MONDAY Q&A: Student from Thailand adjusts to American customs, weather

MONDAY Q&A: Student from Thailand adjusts to American customs, weather


MONDAY Q&A: Pisarn ``Bee'' Chamcharatsri
Published: Monday, December 28, 2009 12:07 PM EST

EDITOR'S NOTE: The story of Thailand native Pisarn ``Bee'' Chamcharatsri is representative of so many of the approximately 700 international students from 75 nations who attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He sat down recently with Gazette staffer Bob Fulton to discuss cultural differences, frigid winter weather, misconceptions about America and Thanksgiving feasting.

Question: Tell me first about coming to IUP. How long did it take you to get here from Thailand?

Answer: I flew from Bangkok and I stopped at Narita in Japan - Narita International Airport. And then I came to Chicago and then Pittsburgh and then Indiana. Altogether it was almost 20, 22 hours.

Question: When you first came here - you're all the way on the other side of the world, everything is different - what were you feeling?

Answer: The first few weeks it was really exciting, the first time to study in the States. Everything was new. But after a few weeks, like other international students I'm friends with, I started having a little of like homesickness.

Question: Had you ever been outside of Thailand?

Answer: Yes, I was in Canada for a month. But this is the longest period of time that I've been away.

Question: Where did you go in Canada?

Answer: I was in Alberta, in Calgary, studying English - intensive English.

Question: Why did you decide the study in the United States?

Answer: I actually talked to my professor back home and she recommended I come to IUP. Another reason is that I think the educational system here is similar to the educational system in Thailand. And another thing, I think, is the accessibility of information - it's easier to get access to the information here in the States compared to Thailand.

Question: When did you come to IUP?

Answer: August 2006.

Question: And you're a doctoral student?

Answer: Yes. I did my master's here at IUP and I did my undergrad work in Thailand.

Question: What are you studying?

Answer: English-Composition and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).

Question: Have the students here helped in any way to make you feel at home?

Answer: I would say yes and no. Yes, in terms of the students here at IUP in general are really understanding, they are helpful. Whenever I ask for help they are willing to help me. But for the no part, I think one thing - I don't want to say it's problematic, but there's some kind of misunderstanding I would say - that students here sometimes, I don't believe, are comfortable talking to international students. It might be because they never really had exposure to international students. So I would have like people staring at me, but they never really come and talk to me.

Question: What do you like about IUP and Indiana, and what don't you like?

Answer: What I like about IUP is my professors and colleagues. Apart from that, Indiana is a small town, but people are friendly, I would say. And because it's a small town it's easy to access - you don't have traffic and you don't have any logistical issues. But what I don't like about IUP, well, food is always an issue for international students, I would say. But I also hear some American students complaining about food. I think it's common.

Question: Well how about the United States as a whole - what do you like and what don't you like?

Answer: For the USA in general, I like it in terms of ... well, I traveled to the West last winter, went to California. I've also been to Florida, to New York. I think it's the diversity that, when I go to the West I see different kinds of people, different scenery, go to the North, a different one, go to the South, it's totally different. I think that's what I notice, is the diversity whenever I go somewhere else. As for the people in general, they are really friendly and really helpful. I've been to a lot of different places, but I haven't really had any bad experiences so far in terms of interaction with people.

Question: Did you have any misconceptions about the United States or Americans that, when you came to this country, you discovered were totally wrong?

Answer: I didn't really have misconceptions but my friend did. After I was here for about a year and I went back home, one of my friends asked me about the houses - they asked if the houses in the place where I live were the same as in the Hollywood movies. I said, well, no (laughing). No, no. Misconceptions, yeah, I think I might have one. I see students here who still stay with their parents. When I was young I always thought that American kids when they are about 18 or 19 they are moving out and staying by their own. I guess that's one. I think it's OK, because in Asia most kids stay with their parents until they get married.

Question: Are there any American customs you find peculiar? I mean, what struck you, at first, as really odd?

Answer: I think the hunting would be the answer (laughing heartily). When I was in the dorm for the first year, the opposite room of mine they were American students. We are still friends. One of the roommates, he is a big hunter. He actually goes back home every other week just to hunt. He knows what he can hunt each week by heart. I was amazed by that. And just walking through campus, I've heard a lot about the hunting culture.

Question: Besides maybe the food and the language, is there anything else you had difficulty adjusting to in this country? Thailand's not far from the equator - maybe the weather?

Answer: Yes, the weather. The first time that I have to live through the real winter season, it was a little bit rough. The first year when I was on campus that was OK because I just walked. But the driving through the snow, that's difficult. And the transition between the fall and the winter is the worst. Like you get the sleet, you get hail. It never gets cold back home. We never really go below 60, 65 (degrees). Right now is the perfect temperature for going to the beach in Thailand. That's something I miss about coming here.

Question: Are you surprised by how little most Americans know of Thailand?

Answer: If you say ``Thailand'' people will always be confused about Thailand and Taiwan. They will think like it's the same country and I'll say ``No, no, it's a different country.'' Sometimes they might not know where it is, but since we have a big tourism industry there, lots of people know about the beaches. But they don't really know about what else is there.

Question: You mentioned you went out West and to Florida. Where did you go?

Answer: I went to national parks.

Question: Which ones?

Answer: I went to the Grand Canyon, Sequoia, King's Canyon, Saguaro in Arizona, Glacier National Park, Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone and the Everglades. And the Grand Tetons, too.

Question: You live so far from home - how often do you get back to Thailand?

Answer: Once a year, I would say. The first time I went home I went there during the winter break, three or four weeks. The last time that I went home was three months, over the summer.

Question: Is it difficult for you, over the Christmas break, for example, when other kids go home and you and the international students mostly stay here?

Answer: It is. It is very difficult. Everything is closed, no one's here, the town is practically dead, you don't have any other places to go. If you don't have a car that's even worse, you don't any access to anything. And even though the bus system is getting better now, over the holidays you don't have any buses to go to Walmart. You don't even have the chance to go shopping anywhere.

Question: When will you get your doctorate?

Answer: I still have to write my dissertation - probably at least two or three years to finish my doctorate.

Question: Whenever you go back home, what do you think your favorite memory of this whole experience will be?

Answer: It's probably going to be winter (laughing). Well, besides that, the Thanksgiving. Because I have my host family, and Carol Worrell invites my other international friends and I to her place and we have a Thanksgiving meal almost every year.

Question: Are you impressed by the amount of food Americans serve at Thanksgiving?

Answer: One of the first Thanksgiving meals that I had, one of my friends invited me to his place. I saw so much food on the table. And then the leftovers, I don't know how people manage to eat them all.

Question: After you finish your doctorate, a couple years down the road, what do you want to do with your life?

Answer: I plan to at least get some teaching experience here in the States. But towards the end of the road I'm going back to Thailand to teach and help Thai students to at least give them an equal opportunity to get some knowledge.

NEXT WEEK: IUP grad Jim Self, a professor of tuba at the University of Southern California.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Do you know someone who would be a great subject for the Monday Q&A? If so, please call Jason Levan at (724) 465-5555, ext. 270.

AT A GLANCE......

Name: Pisarn ``Bee'' Chamcharatsri

Job: Graduate student

Age: 31

Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand

Family: Father Songkiat, mother Siriwan, brothers Phanuamon and Suphot

Favorite foods: Spicy chicken with basil

Food I refuse to eat: I eat everything.

Favorite movie: ``Sleepless in Seattle''

Last book I read: ``Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,'' by Dee Brown

Favorite way to spend a day: Reading on the front porch

People who most inspire me: My parents

My life goal: Become an English professor

Something most people don't know about me: I want to be a novelist, and I have an M.A. in advertising and public relations.

Guacamole: Yummy

2 Avocados
1 tomato or 5-6 cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlics
1-2 lime
1 Tbs of chopped cilantro
a few fresh chili
Salt

Serving: 5-6 people

Mixture:
1. Finely chop or blend garlics
2. Peel avocados into the mixing bowl
3. Mix two ingredients together. Mashing avocados while mixing with fork
4. squeeze fresh lime onto the mixture to oxidize the avocados so that it wont turn dark
5. add finely chopped chili and chopped and diced tomatoes
6. put some salt
7. Taste to your own flavor...

enjoy cooking!

"How do you assess my writing?"

I have to admit that writing assessment is not actually my cup of tea (for now). It's not that I am not interested in the issue; however, I have not had any chances to work on any projects with assessment framework in mind. This week's readings are interesting and mainly discuss the issue of peer response and placement writing. Let's hear some personal stories regarding how I assess students' writings.

Junior hi-school students in Creative Writing Course:
When I taught high school students a creative writing course, students always (read ALWAYS) came up to me and asked about how I graded their writings. Their writing assignments were poems, short stories, comic strips, and a newspaper as a group project (editorial, news articles, movie reviews, etc.). What I did in assessing their writings was to create a rubric with them. I asked students, "If you want to assess one's writings, what criteria would you use?" Since I had more freedom to teach this course, it was appropriate for my students and I to come up with the grading criteria.

Senior year, English major in Research Writing Course:
I also had a chance to teach a Research Writing course for a college in Bangkok, Thailand. Students were asked to do peer response with multiple drafts. Since students were trained to do peer response, I did not have to spend much time explaining and modeling the response process. However, I still need to come up with assessment criteria for their research papers, which they came up with their research topics (15 pages excluding references). I came up with grading criteria as followed: Format, organization, grammar, content. You might be wonder how I came up with this criteria; I used my own past experience when I was graded for my paper in college as well.

As an undergraduate student, I was trained to do multiple drafts and peer reviews. I was not my friend's favorite because I usually gave my friend's so many comments that they did not enjoy revising at all. I gave respond to both global and local concerns. I sometimes underlined awkward or confusing sentences with some suggestions for future revisions.

Peer response has gained its attention and popularity over the last decade. The most important issue in using this approach is the trust between students. Teachers need to make sure that students will not perceive that teachers will be the only person who will read and grade their papers. We educators need to make sure that we incorporate students' peer responses into account so that students will take the peer response responsibly. Some students might think that critiquing others' works is not appropriate. I think if we explain to students the purpose of doing this activity, it might help students to be more aware of the activity. Teachers need to model the process as well so that teachers and students will be on the same page.

Connecting Speaking and Writing

The connection between speaking and writing is crucial to learning a second language. I think that literacy educators never really pay much attention to these two interconnected skills because of the fact that it has been coined as one-on-one conferencing. Also, we have not realized of how much we can write after we discuss our ideas and/or concepts with other people.

As Williams has discussed in her Chapter 1, writing center is a site that this research can certainly grow and will, I believe, play an important role in the future. Writing centers always try to find out how much tutors can help students in revising their writing and helping with their papers when they come to the centers.

However, I still think that writing and speaking skills are incomparable in term of language production. We cannot expect students, especially L2 learners, to experiment new forms in writing if we still use grammatical drills or textbooks with writing formats. In those contexts, students will always think writing as rigid rules because they will think that writing they produce need to be grammatically correct. Though the attempt has been made to encourage these L2 students to be less worried about this issue as grammatical issue can be dealt with in the last draft, they still insist (and sometimes resist) to the idea. This is the reason why I think that creative writing is a great start for L2 students to produce because the form is literally ignored (i.e. in poetry writing).

Another interesting connection between speaking and writing is the concept of intertextuality. Intertextuality is the use of other people's words, ideas, and concepts to build our own credibility to our claims in speaking and writing. This skill is crucial for doctoral students simply because they need to conduct their professionalism in the future through research and publications--conferences and journals. They need to think about how to enter into the conversation and this intertextuality is the key for doctoral students to do so.

It is interesting to see students' interactions through online comments and discussion in Seloni's chapter. These students are in the quest of negotiation to add their own voices in their writings. By adding their voices, they want to add their own ideas and thoughts into the writing, which in a sense it is legitimate to do so. There are two strategies in doing so, which I think they are useful for the future as well. First, these students need to read widely on the topic they are working on. By knowing the literature, students will be able to see gaps that they can add their voices in. Second, they also need to develop their own authority by start publishing. I believe these two strategies will certainly be the start to add multiple voices into the literature.

Negotiating Identity from Autoethnography

Paper Presented at Symposium on Second Language Writing 2009, ASU, Tempe, Arizona, Click here for full access to published article

Negotiating Identity from Autoethnography

View more presentations from pisarn.

Which comes first: Reading or Writing?

So which comes first, reading or writing? I do not think that we can actually separate these two. Personally speaking, both reading and writing have been playing in my life as far as I know. I always find my time to do volunteer reading in Thai. I read all the time. I need to have books, magazines, newspapers with me wherever I go. I also have to have a diary when I travel so that I can keep my travel journals.

After reading these two chapters, I remember myself as a student working on summary paragraphs, annotated bibliographies, reading and writing (as I am working on my writing assignments and citing the sources), reading before I write (as the way to gain more information on the topic), and writing before I read (as a freewriting approach relating to the topic I will write about). I think that reading makes me a better writer. Personally I love books. I have many books both at home and in the US. I buy so many books that my parents, especially my mom, need to tell me to stop buying because there is no place to store them. She also says that she will build a library for me after I go back home.

I also believe in the connections between reading and writing. I always tell my students to read, read, and read if they ask me about writing. Sometimes my students would ask me about how to be a good writer, my answer is always related to reading. At the moment, I write papers, I will re-read those articles in the beginner's mind. I actually notice that I underline or interact with texts in different parts of the articles depending on the topic/issue I am working on.

I personally like the writerly reader approach. Though I have not tried this, I think that it is a fun and valuable one for me. By thinking as the author, I can read and analyze critically on the writing itself. I will also gain more vocabulary repertoire because I will guess the terms the authors use comparing to the terms I think. This way I can learn both rhetorical moves and vocabulary use. I also think that it will challenge students to do this because they will be more aware of the similarity and difference the authors as well as the way they compose. I can adapt this approach by giving students the paraphrased version of the sentence. Then let them see and work on the cut-into-pieces original articles to form a sentence in which it gives the same meaning as the paraphrased one.

I think that using reading and writing can help students to gain both "ear" and "eye" learning skills because we can shuttle our focus to either on reading or writing lessons. For myself, I used to be an "eye" learner because I need to read and see what it is written down to be sully understood. After working at the writing center, I also become an "ear" learner because I need to listen to students' writings and give them respond. I think this can be done too in the classroom settings where students can do first reading peer response by students reading their papers out loud while other students write down what they think their friend's paper is about, how to improve it, what part they like. The next class we can ask students to read and respond to their friends' drafts.

Reading-Writing Connections

While reading Hirvela's book on reading-writing connections, the flashback of my undergraduate classes came to mind. I had taken classes such as Listening and Speaking I and II, while Reading and Writing courses are taught seperately. However, I think that reading and writing are inter-related skills that students need to acquire if they want to be successful in their academic lives.

In the chapters, Hirvela discusses the connections between reading and writing skills in students' first language that might enhance learning in L2. Personally, I read widely (mostly novels) in both Thai (L1) and English (L2). This is because I did my BA in an international college where English is used as a mode of instruction. I feel comfortable composing in English because I have been trained and educated in that contexts. I have never written any academic papers in Thai, though I read some of them. Even now, I still think that I might not be albe to compose any Thai academic paper because I do not know formal written form in Thai language. I was also discouraged when I wrote in Thai because that person gave me this comment when reading my Thai composition:

A: Have you educated abroad?
B: No, I answered.
A: Because your Thai structure has lots of "milk and butter" in it. (I think that person might mean that my written Thai employs English structure, word order, sound informal, etc. Since I did not ask what it meant to that person by that phrase, I never know what it meant as well.)

As a language teacher, I always tell my students that if they want to be writers, they need to read a lot. I personally think that reading and writing skills are connected. This might also reflect on how I create my own reading and writing skills. Many colleagues ask me questions: "How many hours do I spend in reading?" "How many pages approximately do I read each day?" I think these are interesting questions because I have never thought about those questions before. However, I always tell people that whenever I write, I usually read until I think that I have something to think and write about. Then the act of writing begins. This is where the notion of by Bloome's and Hirvela's reading and writing as social process means. I interact and interpret meanings of texts. I create meaning among texts while reading and recreate meaning texts while writing.

I also think that Hirvela's approach in teaching reading is meaningful because his approach did not focus on the texts itself, but on the meta-awareness of students' reading skills. It can also give teachers some literacy backgrounds of students, how they learn, interact, and interpret texts from their perspectives.