The Continued Coming of Second Language Students

By Clifford Adelman. Forty years ago, I was assigned to teach “Open Enrollment English” at the City College of the City University of New York.  The course was classified as remedial, and credits were non-additive. Walking sprightly and empty-headed into the class, I found one-third of them were off the boat from Hong Kong, one-third off the boat from San Juan, and most of the other third off boats from Palermo, Porto and Gdansk (remember: this was 1970). The first writing assignment produced three different versions of English, and I had no idea where they came from -- or how. Read more...