Chekhov in the ELS Classroom.

 I have read all about how to use literature at the ESL classroom, in Ninah Beliavsky's article, named Discover the unknown Chekhov in your ESL Classroom, from the first author's insight related to her own emotions while listening to her mother's reading aloud (Beliavsky, 2007), to the purposes of all of these educational practices, which are “... to educate and broaden our student's horizons as we teaching english as a second language” (Beliavsky, 2007), as a mean of enhancing culture through literature, as an “cross-cultural exchange” (Beliavsky,2007). Briefly, this practices consist of reading; getting identified with characters; asking question about the story; disscusing into the class about main social problems described at the readings, in order to make a further analisys; to create a hipothetical ending for the stories, without having reading it yet; to summarize the storie; to create a new and original story following grammar, syntaxis, rethorical paths from author's; and finnally, to “write an expositive essay discussing the views of society in general, the main characters, and the main issues in these stories (Beliavski, 2007). She did not talk about the story I choose but it is more or less the same, here we have a main character which is “The begger”, as told at the name of the story, who lives drunk, but who once he found a guy who proposed him to work picking wood once a month for him, and in the mean while, he left drinking. Chekhov, always writes about street characters, and his stories are funny because of the endings, in this case, whenever the helper found the begger at the cue of a cinema, the begger refered to a pretty woman he met while doing the job for the guy, and that he was greatful because of his love toward her, he left drinking. Helper did not have any merit about. So, what Dr.Ninah Beliavsky tells, and that inspired me about her method, it's about her habit of collecting “books, music, opera, art, young adult novels by american writers” (Beliavsky, 2007) for being used at her classes, selecting them from worldwide literature, looking for her students to recall, same, from their childhood, and many times readings in their own “native tongues” (Beliavsky, 2007), to create a human conexión, and motivation for learning, since students can recognize street people from them. So, what she explains is that Chekhov constructs “vignetes of real life” (Beliavsky, 2007), with emphatizes with student's daily life. Before I read Dr. Beliavsky's article, I did my insights from my own experience, I'd like to share, trying to complement what she says about teaching a second language, and which explains my interest in the topic she writes on. First of all, it's too different learning native language from your own mother that going to school for it; then, I thought of the homeschooling method; I think it is easier to learn new vocabulary by doing hands on activities, or following listening/reading/writing/comprehension processes on a topic you're interested in like, for instance, training a dog; a second language's learner picks up more words from kids' documentaries, like, “horses are mammals, have four legs, and every single issue about how a pony gets to life; there is a relationship between emotions and learning; the way how mom expresses herself while reading aloud is important for gainning the taste of the language; a baby can keep seeing his/her mouth and face expressions for hour; babies learn the accent from everyday use of a word; babies can ask backward; babies can repeat mother's manners as well; loving and caring reinforce confidence while using new vocabulary; Teenager are the worst new language's teachers, they don't have patience, and make you feel stupid. They never have time either, they won't push you to a party if you did not understand, they won't repeat; It is much better go for a grandma, she will correct any mispelling and pronounciation issues; going into a baby's path of learning a second language lets you catch the ABC's, the fundamentals, the accent, and stories form part of this method; most of MBA's people can't describe their childhood because of lack of vocabulary and experiences, it makes social communication harder for them; you can find reading aloud stories by a mom at You Tube, often, some of the readers have lovely voices too, so you get engage with the way the reader-mom point out with his/her finger on the drawings, so you can learn first hand vocabulary, pronounciation, aside rythms and patterns of the new language, without translating, which is an adventage, because it is easier for the brain to acquire the new vocabulary without changing archives at the memory, you even can become a translator.

Beliavsky, Ninah. Discover the Unknown Chekhov in Your ESL Classroom. The Journal of Aesthetic Education.Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 101-109 (9 pages). Published By: University of Illinois Press.