SOME STEPS IN THE PAST: AN ATTEMPT AT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Mikhail Yeselson
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I had written this essay during my second year in the USA.
The first pages of Autobiography were written for Prof. Dorise Morazan's ESL course...
No, I started before.
My first ESL teacher was Gayle Kline-Peck.
All of her students wrote paragraphs consisting of seven to ten sentences and making sense. This was a small place but big enough for sense, and I've always tried to create inside it a small story. "Were you a writer formerly?" asked Gayle after reading my first paragraph -- and I did not understand her. Month after month, and year after year I had similar troubles. My oral English was very slow, and, in any case, I preferred to write, write, and write...
Well, a greedy cook does not leave trash. Gayle gave her lessons, my paragraphs became better, and two or three of them you can find inside my long story.
Thank you, Gayle.
My next teacher was Professor Doris Morazan, and I found myself in kind hands and in a good school. "Mikhail, you must write, write, and write," she said almost every day. I asked her to read my essays very strictly, and they became black from her pencil. However, she turned my Russian English into proper American English. The words which she wrote on my essays warm up my heart till these days.
Thank you, Professor Doris Morazan, thank you very, very much.
I think I have to tell something important (at least, for me). Teaching methods of writing English in the USA are very different from Soviet methods. Students do not write about image of... and image of... Instead of that, students have to write about different things using different styles. When you do that and think about the results, you begin to understand more about your writing and about yourself.
A couple of final courses were next . At the middle of Judy Delahunty. I knew distinctly what sort of writing is convenient to me. I guessed about that before, but I did not know.
Thank you, Judy
Thank you, Mollie Whitaker.
Thank you, Dr. Hansen, Head of ESL Department of Middlesex County College.
Well, I finished my ESL courses, but not Autobiograhy. Under the influence of Tanya's and my big friends, The Frankel family, I continued to write up one new chapter after another. All of the Frankels, especially Alan, read this, corrected me, taught me the American writing.
Thank you, Helene, Henry, Dana, Alan and Steve. Thanks for teaching, and, much more, for friendship.
Then Mary came in our home, Mary Zwiebel from the great organization, Literacy Volunteers of Middlesex. She did unbelievable things--we began understanding TV and finished quivering from telephone rings. She printed a small piece of My City in the Literacy Volunteer's edition named In Our Own Words.
Thank you very much, Mary. Thank you, Ken
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Mikhail Yeselson, 1996