Outsiders - American Short Stories for students of ESL

Like native English-speaking Americans, the many thousands of foreign students in degree programs in the United States are still required, even in this age of emphasis on technology, to study literature. They also share with native English speakers the need to develop and polish their writing skills to a' level of competency acceptable in college work.

The purpose of Outsiders is to help address this twofold obligation to nonnative English users in our colleges and universities by offering the following:
Short stories carefully chosen for their quality, diversity, and appeal, so that they can provide a sound, structural basis for studying fiction as a literary genre in a college credit course.
A glimpse of American lifestyles, cultural variations, and social issues as portrayed in fictional settings by first-class American writers.
The unifying motif of "the outsider in the U.S.A.," a theme that recent arrivals can understand and appreciate and then recognize as broader in scope than they had at first supposed.
An objective ("scientific") approach to literature, using the skills of observation and inference to develop reading techniques appropriate for a college-level study of literature and adaptable also for the intensive reading required in other disciplines.
Extensive vocabulary support provided in a unique format, which not only makes unfamiliar words conveniently accessible but lends itself to special study of different American cultural backgrounds and colloquial speech patterns.
Exercises, discussion topics, writing assignments, and group projects that are clearly derived from the stories themselves and that aim to cultivate college-level thinking and writing skills.

The order in which the Outsiders stories appear pertains, in general, to their sophistication of style and content. Since the "outsiders" theme, if left undiluted, could become somewhat intensive, an effort was made to intersperse the stories having more serious themes with lighter, more humorous pieces such as "The Loudest Voice," "Senor Payroll," "Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N and Vocabulary," and "Rope."

However, because the study of short fiction as literature is of paramount concern in Outsiders, the length and complexity of the stories increase toward the end of the book.

The study questions and other activities that accompany each story are closely related to the story itself. Since the nature and type of the study materials vary from one chapter to another, a descriptive label has been assigned to each activity and can be found as a numbered heading where that activity begins, as well as in the contents.

The instructor should feel free to omit whole chapters or parts thereof, or to shift the order for studying them, should teaching purposes so require.
A discussion of the Vocabulary Aids and how to use them appears in Chapter I.

The rationale for providing such a prominent and thoroughgoing treatment of vocabulary is, in short, to facilitate the student's ready grasp of precisely what the author is saying. Undergraduates are generally expected to study literature in their own native language, and even then they find sufficient challenge in the artistic subtleties of a great writer.

The Vocabulary Aids in Outsiders are a response to this student and to the others quoted in the beginning of the Preface. Much of the material in the book has been used (in its initially crude and unrevised form) in teaching ESL freshman English to over 400 students at Northeastern University.

Most of the students were majoring in engineering and had TOEFL scores of 450-500; moreover, their English instructors were used to teaching grammar and composition, not literature. Yet both students and faculty responded favorably to the unaccustomed experience of studying and writing about the stories in Outsiders.

The author has endeavored to furnish enough basic tools for the instructor new to the teaching of literature, and also to offer a wide choice of alternate approaches to instructors already comfortable with teaching complex literary themes.

As everyone who stands before an ESL class has discovered, the teacher can immeasurably extend the students' cultural awareness simply by drawing upon her or his own personal history and familiarity with the language.

The stories and activities in Outsiders are intended to reinforce that process and to further enhance the special creative interaction so well known to be a welcome feature of the ESL classroom.