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."
I agree with this, if a professor or a TA cannont communicate with basic English as a second language skills it is a waste of tuition dollars. I do not believe however it should be necessary for states to legislate this, colleges should want the best and students should demand it as well.
5 comments:
I agree whether it's Owens or UT or any other college if they are going to charge people that much they should at least make sure the professor or the TA can speak passable English.
See what happens when we keep our borders open. Our kids can't learn until they speak Japanese or Chinese. :)
I am one for less laws, but I think that this tpye of law should be passed, because that is the only way colleges and universities are ever going to comply. Sure, as parents, we can complain and try to organise against the higher learning system, but there are many parents who will spend the money anyway without complaint, just being happy that thier kids are in college. And if the colleges keep getting the money with little or no resistance to this issue, why should they change policy? Make it a law and have high fines for noncompliance and then the schools will listen.
I've been fortunate so far and have only had one professor who I could not understand even if my life depended on it (Literally--what if we were working with highly dangerous material and I couldn't understand his instructions and I didn't know any better not to let water near sodium?? This isn't a likely scenario in my mechanical engineering classes, hopefully, but I still wonder).
As teaching assistants go, however, good luck finding one that speaks English at the University of Toledo. I think I've had three that have spoken English.
Glad you saw it Em, I forgot to tell you when we talked. You inspired me to post about it remembering what you went thru
:-)
What a great site » »
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