<p>Drop the class. If required switch sections, wait a year, take it at another school etc. Do not torture yourself. Really...a lower gpa could keep you out of internships, jobs, med school. It's just not worth the aggravation.</p>
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PhatAlbert,
even if your interpretation is correct, it still implies that being a woman is an impairment of sorts (although one that in that particular case should be forgiven because of her other noble qualities).
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<p>I see a hint of bitter feminism here :D</p>
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switch sections
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<p>could be one good suggestion, but... I went back to OP to remind myself whether this was a section TA or a full prof and he had said:</p>
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teach on an exchange basis
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<p>so perhaps in this case "switching sections" can't be done. Perhaps it;s too late to drop the class without penalty, I don't know. I think the previous poster's idea, just to pull the plug on this course, is worth a thought, if it'll harm her GPA. OTOH, I hate to see kids reduce their hours when they were ready for them, and it only comes back to weigh them down later when they wish they had a lighter schedule. No fair to have to drop a whole course over this issue, and the frustration of paying for a class that can't be understood is real. If, however, she's ahead with hours (for example due to AP's) or already feels weighted down as a freshman and could afford a lighter load now to be made up later, then perhaps dropping the course is the swiftest way to end the problem. </p>
<p>This did cause me to want to post again to revise my comment about the regional issue, as the OP had wondered if this was the La Jolla attraction for foreign professors. So to correct that part of my post: I must say that in upstate NY unis, where there's only snow, I've only heard recently about TA's and grad students with heavy accents leading math/science SECTIONS. Many uindergrad students find it hard to understand the section.</p>
<p>But exchange profs? teaching whole courses? That is less familiar to me. So it may indeed be a regional thing, still not sure, but wanted to correct what I had said earlier. Here, it's a problem at the section level, and often mentioned by parents of math/science freshman at big universities.</p>
<p>My S (at a big state u. in the south) dropped Calc.1 his freshman year because the grad. student (from India I think) teaching the course had such a thick accent S could not understand it. It was too late to get into another section of Calc.1 for that semester. Luckily he was taking it as a "refresher" ( had AP Calc. as h.s. jr) so it didn't impact him that much. He just signed up for Calc2 in the spring and did fine. At his school there are a lot of foreign teachers in the engineering (and all subjects related to it) dept.</p>
<p>I have heard of this problem chiefly with TAs. My roommate in college was a pharmacy major and complained constantly about learning new biological/medical terms from someone who had an accent. It's one thing to get adjusted to the rhythms of foreign speech when they're using common English words. It's very difficult when they're using words you've never heard before!</p>
<p>And the only help I can think of, if you can't change sections, is to constantly ask the teacher to repeat or spell a word, so you get it properly. And perhaps read the chapter BEFORE class, even if it's not required until after, so you have a clue. It can be a challenging sort of game. ;)</p>
<p>An easy (ha!) solution to the hard to understand foreign profs: grow some more American mathematicians and scientists and most of the problems would disappear. Go to a graduate department in math and sciences and see how many students from Asia there are, as opposed to Americans.<br>
Foreign visiting profs are usually not asked to teach bread and butter courses but electives; this is to give students a wider choice of courses to take if they wish. </p>
<p>As for pregnant profs, they usually go on teaching until nearly the last minute unless they've been ordered to do total bedrest. One prof I knew had to have a C-section because of her bad back (i.e. not for scheduling purposes) and was back teaching her classes within two weeks. For the two weeks she'd missed, she'd produced copious notes for her students. They did not miss anything.</p>
<p>And it's not just in colleges, my h.s senior son has a science teacher this year from the Middle East with a very thick accent and last year had an exchange teacher from India for math.</p>
<p>One year, high schools were so short of math science teachers they had to import them from abroad by the hundreds. </p>
<p>Why can't schools have teachers who can speak intelligible English?
There aren't enough of them. Why? You tell me. The solution? Avoid hirin anyone who has a thick accent. If there aren't enough teachers or TAs to staff lectures and sections, too bad.</p>
<p>I'm sorry to sound unsympathetic but this is a problem that has been in the making for many many years. It's a wholly Made in America problem. No university is looking to hire foreigners over American citizens. Just securing green cards for them is an extra burden. Not enough Americans are going into math/science teaching at any level.</p>
<p>I found this to be a major problem when I was in college, and do sympathize. Frankly, as a parent paying tuition it would infuriate me if my son's learning were hampered because of a language barrier, unless it were a foreign language class. I have a suspicion that most of this happens in research based universities where there are more TAs (assuming that many are from other countries). At the school my son attends, he has not experienced this problem to date (3 semesters and 15 professors later). His school is student rather than research orientated and this might be the reason. The focus is on the undergraduate and no TAs teach courses (one is currently teaching a discussion group my son attends. It supports the lecture and he speaks English well). My son has taken two math, one science, and a couple of math related business classes and has not had this happen. Honestly, I know it sounds intolerant, but I do not have the patience for this with my tuition dollars. If the course were at no cost to me, I would be much more tolerant of this situation. I agree with the advice about dropping the class, and taking the class the next semester and I know that this is what my son would do.</p>
<p>The real problem as Marite said is not enough Americans are going into the math and sciences. You don't find this problem as much in other fields. Sometimes though you can get acclimated to an accent. I had an Austrian architectural history prof. whose accent I thought was very difficult the first day. I got used to it and he ended up being my favorite prof. and I wrote my undergrad. thesis with him. </p>
<p>Getting rid of an accent is very very difficult. I spent five years in Germany. I even took once class while I was there devoted solely to improving one's accent. Still even after the extra training, I didn't have to speak too many sentences before I got asked where I was from. Maybe universities ought to offer similar classes to their foreign teachers?</p>
<p>PS My younger son has a physics teacher from Romania this year. His accent is adorable.</p>
<p>I had a guy from india and I could understand him just fine - a few words were off here and there. I also had a guy from Iran and while I understood him, his accent kind of annoyed me because there were certain words that he pronounced horribly wrong each and every time. Also paired with the fact that I didn't like him at all as a professor made me hate that class, haha.</p>
<p>I'm not going to argue that there is no problem here but I'd like to bring up 3 points:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The fields that have the most foreign professors and grad students are also the fields in which there is a greatest globalization. Therefore, today's students will no doubt have to deal with people from around the globe (and may even work in other countires) throughout their careers. They need to get used to working with (and learning from) people with accented English. (and these US students may have to learn other languages . . . at which point they become the non-understandable foreign person.)</p></li>
<li><p>There are professors and grad students from parts of the US or the English-speaking world that others find difficult to understand. Should they not get jobs teaching?</p></li>
<li><p>Some of this is perception. Several years ago students at the University of North Dakota complained so bitterly about this problem that the state legislature considered passing a bill banning foreign profs unless they passed some sort of spoken English exam. Before they did it, they commissioned a study by a lingistics professor from (I think) Cornell. He did a study in which he taped a lecture given by a very articulate American professor. The tape was then played as if 4 different people were delivering it. One was the original lecturer, the others were clearly of foreign origin. Although the audio was the same for all 4, the student subjects reported that the American professor was outstanding and clear, while the other 3 were difficult or impossible to understand!! In the end, the legislature did not pass that bill.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>mathmom:</p>
<p>I don't know about foreign teachers, but foreign students are encouraged/required to take English classes before starting their Ph.D. programs at many universities. But, as you say, it's hard to get rid of an accent. Anyone remember how Kissinger sounded like (and he only arrived in the US as a teenager in 1939! But I'm told he deliberately cultivated his German accent).</p>
<p>I'll repeat my oft-repeated line from my cousin the math grad student at an Ivy League university: "The only thing I enjoy about teaching is watching the inevitable progression from the first day of class, when my students are all overjoyed that they have a native English speaker, to the point when they realize they would have been better off with someone who only spoke Chinese but who gave a crap about them."</p>
<p>Sometimes I do think it is unfair that these teachers get so much trouble because of this. They can speak English which is sometimes more than what native-born Americans can do. </p>
<p>I'm also a Spanish major so I obviously have to get used to people with different accents. (Usually in Spanish mind you... However, there are different accents even in that language, and good Lord, do they speak quickly!) At times, I'm the one with the thick accent, and it;s frustrating because I want to communicate. As a result, if people were telling me that I shouldn't be a Spanish major because of this, I'd be upset.</p>
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2. There are professors and grad students from parts of the US or the English-speaking world that others find difficult to understand. Should they not get jobs teaching?
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<p>Looking at it from a parent persepective, I admit to not wanting my children put up with this. We are paying to what ends up costing 2800+/class, and many are paying double that (yes, I am counting R&B). For nearly 3k per class, I don't feel that my kid needs to put with this. Frankly, this is one reason that he is not in a research based U to begin with. I also don't feel that for that kind of money he needs to be in a lecture hall with 300+ students! The reasoning is the same. It might be great from the perspective of the university, but IMO, not in the best interest of the student. One can spin it and state one needs to work with diverse groups of people etc. That is all true, and my kids went to a diverse hs and I know that they can work with many different groups, but they did not have to learn exclusively and them be tested on the material from them, and then graded from them for one subject. I don't think that my kids need to be graded on their ability to decipher the unintelligible for my tuition dollar just because it might be in the interest of that foreign TA, or the university.</p>
<p>reeses, as far as differing accents within one language, it exists in English spoken in America too. Just compare the accent from somewhere in the south to one in New England, as just one example. Even within one state there are differing accents. Compare the accent of someone from Long Island or Brooklyn, NY to someone from upstate NY. They might sound very different.</p>
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And perhaps read the chapter BEFORE class, even if it's not required until after, so you have a clue.
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<p>This is very standard advice for all college students, and especially for college students studying math and science. The long version of advice for college math students is found in an earlier post of mine </p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=355458%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=355458</a> </p>
<p>with links to FAQ pages from college math departments.</p>
<p>Here's the deal: If your child chooses to go to a university, he or she is choosing an institution where what you know and how you communicate it to your peers is far more important than your skill at communicating it to high-strung 18 year-olds. And where the prevailing ethos is that it's a student's responsibility to do the work to learn what a top scholar has to offer, not the other way around. Maybe the kid choose that university for the football or the awesome frats, but it's a package deal. If you want the prestige, resources, scope, and depth of a university, you accept that sometimes you are going to have to work to understand a teacher.</p>
<p>There are other institutions of higher education with different value systems. Some of them are much less expensive. It is cheaper -- perhaps unfortunately -- to hire gifted or well-trained teachers who are not top scholars than to hire and to equip top scholars, and to stock the graduate programs with the students those scholars want and who may become top scholars themselves. If kids don't like the university deal, they should explore other options.</p>
<p>JHS, Absolutely correct. You really should look to see the differences between schools before choosing one. A large flagship univesity will be very different than a small LAC without graduate programs.</p>
<p>Deal with it. It's not going to change once you enter the industry. There's still going to be people with accents that you're going to have to work with, and some of them may not have even attended an American University. Better to get used to it in college than trying to cope with it in your career.</p>