more on Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bradley Roberts <brarrr () gmail com>
Date: June 27, 2005 6:56:55 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: egor () kobylkin com
Subject: Re: [IP] Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign  
Teacher Said





> 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.


As a current graduate student in engineering, with numerous friends  
from both native English speaking countries and other-language- 
countries, I'd say that cheating is rampant on both the GRE and TOEFL  
in some "foreign" countries.  I have no proof other than the near- 
complete inability to comprehend the English language coupled with  
GRE verbal scores in the 99th percentile for some students.  The  
native-english speaking students in many research groups get the  
dubious pleasure of helping correct and clean up manuscripts for  
publication from their colleagues who are supposedly masters of  
vocabulary and grammar.  I'm not putting this forth as a complaint  
but as support for the idea that *something* is wrong with the  
language tests/testing methods themselves.  These are good people but  
some DO lack the necessary oral and written knowledge of the language  
in which they're instructing.


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