[IP] Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
Begin forwarded message:
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 24, 2005 12:04:34 PM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [johnmacsgroup] Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign
Teacher Said
Reply-To: johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From the New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/education/24assistant.html?
hp&ex=1119672000&en=df43edc6573c5b69&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
By ALAN FINDER
Valerie Serrin still remembers vividly her anger and the
feeling of helplessness. After getting a C on a lab report in
an introductory chemistry course, she went to her teaching
assistant to ask what she should have done for a better grade.
The teaching assistant, a graduate student from China,
possessed a finely honed mind. But he also had a heavy accent
and a limited grasp of spoken English, so he could not explain
to Ms. Serrin, a freshman at the time, what her report had
lacked.
"He would just say, 'It's easy, it's easy,' " said Ms. Serrin,
who recently completed her junior year at the University of
California, Berkeley. "But it wasn't easy. He was brilliant,
absolutely brilliant, but he couldn't communicate in English."
Ms. Serrin's experience is hardly unique. With a steep rise in
the number of foreign graduate students in the last two
decades, undergraduates at large research universities often
find themselves in classes and laboratories run by graduate
teaching assistants whose mastery of English is less than
complete.
The issue is particularly acute in subjects like engineering,
where 50 percent of graduate students are foreign born, and
math and the physical sciences, where 41 percent of graduate
students are, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate
Schools, an association of 450 schools. This is despite a
modest decline in the number of international students
enrolling in American graduate programs since the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The encounters have prompted legislation in at least 22 states
requiring universities to make sure that teachers are
proficient in spoken English. In January, Bette B. Grande, a
Republican state representative from Fargo, N.D., tried to go
even further after her son Alec complained of his experiences
at North Dakota State University. Mrs. Grande introduced
legislation that would allow students in state universities to
drop courses without penalty and be reimbursed if they could
not understand the English of a teaching assistant or a
professor.
"If a student has paid tuition to be in that classroom," she
said, "he should receive what he paid for."
State lawmakers, however, balked, instead ordering education
officials to assess how well state universities were training
teaching assistants.
Many universities are trying to minimize the problem by
creating programs to assess the English skills of
international graduate students who are prospective teaching
assistants and offering courses as needed.
But interviews with dozens of undergraduates at six
universities over the last few weeks indicate that the problem
remains acute, in some cases even influencing decisions about
what majors to pursue.
Ms. Serrin said that she went to Berkeley thinking she might
go to medical school but that she was now majoring in
economics, in part because of freshman chemistry.
Myles Sullivan, a University of Massachusetts senior, twice
dropped courses, once in astronomy and once in linguistics,
because he could not decipher his teaching assistant.
"Both were brilliant men, but the language barrier was just
too much for me," Mr. Sullivan said.
Some students end up spending hundreds of dollars to conquer
the language barrier. Loyda Martinez, a senior at the
University of Massachusetts, started subscribing to an online
service that provides copies of notes from previous courses at
the university when she had a hard time understanding teaching
assistants in math, science and psychology classes. The
service cost $20 to $75 a course, Ms. Martinez said.
Others in the academic world believe that the complaints are
not entirely about the shortcomings of foreign-born teaching
assistants.
"Is there some low-level carping? Absolutely," said Dudley
Doane, director of the Center for American English Language
and Culture at the University of Virginia. "Is it justified?
At times it may be. However, we have some students who aren't
used to stretching."
It is a point echoed by some foreign teaching assistants who,
in addition to their own studies and the rigors of grading
papers, overseeing labs and leading discussions, must deal
with what they sometimes consider intolerant undergraduates.
"I had students come into my class mimicking the accent of a
friend of mine, who is a teaching assistant in math," said
Atreyee Phukan, a graduate student in comparative literature
at Rutgers University who was born in India and raised in
Bahrain and has a slight accent. "They thought it was
hilarious to make fun of his accent."
But Ms. Phukan also thinks the university should consider
requiring more graduate students to take rigorous classes in
spoken English.
Many public and private universities have created programs in
recent years to assess and train international graduate
students. Most research universities require international
applicants to pass a standardized test in written English for
admission to graduate school. Many also set standards in
spoken English for prospective teaching assistants.
Virtually every major graduate school has made a concerted
effort to make sure that international teaching assistants
have the language skills they need, said Debra Stewart, the
president of the Council of Graduate Schools, but that does
not guarantee that there will not be problems.
"American students are living in a global world, and there is
value in making an effort to understand people who sound
different from you," Ms. Stewart said. "That said, it is also
an obligation of those of us in education, that if we put
someone in front of students, reasonable people will be able
to understand them."
At Stanford, for instance, about 200 foreign graduate students
take a standardized test each year to assess their ability to
speak English. About 30 of these students are required to take
English classes, and others are encouraged to do so, said
Philip Hubbard, director of the English for Foreign Students
program there.
"I can't say there's no problem out there," Mr. Hubbard said.
"It wouldn't be fair. But there hasn't been any significant
problem here for a number of years."
At the University of Virginia each year, about 120
foreign-born graduate students who are prospective teaching
assistants take a test in spoken English; those who need to
improve are offered courses.
But many students said that despite such efforts the problems
remained. They said they had adopted myriad strategies to get
by, not all of them successful.
Alison Monrose, a junior at Rutgers, said she began sitting in
the front of the classroom to "lip read." Ms. Serrin at
Berkeley formed a study group with other students. Jacqueem
Winston, a junior at Rutgers, decided he would just ask
questions in class until he did understand. "You can't be
shy," Mr. Winston said.
But Mohammed Islam, who is also a junior at Rutgers, simply
stopped going to his discussion section in a physics course.
The professor who lectured to the large class was excellent,
Mr. Islam said, but the teaching assistant who oversaw his
small weekly discussion section "didn't speak English at all."
Mr. Islam, a ceramic engineering major from Brooklyn, paid a
price for his decision. Homework, which counted for 25 percent
of his grade, was supposed to be turned in to the teaching
assistant. But since Mr. Islam had stopped going to the
discussion section, he did not hand in any homework. He still
managed to get a B-plus in the course, he said: "I broke the
curve on the final."
Geoff Young, a junior at Rutgers, said he had not had problems
understanding his teaching assistants. But he said many of his
friends at Rutgers had struggled mightily.
"I've heard a lot of people complain about that," Mr. Young
said, "saying things like, 'How many languages other than
English have you learned while you were here?' "
Even dealing with the problem caused anxiety for some
students.
"You don't want to be rude and say, 'Your English is no good,'
" said Rhyshonda Singletary, a senior at the University of
Massachusetts. "But you also don't want to suffer."
Michael Falcone contributed reporting from Berkeley, Calif.,
for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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