<p>Who do you ask for questions like this?
.
.</p>
<p>For that information, try stopping a student when you visit the school, preferably one who doesn’t work for the admissions office.</p>
<p>You can always dig around by school or name on [Rate</a> My Professors | Find and rate your professor, campus and more - RateMyProfessors.com](<a href=“http://www.ratemyprofessors.com%5DRate”>http://www.ratemyprofessors.com) the kids who write in tend to tell it like it is!</p>
<p>Thanks that’s what I was wondering if I could ask the tour guide or not. You hit the nail on it’s head.</p>
<p>Now that I’m home from the tour is there a way to find this out by email?</p>
<p>Or you could try this link and scrOll down to the alphabetical list. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/</a></p>
<p>Thanks Kajon I just saw your 2 posts.
I’m checking the links now</p>
<p>Large research universities with big graduate programs are more likely to use international graduate students without much (if any) pedagogical training or familiarity with the American educational system to teach intro undergraduate courses. The issue with hard-to-understand instructors is going to exist primarily at these kinds of schools.</p>
<p>If you get someone you cannot understand, and if others in the class cannot understand that person, you all can go to the department head and higher for a fix.</p>
<p>My D and I went to an Accepted Students Day at a school at the very top of her list. There was an information fair with professors there. We asked a question about teaching assistants in the classrooms, recitations, and labs. He proudly told us that they run an intensive oral English language program for their graduate students every August.</p>
<p>Huge red flag! D is attending another school.</p>
<p>hehe, you’re going to have plenty of these teachers no matter what school you go to. However, like someone else above said, research-based institutions likely have more. </p>
<p>In reality, this is sort of a silly thing to base your college decision off of. There are so many more actual important things to worry about.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t care because IMHO…this is good preparation for dealing with co-workers, and most importantly…clients who have strong accents. </p>
<p>What? You’re going to complain and ask for different co-workers and clients?!! </p>
<p>A couple of fresh college grads at one place I worked were fired for acting as if they could do exactly that with several much more experienced/proven colleagues…don’t think so…</p>
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<p>Not really. Many colleges have international faculty but at LACs, for example, those faculty are more likely to be full-time experienced teachers with English-language communication skills and teaching background far superior to those of freshly arrived graduate student TAs at huge research institutions.</p>
<p>And it’s not a silly consideration, nor is it xenophobia. Students in any and all countries have the right to be taught by someone with decent communication skills in the designated language of instruction.</p>
<p>You could ask a few people on line , and they will probably tell you the truth. Just look for a thread from the school you are interested in ,and PM a few students !</p>
<p>I know at least a few professors that get complaints all the time about their accents, but have lived in the US for the majority of their lives, and are probably more familiar English than any other language. If it’s not xenophobia, at the very least, it’s students looking for a scapegoat for their poor performance.</p>
<p>I graduated pharmacy school 23 years ago from the top ranked pharmacy school in the nation (at the time, I am not sure about now). There were quite a few of my professors (long-standing professors, not graduate students) who I had trouble understanding. They were absolute geniuses in their fields, but between their accents and their communication skills, we often had a difficult time understanding them. I think it is much more common in math and science. I guess I agree with cobrat, it is good preparation for life.</p>
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<p>Every student I’ve encountered who made complaints about Prof/TA’s accents tended to be those looking to scapegoat others for academic failures/mediocre grades really derived from factors such as concentrating too much on double majors in partying/alcohol, goofing off in/out of class, turning in crappy assignments/missing them altogether, not doing the assigned readings, etc. </p>
<p>It’s become such a problem that if someone does complain about this…I’m predisposed to thinking this person is someone trying to find excuses to justify poor academic performance that’s really self-inflicted. </p>
<p>I’ve also read several online student reviews of Profs/TAs I personally knew where they were accused of having “heavy accents”. That’s complete BS considering my personal interactions with them and the fact they’re all American-born. Only common factors with them is that they’re “foreign looking”…wonder what conclusions one could draw from that…</p>
<p>I had a teacher in college who was very difficult to understand–even when he was asked to speak up, he still mumbled incomprehensibly. Everybody in the class frantically wrote down everything he wrote on the blackboard in an effort to follow him. As an 18-year-old freshman, I didn’t have the chutzpah to complain about it, although I should have. So I think this does happen, and students shouldn’t stand for it. I agree that it’s good practice for later life, but not for dealing with accents–rather, it’s good practice for demanding to get what you’re paying for. Classroom instruction that you can understand is what you’re paying your tuition for, and if you’re not getting it, you should complain.</p>
<p>“In reality, this is sort of a silly thing to base your college decision off of. There are so many more actual important things to worry about.”</p>
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<p>IMO not necessarily. If you are in math, econ, chem etc. and cannot understand your professor and/or TA and are paying 40k+ per year that’s a problem. It’s often worse in the giant lecture hall classes when you can’t ask questions and backtrack. These are also the pre-reqs for majors or professional school where your grade matters and having that base of understanding for the next level matters. In those intro classes you aren’t paying for nobel prize expertise - it’s basic, established information that needs to be taught effectively.</p>
<p>I do think TAs and professors should be able to speak English, but agree with Cobrat that getting used to foreign accents is a good life skill. I remember having great difficulty with the Austrian accent at the first lecture given by my favorite teacher at Harvard. I got used to it quickly - his English was in fact excellent and he was a very caring guy who really went the extra mile. I do think some schools use too many fresh off the boat (or plane) grad students who really don’t speak English very well yet. </p>
<p>My worst experience dealing with a foreign accent was being given a placement spelling test the first day of school by someone with a strong southern accent. I’m sure they must have realized they had a problem when I spelled “referred” “refud”.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Cobrat. I saw the results of at least one experiment in which two randomly chosen groups of college students listened to identical recordings of the same voice, which had a very mild, indeterminate accent; one group had a picture of an Asian woman on their computer screens, the other a picture of a white woman. In the reading comprehension test administered afterwards, the group with the picture of an Asian woman scored far lower. As if they saw the photo and expected not to be able to understand her, and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>