But here's the kicker. I've run out of time. I've had a cochlear implant operation; I've gone back to work (door-dashing); I have grown kids addicted to pot in a way that has made me look like an amateur, and I'm trying to avoid paying for it; and finally, my peace and quiet, and ability to research psychology or sociology, has run out. I have to take what I've got and lay it on the table.
Much of the book is written. I have been saying that language is a self-organizing system for many years and I could take any one of those tracts and slip it in there. But I don't want to simply keep repeating myself; just saying it is does not make it true. I want to show how the parts of the system work together to make a whole system, a system which, from above, looks like a fantastic mandala, evolving and changing and adjusting to minor abberations. It's a system that organizes itself because its moving parts organize themselves in similar ways. We just have to idemtify those parts and show how they relate to each other.
I will keep you posted here on my general progress on the book. This morning I tried to print it out and the printer wore out about halfway through, leaving me about sixty pages of mostly white, small-printed text that is not in very good order. I am not even sure I will use what I've printed except that I'm always short of scrap paper and can surely use it for that. The central question for the book is order - how soon should I bring in Chomsky? How thoroughly should I discuss or disprove other major language theories? What kind of lit review should I have or should I even separate it out? I've been stuck on that lit review question because, frankly, I have tons of sources yet no coherent organization. I need the overall organization to be solid before I go further.
But then, I'm ok with going with what I've got. I've got plenty. I have a strong argument. People can take it or leave it. And the title is good; it shows what I'm doing. I can explain this theory in a short elevator-rap where I give people the boiled down version: Chomsky was wrong. Language is a self-organizing system.
My other book is a novel, Sorry for Late. It will document my ESL teaching years in the same way Tall Corn State documented my life as a vegetarian cook. Like most novels it will have fictional characters, a plot, and an intense setting. I have no idea when it will be done. It too is at least half written. The characters are good. I like what it's becoming; I just need time to delve in and finish.
My ESL compatriots have turned out to be my best friends over the years. As a tribute to them, a gift to them, I want both of these to be as good as I can make them. They may or may not read what I've written, and that's true for my family and family books too. I can't control how much someone really cares about who we are or where we came from, or about what it's like to be an ESL teacher. I myself have been almost unable to think about it for years, I was so burnt out from working so hard. But now I feel the obligation to document what I learned. I didn't do all that work for nothing, or rather, if feeding myself and my kids was the only outcome, that would be ok but would not be ideal. I want to say I got something else out of it, knowledge that I can share.
