Subject: [edu-team] "ESL person"

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 13:52:23 +1300

Dear EDU colleagues,

Over in the Gen-ART team we've been discussing the case of a draft
written by non-native-English speakers* that has reached IETF Last Call
with some serious problems of English. Please read on.

*also known as English as a Second Language (ESL) people

On 22/02/2014 08:32, Russ Housley wrote:
...
>> Is it really the right thing to push a document all the way
>> through on the assumption that the RFC Editor will fix such
>> major problems without introducing technical errors as a
>> result? I'm not convinced.
>>
>> I work a lot with "ESL" co-authors and it's hard work to
>> get things right, but shouldn't the community have some
>> support system for them in a case like this, where all
>> co-authors are ESL?
> 
> The IESG has held a one or two workshops for ESL authors.  WG chairs are asked to identify authors as candidates to participate.  There will be on in London.
> 
> Russ

I feel that this should be on EDU's radar.

    Brian

---

From: "Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 18:20:59 -0800

Hi Brian, EDU team,

Alice brought this thread to my attention (I am not currently on the
edu-team) as the whole English-as-a-difficult-language problem is of
interest to me as well.

In Berlin, the IESG put together the first Document Language Editing
session.  The goal was to help authors reach technical clarity by
helping them with the language in their document.  Sandy and Alice sat
in to offer assistance of a more editorial nature.  While only a few
authors signed up for the Berlin session, the feedback from the
community was positive and so Ted Lemon and Joel Jaeggli are offering a
second session in London (I've copied them on this message to help
answer any questions about that session and the experiment from the IESG
perspective).  Again, the turnout is not huge, but it still seems like
too good an idea to let go (see
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/group/iesg/trac/wiki/DocumentLanguageEditing
for the current list of documents that will undergo review).

Probably the most persistent criticism of this effort that I have seen
is that this doesn't scale if it is dependent on ADs to do the heavy
lifting.  I would have to agree with that, and I am looking for ways to
do something with the the RFC Editor and community volunteers around
helping authors (targeted at but not limited to ESL authors) write
documents that are clearer and produce better RFCs.

I sent out a very informal request to the WG Chairs list to see if
anyone would be interested in brainstorming with me on this topic, with
the idea of perhaps forming a design team in the future.  It's still
very nascent, but three people (Bill Cerveny, Bert Greevenbosch, and Tom
Taylor) from that list have chimed in indicating interest in discussing
this problem space further.  I would be happy to work with or within the
edu team to see this move forward.

-Heather

On 2/21/14 5:00 PM, Alice Russo wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> > From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
>> > Date: February 21, 2014 7:52:23 PM EST
>> > To: EDU Team <[email-masked]>
>> > Subject: [edu-team] "ESL person"
>> > 
>> > Dear EDU colleagues,
>> >

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 13:05:57 +0100

Hi,

Thanks for bringing this to the EDU Team's attention. Would it be an 
idea to post that training session on the Edu Team web pages (and 
possibly also on the registration page even though it might be a little 
late for that now)? That way it might reach a different set of people.

I am an ESL person myself, so not sure how much help I would be, but 
maybe other Edu Team members are interested in helping with this 
training/tutorial? Any volunteers?

Regards,
Mirjam

On 22/2/14 3:20 AM, Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor) wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> edu-team mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-team
>

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 08:52:20 -0500

On Feb 24, 2014, at 7:05 AM, Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Thanks for bringing this to the EDU Team's attention. Would it be an idea to post that training session on the Edu Team web pages (and possibly also on the registration page even though it might be a little late for that now)? That way it might reach a different set of people.

Could do.   It's on a Saturday, so aside from people who have already made arrangements, probably only local people would likely be able to attend, or people who decided to come early.   But that's okay.   At this point we only have three or four people coming, so we can handle more.

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:40:58 +0100

Hi Stephanie,

Can you please add the English As Second Language tutorial to the IETF 
89 tutorials. Thanks.

Ted, could you please provide Stephanie with the relevant information 
(time and venue and maybe a short description).

Thanks,
Mirjam

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 14:53:18 -0500

On Feb 24, 2014, at 11:40 AM, Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Can you please add the English As Second Language tutorial to the IETF 89 tutorials. Thanks.
> 
> Ted, could you please provide Stephanie with the relevant information (time and venue and maybe a short description).

Oh dear, no, it is _not_ a tutorial.   It is an interactive session, and you have to bring a draft you'd like worked on.   Attendance has to be approved.   I'm happy to socialize it through the edu web pages, but not as a tutorial.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 08:53:37 +1300

On 25/02/2014 01:05, Mirjam Kuehne wrote:
...

> I am an ESL person myself, so not sure how much help I would be, but

Actually, I think someone like you, who has reached a very high standard
in spoken and written English, can be a lot of help. How did you reach
that level of fluency? That is something that ESL people with limited
skills need to understand.

> training/tutorial? Any volunteers?

Don't we need a bit of expert advice here? I suspect that people
with a European mother tongue need different training from people
with an Asian mother tongue, for example. Certainly I see characteristic
mistakes by (say) French or Chinese speakers that are completely
different.

Is there scope for a Sunday tutorial/workshop?

  Brian

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 09:59:40 +0100

Hi Ted,

Sorry if I misunderstood. In any case, we're happy to announce it on the 
Edu Team pages. We can clarify in the description that it is not a 
tutorial and that it is targeted to people who are working on a draft 
right now.

Mirjam

---

From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 10:03:03 +0100

Hi,

> skills need to understand.

Thanks, Brian :-) I guess it's just a lot of practice and hanging around 
native English speakers. That is difficult to teach.

> Is there scope for a Sunday tutorial/workshop?

Maybe we can discuss this some more in London - together with Joel and 
Ted? Perhaps the Edu Team can help organise some peer mentoring as Joel 
suggested? I agree that in the long run this might scale better. 
Unfortunately I won't be there on Saturday. Anyone else wants to 
participate in the session?

Regards,
Mirjam

---

From: Alice Russo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 13:47:40 -0500

Heather wrote:
> Sandy and Alice sat in to offer assistance of a more editorial nature. 

Sandy was there, but I didn't attend the one in Berlin. I'm planning to attend the one on Saturday. (I might be late - it depends on my flight's morning arrival.)

Joel wrote:
> Imho I think this activity in the long run lends itself to peer
> mentoring type activities, which might well benifit from having an
> organizational structure facilitate them.

I agree. If such an activity existed, I wonder if the GEN-ART reviewer (who is focused on the larger issues*) could flag a document as recommended for that program, e.g., 'Writing lab recommended' or similar.

* From the current GEN-ART guidelines (http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/gen/trac/wiki):
Reviewers should review for all kinds of problems, from basic architectural or security issues, Internet-wide impact, technical nits, problems of form and format (such as IANA Considerations or incorrect references),and editorial issues. Since these reviews are on documents that are supposed to be finished, the review should consider "no issue too small" - but cover the whole range from the general architectural level to the editorial level. However, a review which consists only of copy-editing is not productive. If the reviewer feels that a draft is too badly written to advance, it will be sufficient to say so with one or two examples.

Thanks,
Alice