As an English teacher, it’s sometimes a challenge to read papers from students who are not native English speakers. It’s especially challenging because some of these students have the most to say. Some have traveled unbelievable distances–emotionally as well as on the globe–in order to sit in my classroom. That’s humbling.
That’s not to say that I don’t realize that my own time is more in demand because they are in my class. I cannot grade a non-native speaker’s paper as fast as I can grade a fluent southern Minnesotan’s paper. Well, that’s not always true because some of the white kids who grew up around Mankato certainly don’t have the best of the best writing skills. BUT I’m busy making generalizations here. I can grade a student’s paper who doesn’t struggle with the language or with getting ideas on paper or with sentence structure faster than I can grade a paper written by someone who struggles, no matter who he or she is, and no matter where he or she’s from. That’s just a fact of grading. And of course, I like to grade easy-to-grade stuff. I have more to do in life than grade papers.
HOWEVER, this morning, I read a paper by a student from Somalia. I can say this in complete anonymity because I have so many Somalian students, I’m not revealing anything. The introduction to the paper was long and rambling. I had a sense of the student’s entire afternoon before doing the interview (the crucial part of this assignment), and then the student got down to business, telling the story gleaned from the interview.
My first response was to say (and I did), “Look at your introduction. You wander around, setting up the interview, but we’re on page two before we even know who is going to be interviewed or the point of this paper.” Yes. I said (wrote) that. The online tutoring center where the paper had been submitted said the same thing.
That’s when it hit me. This is an African paper. Africans talk like this. You meet an African for a meeting, and he or she asks you how you are, how your family are, and all sorts of other things before he or she talks about the most important issue of the meeting. Africans are on “Africa time” because caring about the people around them are more important than the deadlines imposed.
This is an African paper. It’s set up like an African talks. It wanders into the subject, and, finally, the story of this paper–gleaned from the interview as assigned in my class–packs a powerful wallop. It’s a great story.
Yeah, the writer could have elaborated in places. Some details needed adding. Some shifts–from interviewee’s very happy marriage with everything sunny to full-blown war in the space of a sentence could use some more explanation, a transition even. But that’s how it happens. Happy life—then BAM! War has descended, and that’s what happened in Somalia.
I struggle grading this paper. I want to say to the writer, “This is spectacular! This is a story that must be told! Thank you for writing this!” And I do. I wrote that on the top of the paper. But I also had to mark down points for a bunch of run-on sentences, lack of editing as suggested by the online tutor, and some ways in which the point of the story wasn’t clearly spelled out by the writer. We as readers feel it, but as a writer, the responsibility is to make sure it won’t be mistaken.
So, this wonderful, powerful paper ended up getting a C. And I’m in turmoil. I want to give this an A, but it’s not an A paper by my standards. It’s powerful, though. And I justify myself by saying, well, this writer has much to say, so if I guide this ability through the semester, this writer will be producing really good, powerful, acceptable work at the end of the term. Is that really what will happen, though, or am I just forcing one more African to fit into the western model of what we deem acceptable as writing?
Help. I don’t know. I love these students, and as I get older and am much nearer the end of my teaching career than the beginning, I feel as if I’m only beginning to grasp the ways I can be a real teacher. I’ll keep muddling through. 
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