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Feature Articles Curiosity Didn’t Kill this Cat: Studs Terkel for English Language Learners SUSAN KELLY Shandong University of Science and Technology After years of studying academic English, many students are ready to move beyond language designed for the classroom, or what Yoshida (2001) calls ‘‘fishbowl’’ English, to the language of the ‘‘open sea.’’ As students develop beyond the beginner level, they are ready to read and discuss appropriate authentic texts. Even students who are unsure of themselves can make it in the ‘‘open sea’’ and navigate quite well with help from teachers and peers. Studs Terkel’s work is appropriate material that captures U.S. culture in all its vitality, complexity, and variety. With some scaffolding, teachers can use Terkel’s work to help students understand authentic English and gain insight into U.S. culture. To sharpen the focus of students’ study, I have created reading, writing, and discussion activities based on Terkel’s writing and oral history interviews with Americans with distinct perspectives and backgrounds, from factory workers to CEOs. Studying these individuals gives students living examples of the principles discussed in our text. doi: 10.5054/tj.2010.220147 In Korea, the college-level students in my classes have studied English for at least 6 years. As I plan my course and consider students’ needs, I reflect on Krashen’s (2004) assertion regarding delayed gratification: The Comprehension Hypothesis does not require delayed gratification. It claims that we can enjoy real language use right away: we can listen to stories, read books, and engage in interesting conversations as soon as they are comprehensible. The Comprehension Hypothesis, in fact, insists on pleasure from the beginning, on acquirers obtaining interesting, comprehensible TESOL Journal 1.2, June 2010 247

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Page 1: Studs Terkel for ELLs

Feature Articles

Curiosity Didn’t Kill this Cat:Studs Terkel for English

Language Learners

SUSAN KELLYShandong University of Science and Technology

After years of studying academic English, many students areready to move beyond language designed for the classroom, orwhat Yoshida (2001) calls ‘‘fishbowl’’ English, to the language of

the ‘‘open sea.’’ As students develop beyond the beginner level,they are ready to read and discuss appropriate authentic texts.Even students who are unsure of themselves can make it in the‘‘open sea’’ and navigate quite well with help from teachers andpeers. Studs Terkel’s work is appropriate material that captures

U.S. culture in all its vitality, complexity, and variety. With somescaffolding, teachers can use Terkel’s work to help studentsunderstand authentic English and gain insight into U.S. culture.To sharpen the focus of students’ study, I have created reading,

writing, and discussion activities based on Terkel’s writing andoral history interviews with Americans with distinct perspectivesand backgrounds, from factory workers to CEOs. Studying theseindividuals gives students living examples of the principlesdiscussed in our text.

doi: 10.5054/tj.2010.220147

In Korea, the college-level students in my classes have studiedEnglish for at least 6 years. As I plan my course and considerstudents’ needs, I reflect on Krashen’s (2004) assertion regardingdelayed gratification:

The Comprehension Hypothesis does not require delayedgratification. It claims that we can enjoy real language use rightaway: we can listen to stories, read books, and engage ininteresting conversations as soon as they are comprehensible.The Comprehension Hypothesis, in fact, insists on pleasure fromthe beginning, on acquirers obtaining interesting, comprehensible

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input right from the start. The path of pleasure is the only path.(para. 3)

Students should not think that they must wait until their Englishis perfect until they enjoy the ‘‘real language’’ offered to nativespeakers. For this reason, and because I agree with Lightbown andSpada (2006), who assert that unless students use authenticmaterials, first with a teacher’s guidance and then on their own,they will remain dependent as English communicators, I includeauthentic materials in my intermediate university courses.Moreover, I find support from Berardo (2006), whose contentionapplies to listening as well as reading:

One of the main reason[s] for using authentic materials in theclassroom is once outside the ‘‘safe,’’ controlled languagelearning environment, the learner will not encounter the artificiallanguage of the classroom but the real world and language howit is really used. The role of the teacher is not to delude thelanguage learner but to prepare him, giving the awareness andnecessary skills so as to understand how the language is actuallyused. (p. 60)

Similarly, Nuttall (1996) notes that ‘‘authentic texts can bemotivating because they are proof that the language is used for real-life purposes by real people’’ (p. 172). After years of reading texts inboth Korean and English that are designed for young students andedited to ensure that they do not encounter any stylisticirregularities or controversial thoughts, students in my classes areeager to explore writing and conversation aimed directly at the realworld as opposed to the classroom. Terkel’s work contains theslang, debate, inquiry, and energy found in the bar room,newsroom, and boardroom. The college students I teach are readyfor a taste of such English, and I strive to meet this need with low-anxiety activities using authentic materials, as Krashen (1982)advocates.

BACKGROUNDStuds Terkel was not just an oral historian, music critic, radiopersonality, and writer. He was a national treasure. This vital,inquisitive, trenchant, down-to-earth man, dressed in his signature

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red-checked shirt and red socks, represented the American spirit.When I started teaching a content-based U.S. culture EFL class in aSouth Korean university, I wove Terkel’s work into the curriculumto bring to life various U.S. traits, such as self-reliance, diversity,and creativity.

Born in New York in 1912, Terkel grew up in the men’s hotel hisfamily owned in Chicago. He described himself as a pet among thecolorful residents (Gross, 2008). His life spanned two world wars,the Great Depression, McCarthyism, the Civil Rights movement,and the Internet age. He studied liberal arts and law at theUniversity of Chicago, but never practiced law because he ‘‘couldn’ttake the legalisms’’ (Gross, 2008). He worked for Works ProgressAdministration projects, wrote music reviews, and hosted radio andtelevision programs before his first book was published in 1966. Helived out the themes of self-reliance, can-do spirit, creativity, socialcriticism, and bravery that students in my class read about in theirtextbook and discuss in class. Comments from listeners of radiostation WFMT (available at www.wfmt.com/main.taf?p51,1,41,31,2) about Terkel’s impact demonstrate his legacy:

After all the years I’ve been fortunate to have listened to and readStuds, I’ve received a priceless education on what it means to beHuman. Something I could not have gotten anywhere at anyprice. Studs spirit lives on. (Jeff Wojnicki)I found Hard Times on the shelf of one of the families I babysatfor. Thank you, Studs, for finally revealing why my father storesfood and the source of so many aspects of our culture I hadn’tunderstood before. I wish I had such a talent for eliciting people’sstories because I want to know how people think, what makesour culture tick. Since I don’t, I thank goodness he did. (AnnaLehner)

TEACHING CONTEXTI use Terkel’s writing and interviews in a semester-long EnglishThrough Culture course at university in Seoul. Intermediate- andadvanced-level students take this 15-week content-based culturecourse that focuses on U.S. culture and explores topics such asfamily life, national values, business, government, andmulticultural issues. In addition to reading Terkel’s work, students

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listen to and give ‘‘This I Believe’’ speeches, perform Internetresearch, conduct oral history interviews, and complete researchand writing assignments, or a combination of these activities. Icannot include all of these activities in a single semester due to timeconstraints, but I always include a few as a means of addingchallenge and variety to the course. Teachers can use many of theseactivities in adult ESL/EFL conversation or reading classes.

Terkel’s ability to ask hard questions in a respectful, sometimescomic way is a useful model for interview technique. Moreover, thewritten and spoken interviews are an appropriate length forstudents who are ready to move beyond the sheltered English ofgraded readers and the CDs that accompany them to moreauthentic language.

Terkel’s work covers a wide range of themes, including work,service, democracy, politics, education, economics, media trends,and race. I have found that many adult English language learnersare often eager to exchange their opinions and question each otherabout these relevant topics. With sincerity and passion, Terkelinterviews men and women from all fields in a way that makesreaders and listeners feel part of the conversation. Moreover,Terkel’s writing and interviews fulfill Peters’ (1991) guidelines forauthentic content because they

N reflect important themes and ideas,

N are consistent with curricular goals,

N are rooted in real-world experience,

N are sensitive to students’ development

N allow students to engage in higher order thinking.

Consequently, students of many ages find Terkel’s workcompelling and feel a sense of accomplishment because, in readingand listening to them, they have succeeded in interacting withEnglish designed for the wider English-speaking community.

STARTING WITH A SEARCHIn countries with widespread and readily available Internet access,having students conduct a web search is an effective way topromote learner autonomy and encourage habits for lifelonglearning. I don’t provide a lecture on Studs Terkel’s background;rather, I have students find this information themselves. Because

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these students have easy access to the Internet and thoroughly enjoyusing it, I begin by asking them to search for information aboutTerkel, whose work we will listen to and discuss. Via e-mail, I askstudents these questions and instruct them to provide me with theiranswers:

N When did Studs Terkel live?

N What was his name at birth?

N Where did he live?

N What was his educational background?

N What jobs did he do?

N Where is Bughouse Square?

N Did he win any awards?

N What did he look like? (Write a two- to three-sentence description.)

N What web site(s) did you use?

N Explain how you know the information is reliable.

Although the Internet is an amazing source of information,students can easily access inaccurate and biased information.Consequently, I teach them not to blindly accept all they find on theweb. I want students to develop good ‘‘habits of the mind’’ andoften ask them, ‘‘How do you know what you know?’’ (Kohn, 2003).Because I teach students how to evaluate web sites and they expectto be asked about the source of the information that influenced theiropinions, they are not surprised that I will ask them about thereliability of their sources when we discuss what they have learnedabout Terkel.

Students bring their answers to class and we discuss theinformation that everyone has found, noting the different sourcesand comparing their findings. By having students investigateTerkel’s background rather than supplying it for them, I encouragestudents to develop their sense of agency and autonomy as learners.

Terkel’s life and career is in itself an example of the complexityand richness of U.S. culture. His abandoning the practice of law towork in radio and his eventual career as an oral historian would beuncommon in Korean society, whereas so many people in theUnited States switch careers frequently. Such differences can makefor vibrant discussion.

I have the students save the information they have found, andtheir citation, for their final paper. Students find it interesting tocompare sources with each other, thus discovering new web sites. I

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encourage them to move beyond Google and Wikipedia and try ipl2(Drexel University, 2009) because this search engine is designed foreducational research. In addition, if their college subscribes to anacademic database, students may use that to search, therebylearning about their university’s resources. Many students do noteven know about these resources and how they differ from morewell-known and widely available search engines.

DEEPLY HELD BELIEFSAfter discussing Terkel’s background, I introduce National PublicRadio’s ‘‘This I Believe,’’ which revives Edward R. Murrow’s seriesof personal essays, which he introduced as such:

The personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in allwalks of life. In this brief space, a banker or a butcher, a painteror a social worker, people of all kinds who need have nothingmore in common than integrity, a real honesty, will write aboutthe rules they live by, the things they have found to be the basicvalues in their lives. (Murrow, 2008)

I distribute a sheet with vocabulary and a cloze version ofTerkel’s essay ‘‘Community in Action.’’ Before we listen, I want tomake sure students understand words such as evict and species andknow who Thomas Paine was.

I play the taped essay twice so that students can listen for themissing words and get Terkel’s main ideas. Afterward, in smallgroups students discuss their opinion of the importance ofcommunity and share any experiences or observations they havehad with a community in action.

After the discussion, I explain that each student will sign up fora day to share a brief ‘‘This I Believe’’ speech. They will prepare atwo- to three-minute speech describing one of their deeply heldbeliefs and the experiences that helped them form that belief. Toreinforce their understanding of Western rhetoric, I explain that thebelief in this assignment is the thesis statement and the experiencesupports it by describing why they hold that belief.

My objective is to provide each student with an opportunity toshare with the class a belief that influences them. I see this as anactivity that helps us get acquainted and builds community in the

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classroom. To encourage students, I tell them that I did this activityfor a writing class and. I also tell them that they don’t need to sharetheir most intimate belief, but rather one that they feel is importantand safe to discuss. I explain that in new settings, like a collegecourse, one is not obligated to bare one’s soul. These students havelearned that people in Western countries are often very direct, and Iwant to let them know that Westerners do not always pour out theiremotions. I want students to choose safe topics and not mistakenlyassume that I expect or require them to take bold emotional risks.Rather, they should carefully decide what is most appropriate toshare. I have not had any problems with students choosinginappropriate or offensive topics. In other settings, teachers mayhave to set guidelines to ensure that appropriate topics are chosen.

Reticent students will feel nervous. To alleviate their fears, Ishare my own feelings of shyness. I am intimately aware of what itis like to have butterflies in my stomach, and I have had to givespeeches in Latin as well as do a ‘‘This I Believe’’ speech for a largegroup of writers. I find that this revelation is the most authentic,effective assistance I can provide to reluctant students.

Each class starts with a student sharing a significant belief of hisor her own choosing, and these can be quite powerful. Studentshave shared stories of discovering an unexpected friendship,overcoming a serious illness, reconciling with a sibling, or comingto terms with a great disappointment. By listening to these essays,our knowledge of each other grows. I use this activity to buildcommunity at the beginning of the semester, so I do not assess thesespeeches for a grade. Students receive authentic feedback from theirpeers through attention and applause. However, other instructorscould choose criteria and formally assess the content and delivery ofthe speeches.

INTERVIEWSTerkel is best known as an oral historian. His interviews areavailable from a variety of sources, including the Chicago HistoryMuseum’s (2002) web site and the Historical Voices web site (seeUsing Primary Sources to Learn of the Life of Studs Terkel, n.d.).Teachers can play segments of these interviews for students and askstudents to summarize the interviews and discuss their impressions

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or opinions. (When in a classroom without Internet access, I use aCD of Terkel’s interviews.)

Terkel sought out people from all walks of life—inner-city highschool students, CEOs, atheists, priests, opera singers, folk singers,artists, authors, social workers, politicians. Even simply reading alist of the people Terkel has interviewed and listening to a fewinterviews expands students’ views of U.S. culture.

Like Cauldwell (1998), I realize that a diet consisting purely oflanguage recordings with slow, steady speech limits students’listening development and may be ‘‘misdirected charity’’ becausethey fail to help students cross over from the controlled languagedesigned for the classroom to the livelier language aimed at thepublic square. Thus I choose to use Terkel’s recordings for theirauthenticity and challenge. I can help students cross this bridgewith repeated listening and cloze handouts, helping them attainindependence with their English.

After listening, students can discuss how Terkel conducted hisinterviews. I ask them to consider the following questions:

N Who talks more, Terkel or his subject?

N How does Terkel show that he’s listening?

N How does he show his subject respect?

N How does he encourage the guest to expound or clarify?

I list Terkel’s techniques after students finish their small-groupdiscussions.

After gaining a better understanding of these techniques,students can conduct their own interviews. In an EFL setting theymight interview older relatives or neighbors in English (or if thatisn’t possible, in their first language) and then summarize theinterviews to share in class. In the Korean context, I ask students tointerview an older relative about how he or she overcame ahardship or what life was like when the relative was the students’age. In another context, for example, a skills course with a unit onbusiness, I could have students conduct interviews about differentjobs, like those in Terkel’s (1974) Working. Because Terkel was ageneralist, interview topics may vary greatly.

In an ESL setting, students are likely to have access to nativeEnglish speakers and they can interview friends, teachers, schooladministrators, or people in the community whose work or

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experience intrigues them. Although I would prefer that allstudents conduct their interviews in English, I realize that in an EFLsetting that is difficult for some students. Besides, bilingualprofessionals use one language for interviews and then translatetheir subject’s words into English, so translation is an authentic taskof a nonnative English speaker. I would rather a student tell me thathe or she interviewed a person in Korean and translated theresponses than have the student mislead me. I realize that eachsetting differs and other teachers can require that students conducttheir interviews in English.

Before they conduct their interviews, I show students a video ofJon Stewart’s (2006) interview with Terkel in which Terkel admitsthat one of the reasons people open up to him with ease is that theysee him as imperfect. He admits that he bumbles with his own taperecorder and his subjects must help him with it. I include this videoto make Terkel real to the students and to reinforce the idea thatmistakes are natural and that we should not feel shame when wemake them. Terkel’s open admission of imperfection provides agood example for them.

With a partner, students brainstorm questions and discusswhom they will interview. I start by suggesting that they considerwhat their relative has a passion for and then prepare thoroughly asTerkel did by collecting information on their relative’s career,hobbies, hometown, and friendships. I give the example of myinterviewing my father’s aunt, my oldest relative. I list questionsI would ask her about life during the Depression, being one ofeight children with no father, her interest in football, and somegeneral questions that might elicit interesting stories about, forexample, what dating was like when she was a girl or how shegot her first job. I show them the following list of questions thatI might ask her:

N What was your neighborhood like compared to what it’s like today? Can youtell me about the families near you?

N I know your father left when you were young. How did your mother takecare of all the children by herself? Did anyone help her?

N I remember that Grandpa had a paper route. Did all the children have jobs?What were they? How much did they pay you? Did you like working?

N What was school like for you? How many students were in your class?

N How did your life change during World War I?

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Students can record these interview responses and latersummarize them in a worksheet, paragraph, or essay, which will beshared in small groups during class. Because not all of the students inmy class conduct their interviews in English, and some may do soover the phone, I assess them via Oral History Interview worksheets(Appendix A) and their own Oral History Self-Assessments(Appendix B). I evaluate both of these assignments based on ideadevelopment, word choice, sentence fluency, and grammar.

If all the interviews are conducted in English, teachers can assessthem based on preparation, research, the questions’ effectivenessand logical sequencing, and the interviewer’s ability to elicitinformation. For large classes, I suggest having students work witha partner on an interview because listening and assessingrecordings is time-consuming.

READING AND WRITINGAs a supplement to the chapter on ethnic and racial assimilation intheir textbook, American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture(Datesman, Crandall, & Kearny, 2005), we read and discuss Terkel’sinterview with C. P. Ellis, a man who went from being a member ofthe Ku Klux Klan to acknowledging and shedding his prejudices.Eventually, Ellis became an activist and union leader, who learnedto respect and collaborate with African Americans. Ellis’s story ofpoverty and struggle, told with openness and humility, fascinatesstudents. It is a portrait of a powerful and rare transformation. First,he responded to his hardship by blaming African Americans, butlater, through his epiphany of shared hardship and the need tocooperate for better schools and work conditions, he realized thathis prejudices were wrong and that he had to step up to join acommunity task force to improve the local schools. He had to putaside his prejudice and work with people whom the Ku Klux Klanhad encouraged him to hate, which furthered his transformation.

Although this reading includes a great deal of new vocabularyand is longer than the textbook assignments students had beforethis course, they complete it because it is so compelling. They enjoydiscussing this challenging, powerful interview.

By the last month of this semester-long course, students are ready toread more interviews. In South Korea, unless students have a high level

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of learner autonomy and read English books on their own, they aretypically not required to read a book written for native speakers. Theyhave read passages in textbooks and possibly newspaper articles, buthigh school and freshman English readings are designed for EFLreaders, and all students read what the teacher chooses. In Asia, outsidemajor cities there are few bookstores with English language books. Itcan be daunting to move from reading one- or two-page passages withsheltered vocabulary to reading a work of fiction or nonfiction that ismore than 100 pages long, as most books for adults are.

However, students can read several pages of a nonfiction booksuch as Terkel’s Race (1992) or Working (1974). I feel it is importantto give them choice in their reading, and this assignment providesthat choice. Moreover, this choice encourages them to spend timeskimming through Terkel’s work, noting the variety of culturaltopics and viewpoints. The assignment also requires that they‘‘conquer’’ an authentic text (Shepard, 2004).

For their final paper students must read one interview from oneof Terkel’s books, which I put on reserve at the university librarysuch as:

N Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel AboutWhat They Do (1974). Terkel interviews a CEO, movie stars, business owners,factory workers, a waitress, a social worker, allowing his subjects to revealand examine their attitudes about work and U.S. society.

N American Dreams: Lost and Found (1980). These interviews examine the idea ofthe American Dream. Subjects include a former beauty queen, ArnoldSchwarzenegger before he became governor of California, Ted Turner, JesseHelms, politicians, and many ‘‘regular’’ Americans. More than 100 people tryto define the American Dream and explain how they pursue it—and how itevades them.

N Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992).This book features stories about racial attitudes and experiences in whichrace was a factor. Again, Terkel speaks with people from all segments of U.S.society.

N Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (2001). Terkel offers an affirmative and upliftingcollection of interviews with doctors, nurses, patients, undertakers, clergy,atheists, and survivors on death and life.

To prepare students for complex vocabulary, I remind them thatthey should not look up each new word in the dictionary (Shepard,2004) and that native speakers would not. Rather, they should usetheir ability to determine a word’s meaning from context, as they

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learned previously. I remind them that they will build vocabularynaturally by reading widely (Krashen, 2004).

After reading a selection from one of Terkel’s books, students writea short paper that explains what struck them and made them choose aparticular interview, summarizes it, and offers their reaction to it.

Students also must include and cite at least two sources thatexplain who Terkel was or illuminate the content of the interview.For example, a student writing about Terkel’s interview with gospelsinger Mahalia Jackson might decide to research more informationon her achievements and the history of gospel music and includethem in his or her paper. By teaching students to cite and paraphrasein this assignment, I am trying to prepare them for longer researchprojects. Two or three sources are a manageable number and givestudents a chance to practice appropriate citation. Moreover, thisresearch is authentic. Good readers and thinkers frequently want tolearn about a person or idea mentioned in an article. With access tothe Internet or a nearby library, this task is simple to complete andencourages students to satisfy their curiosity through research. Andthis sort of project work, as Hutchinson (1996) maintains, is extremelymotivating because it is personal, active work that allows for choiceand creativity, in this case within the framework of an assignmentsimilar to one that native-English-speaking students might perform.These projects not only require language skill, but call upon higherorder thinking ability while challenging and adding to students’understanding of U.S. culture.

CONCLUSIONBecause Studs Terkel embodies a vital curiosity, students find himcompelling. By reading and listening to his work, students not onlyimprove their English conversation and literacy skills, but they seehow they can better question and analyze their own culture andother cultures. Through Terkel’s interviews, students can uncoversome of the rich, thoughtful conversations in and about the UnitedStates and its people’s ruminations on its history and its hopes.

THE AUTHORSusan Kelly is currently a visiting professor at Shandong Universityof Science and Technology, in China, and has also taught English

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language in the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia.Her research interests include content-based instruction, literacy,and curriculum design.

REFERENCESBerardo, S. A. (2006). The use of authentic materials in the teaching

of reading. The Reading Matrix, 6(2), 60–69.Cauldwell, R. T. (1998). Faith, hope, and charity: The vices of

listening comprehension. The Language Teacher, 22(6)Retrieved from http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/

Chicago History Museum. (2002). Studs Terkel Retrieved fromhttp://www.studsterkel.org

Datesman, M. K., Crandall, J., & Kearny, E. N. (2005). Americanways: An introduction to American culture. White Plains, NY:Pearson ESL.

Drexel University. (2009). ipl2. Retrieved from http://www.ipl.org/Gross, T. (2008, November 7). Studs Terkel: ‘‘Hard Times’’ and other

histories [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId596724840

Hutchinson, T. (1996). Project work in language learning. TheLanguage Teacher, 20(9). Retrieved from http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/

Kohn, A. (2003, March). What does it mean to be well educated?Principal Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/welleducated.htm

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second languageacquisition. London, England: Prentice-Hall International.

Krashen, S. (2004). Why support a delayed-gratification approach tolanguage education? The Language Teacher, 28(7), 3–7. Retrievedfrom http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/

Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned (3rded.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Murrow, E. R. (2010). The 1951 introduction to ‘‘This I believe.’’.Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId54566554

Nuttall, C. (1996). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language (newed.). Oxford, England: Heinemann.

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Shepard, S. (2004). Using authentic materials. Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/using-authentic-materials

Stewart, J. (2006, April 4). Studs Terkel [Television series clip].Retrieved from http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-4-2006/studs-terkel

Using primary sources to learn of the life of Studs Terkel, his interviews,and individual stories of WWII veterans. (n.d.). http://www.historicalvoices.org/inner/teachers/studs1.html

Peters, C. W. (1991). You can’t have authentic assessment withoutauthentic content. Reading Teacher, 44, 590–591.

Yoshida, K. (2001). From the fish bowl to the open seas: Taking astep toward the real world of communication. TESOL Matters,12(1). Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/seccss.asp?CID5189&DID51659

APPENDIX A

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWName:Interviewed Person:Transcribe or summarize two of the questions and responses fromyour interview.Question:Person’s Response:Question:Person’s Response:

APPENDIX B

ORAL HISTORY SELF-ASSESSMENTName:Answer the following in complete sentences.Who did you choose to interview and why?What did you learn from the interview subject that was mostmemorable?Did you experience any difficulties conducting the interview? Wereyou able to overcome them?What would you do next time to improve as an interviewer?

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