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Your
first-year student is on the telephone, obviously not happy. "I’m
not doing well in chemistry, Mom. I can’t understand my professor."
"Do you
mean you can’t understand the subject matter?" you ask.
"No, Mom,
I can’t understand her accent. She’s from another country,
and she talks really fast, and I can’t understand. I’ve
tried really hard but I can’t."
The fear that
students will not understand people from other countries is one
of the most common concerns that parents express at Orientation
each year. Parent Times decided to ask teachers, students, and those
who work with them to examine the issue.
Professors,
graduate students, staff, and students come to the University each
year from more than 100 different countries. Graduate students frequently
want to become teaching assistants, to help finance their studies.
To qualify to teach at Iowa, students must pass two assessments
of their language and cultural skills.
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| Elena
Kallestinova, a native of Russia with Five years of university
training in English, and Oduntan Bode, an African languages
instructor from Nigeria, both teach in the Department of Linguistics. |
The Department
of Linguistics first tests students’ proficiency in English.
If a student doesn’t pass, he or she cannot teach until a retest
is successful. To get help, the student enrolls in the Iowa Intensive
English Program, which assists students with learning the U. S.
culture as well as its language.
Once the language
test is passed, a second assessment takes place in a typical University
classroom, with instructors, undergraduates, and a camera operator
who videotapes the session. The prospective instructor is asked
to explain clearly, in words that an undergraduate could understand,
a concept in his or her field. The student must answer questions
during and after the presentation, show awareness of teacher-student
relationships in the United States (which frequently are very different
from those in the student’s country), and show interest in
the subject and in students as learners. Only when the student passes
that test is he or she certified to teach.
"Our instruction
is open-ended as long as they are taking classes," says Maureen
Burke, director of the Iowa Intensive English Program. "(Graduate
students) can always take the test again. Language is not a content
area that you can learn, take the test, get your A, and forget.
It’s more like learning to play a musical instrument. It needs
practice, practice, practice."
Professors
Have Accents, Too
Teaching assistants
are not the only persons who can be difficult to understand. The
Center for Teaching works with professors whose students tell them
they cannot follow the instruction. While the graduate assistant
training is compulsory in order to be certified to teach, professors
seek help from the center on a voluntary basis.
Tom Rocklin,
professor of educational psychology and director of the center,
says, "I encourage faculty members to put the problem on the
table right away on the first day of class, and then repeat it frequently
and honestly. They should say to their class, ‘I know it can
be hard to understand me, but I am committed to making you understand.
Tell me when something is unclear.’ Don’t let the situation
be the pink elephant in the living room that no one talks about."
Rocklin adds,
"I also tell them that if they do have a difficult accent,
they have to do everything else right. No talking to the blackboard,
no speaking very fast. They must be perfect in every way but the
accent. I suggest that they use visual aids that give students a
redundant channel to use in addition to the lecture."
Rocklin says
the problem usually is more intense with new students, who are trying
to grasp a subject area that has its own jargon at the same time
that they are trying to figure out an accent. By later years, the
student understands the subject area better so it’s easier
to listen and understand.
"Students
who have traveled a lot, especially abroad, seem to have very little
problem (with accents)," says Esther Materón-Arum, assistant
director of the Honors Program. "I see this problem from both
sides, because when I came to this country from Colombia, I had
trouble understanding United States accents, too. But worse yet
were professors who mumble. You can learn an accent, but a mumble
is impossible."
Students say
they sometimes need to compensate when they cannot make something
out. Elizabeth Wood, an exercise science major, says some science
teachers are hard to understand. However, she doesn’t let this
affect her grades.
"I took
a chemistry lab where I didn’t have a clue at all what was
going on because the teacher was so hard to understand," she
says. "But I did well. I had to go talk to my professor to
get additional help for this class."
Marketing major
B. J. Fraher says that overall the Tippie College of Business does
a good job of providing helpful teaching assistants for students.
In general, though, he feels that having a teaching assistant with
a strong accent is unfair because students not only have to learn
the course material but also an accent.
"Discussion
sections are supposed to help you," he says. "It’s
almost an oxymoron sometimes."
Jane Tang,
a native of Taiwan, is a first-year Ph.D. student in nursing. She
had studied English for nine years before she came to the United
States in 1993 and studied for her bachelor’s degree in nursing
in Nebraska before coming to Iowa for graduate study. She’s
been a teaching assistant in nursing for three years and is nominated
for an outstanding teacher award this year.
She says that
when a student occasionally complained verbally or showed nonverbally
that a problem existed, she tried to assess the nature of the problem.
"I tried to see if it came from my ‘unperfected’
English," she says. "If so, I made fun of myself and apologized
for that problem.
"Then
I tried to communicate by using different words or rephrasing them,
and used writing to communicate rather than speaking. It helped
to solve some problems."
However, she
says the problem usually lies with students who don’t try to
listen. She has developed other techniques to deal with that problem
because it is so important for nursing students to listen well.
After all, they will need to understand patients with strong accents.
"When
people speak with heavy accents and it’s hard to understand,
we can ask them to slow down or rephrase to help us understand better,"
Tang says. "We can ask questions with few words, slow down
our speed, and use body language to help with the conversation.
We could encourage them to talk by smiling, nodding our heads, or
simply saying ‘yes’ or ‘I understand.’ Most
important is to show our respect. When people feel we are interested
in listening to them, we will be amazed how many things we can learn
from them."
Elena Kallestinova
also came to Iowa with considerable knowledge of English. She studied
the language for five years at the Moscow Linguistics University
in Russia. She teaches Language and Society and Language and Formal
Reasoning in the Department of Linguistics.
"I try
to speak distinctly and slowly," she says. "If I’m
afraid students won’t understand something, I put it on the
blackboard or prepare a handout." She also keeps a sharp eye
out for a student who isn’t understanding but isn’t complaining,
either. "What I do is to ask the student to repeat or explain
to everyone what has been said. Then we know there is a problem."
Materón-Arum
says parents should make sure their students have followed established
procedures all the way through before considering intervening in
some way. The syllabi for all courses in the liberal arts contain
the procedure, and student handbooks in other colleges list remedies
for problems. Parents intervening before the student has done everything
possible simply give the student an "out," she says. They
also deprive the student of a chance to learn how to solve problems.
"Students
may find when they get out in the work world that a co-worker has
the same accent that is bothering them here," she says.
Rocklin says
he prefers to think of this situation as an opportunity to learn,
rather than a conflict. Because of the University’s diversity,
"our Iowa students have an opportunity that they do not always
appreciate," he says.
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