Beside the Point: Close Encounters in the Global Classroom

This funny and moving memoir interweaves stories of an English teachers encounters with his adult students who came to the San Francisco Bay Area from Argentina Brazil France Germany Italy Indonesia Iran Iraq Japan Korea Peru Qatar Romania Saudi Arabia Spain Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Tibet Turkey Venezuela and Vietnam to study this foreign language.Teaching English as a Second Language is a good gig. Its satisfying to sharpen ones understanding of a linguistic point and then present it to a class with lucidity and life. But getting that point across is not what this book is about; it is about what happens in the endlessly unpredictable world beside the point--where surprises spring from the quirks of languages (theirs and ours) and of course from the quirky humans who speak them. -- from the authors prologuePhilip O. Chomak was born in Brooklyn New York and taught English to international students for thirty-eight years in Oakland San Rafael and Berkeley California. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin Chomak studied story writing with Nobel-Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer. He lives with his wife in the Bay Area.