[IP] Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
Begin forwarded message:
From: Egor Kobylkin <egor@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 27, 2005 5:47:26 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
> 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
Dave, my two cents.
Too much buzz about the word "foreign". These teachers will probably
get their Ph.D's soon, then green cards and then become US citizens
i.e. Americans. So the problem is not that they are coming from
abroad or something, but just their language skills. And interesting
enough, to get admitted to a serious university one has to pass TOEFL
and GMAT, both of them not the easiest test in spoken and written
English out there. One which passed TOEFL would be certainly in a
position to explain chemistry to a freshman.
So either the universities in question could not afford rejecting the
grad students that failed or would have fail TOEFL, or something is
wrong with the language tests themselves.
And anyway, with 50% of the foreign teachers in the university
system, it is not a question of the students being able to understand
teachers, but rather teachers to have enough motivation and abilities
to learn English. The notion "foreign" will not be helpful in
improving the quality of US education system, I believe.
Best regards,
Egor
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