A final email from Jim Harrison

I am of the least notable writers to have taught English as a second language, beginning in Japan in 1999 and rising from eikaiwa (English language schools) to the ESL Institute at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. At that time, I had a short correspondence with poet Jim Harrison, who mentioned his own language-teaching experience:

Dear Adam,

I hope I don’t run on at the mouth, but if you’re in La Crosse half the year I think you’ll probably like it. I used to go there occasionally to work or for R & R from Michigan, because I liked to sit at a motel desk and look at the river, and look at pretty things like an eagle tearing into a duck that was half frozen in the ice.

I was an abject failure at teaching English as a second language in grad school. In one class I had 23 nationality groups, all of whom had studied English, but I couldn’t understand anyone.

Yrs., Jim

Part of a forward to my one academic paper as an English language teacher


 

Location: Wisconsin, USA

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