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

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh () hserus net>
Date: June 28, 2005 1:07:20 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Egor Kobylkin <egor () kobylkin com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign  
Teacher Said


David Farber wrote:

> 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.

If you are on a campus, do a quick poll - pick as many indian and  
chinese students as you can, who have all passed toefl and/or gmat

Then see how many of them have an accent you can cut with a knife.

Then see how many more have a weird mix of american and native  
accents that has the added advantage of sounding like gibberish to  
both their countrymen and to americans

Then drop in to any of the TOEFL / GRE / GMAT coaching centers in  
india or china .. those exams are fairly easy to pass if you can cram  
your way through them.

Then add the tendency at least some non native speakers of English  
have to think in their own language, translate this mentally, on the  
fly, to english and then speak .. the resulting english will follow a  
scansion / grammar that sounds rather different from normal  
english .. which is one of the main reasons why you get the weird  
grammatical constructs and words that get called "chinglish",  
"hinglish" or maybe "engrish"


> 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.

I'm in full agreement here, especially as I have several friends who  
are  PhD students who spend a lot of their time teaching courses at  
american campuses all the way from Purdue to UAB (U of Alabama at  
Birmingham)

regards
--srs


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