<p>OP - I think there are 2 distinct issues here. One is the TA’s English or lack thereof and whether your D can adjust to it/meet with other students in a study group/meet privately with the TA and other solutions that have been suggested here or whether pushing hard to switch out is the solution.</p>
<p>The other issue is whether she should handle it on her own or whether you should step in. There was another thread about 2 weeks ago about a girl who had an extreme housing issue and while she had tried to solve it on her own - she was getting nowhere - Mom stepped in via e-mail to various top people and got it resolved pretty quickly.</p>
<p>I think ideally - your D would handle this on her own and would try to cope with the TA. What are the other students in the class doing? But, I also feel that sometimes parents do have to step in - if you feel she is going to fail the class for example.</p>
<p>I had a similar situation with my son as a hs junior - he had a Romanian teacher for BC Calc that he could not understand verbally or read her writing either. It became increasingly clear that his options were to do very poorly in the class or be switched. I had to fight ridiculously hard to get him switched out - but it was the right thing to do. Would I fly into action if it happened now that he is in college - probably not - I would expect him to handle it - but I do sympathize with your situation.</p>
<p>A “lab” generally connotes a small group where the student is expected to do hands-on, participatory exploration of concepts discussed by the prof in the larger lecture. Typically there will be some sort of written syllabus or handouts, as well as written work to turn in, such as a lab report or problem set. </p>
<p>Windsor88 says that at the last lab session she attended, in a class that was very similar to your d’s if not the same one, involved looking at a cadaver of a man who might have had pancreatic cancer. I assume students would have been expected to use their eyes to look at body parts, and that after the lab they may have been asked to draw a diagram of what they had seen. Perhaps in later labs, the students will have more of an opportunity to do dissections on their own. </p>
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<p>No, I am pointing out that “labs” are not “lectures” and that therefore your daughter’s auditory comprehension difficulties would not necessarily be a huge factor - she is there to learn more from looking and doing than listening. </p>
<p>And part of the college experience very definitely is to learn to be able to study, learn, think and explore in a more independent fashion.</p>
<p>^^^
Thank you for the reasonable advice collegeshopping. As I’ve said, so far my daughter has been the point person on this issue. Are you suggesting that regardless of whether she receives cooperation from the Department Head (and rest) that there is no point at which I should get involved? Will you under no circumstances involve yourself with your daughter’s current issue? I understand that your daughter is younger but my question is still valid; is there no point at which a parent of a college student should become involved in helping to resolve a problem?</p>
<p>Edit: There have been a couple of additional posts since I wrote the above.</p>
<p>“English Language Fluency for Teaching Assistants/Fellows
Teaching assistants (TAs) and teaching fellows (TFs) who are non-native speakers of English must be evaluated through a test designed to assess spoken English and English comprehension, approved by the Office of the Provost and administered by the English Language Institute (ELI). The Office of the Provost in consultation with ELI will establish minimum scores acceptable to permit a TA/TF to teach. Individual academic centers or departments may require higher scores than the established University minimums. All TAs/TFs with unsatisfactory scores on this test will be given non-teaching assignments and are required to take special course work until they attain a passing score. An unsatisfactory score at the time of reappointment is sufficient cause for nonrenewal of the student’s TA/TF appointment.”</p>
<p>I think this is fairly typical. Many schools have Speech Comm courses designed specifically for and required of ITA’s who do not pass fluency tests.</p>
<p>“is there no point at which a parent of a college student should become involved in helping to resolve a problem?”</p>
<p>Depends on the problem. I for one would not involve myself in this particular situation, nor would my daughter have wanted my direct involvemen either. But that’s just us. </p>
<p>And Calmom does make a very good point. A parent’s intervention might do more harm than good if she is labeled as a student with a helicopter parent. OTOH, some kids need that kind of support. It’s your call, as her mom.</p>
<p>“is there no point at which a parent of a college student should become involved in helping to resolve a problem?”</p>
<p>I think there are times when it is necessary, but frankly, this would not be one of them. I used to be horrible at trying to micro-manage life…haha. Now I step back and use the rule of 3’s. </p>
<p>What will happen in 3 minutes if I don’t act on this (let me answer this for you aglages)…nothing. What will happen in 3 hours if I don’t act on this…nothing. </p>
<p>What will happen in 3 days…now that depends on what your daughter does. If your daughter spends those the three days weaving through the chain of command (but frankly she needs to dig deep and figure out how bad the problem is…if the kid to her right and her left think she has a point…ok…but if the rest of the class seems okay, then…well…you see what I am getting at) and still does not have a solution that is acceptable to her, AND she has exhausted all her paths…and being told ‘no’ to meeting is not exhausting a path…it simply is cause for a re-route; then what will happen in 3 weeks? Well she <em>1</em> will have learned to understand the TA, <em>2</em> she will have learned to clearly listen to her professor and use the lab for its intended purpose to; see and feel, therefore decreasing the importance of the TA or <em>3</em> she will let it defeat her. At that point your intervention <em>may</em> be necessary, but still, I believe this is her problem to handle. </p>
<p>I know of parents who have been in housing battles with housing, etc, because kids are at risk for whatever reason, and that I get. But she really needs to navigate this. Fast forward to 3 months and the term will be over, 3 years and this will be a blip on the screen and 3 decades, she won’t even remember it was an issue, but she could be here talking about her kids having an issue with a TA…haha.</p>
<p>TAs and even profs who can barely speak and understand English is an unfortunate reality. I’ve already complained about it in a previous thread but unfortunately that didn’t resolve the issue - they still exist. I do think it’s ridiculous to place someone in a position where their primary objective is to communicate, in English, in the USA, yet they lack the basic skill to do this because they’re from China or someplace. I do sympathize.</p>
<p>However, they nonetheless exist at many colleges and it won’t always be possible for your D to avoid them. You can hover over her and try to get it changed if you want but you’ll likely not be able to change it and may do more harm than good including the harm of your D seeing that mommy’s still there to take care of issues like this that she should be taking care of herself. This is part of the transition from HS to college. Once she’s in college she should be taking care of issues like this. But again, there may be nothing she, or you, can do about it by simply complaining to switch. </p>
<p>But, a couple of ideas keepin mind the question isn’t so much whether she understands the TA as much as whether she can still succeed in the course - </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Your D needs to be assertive in understanding the TA including asking questions and making the TA repeat the answer until it’s understood.</p></li>
<li><p>Many people who have difficulty speaking/understanding English can write/read it relatively okay. If your D truly can’t understand the TA, have her write her questions and receive a written response from the TA through email or some other means. Ask the TA to provide assignments, directions, deadlines, etc. in written form. </p></li>
<li><p>Forget the TA other than for assignments, etc. and figure the material out on her own. Interact with other students who might have a better ear for this TA and/or a better understanding of the material to fill the gaps. </p></li>
<li><p>Work harder to understand the TA. This can actually sometimes work when one gets ‘used to’ hearing the accent. I’ve done this a lot. </p></li>
<li><p>If your D is still unable to succeed in the course due to the TA she can possibly drop the course and take it again next quarter/semester (if offered) and do whatever she can to get the better prof/TA. This is something that unfortunately sometimes needs to be done.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Again, I sympathize with your D and your frustrations and think the situation shouldn’t exist but it does so your D needs to know what her options are and choose the best course. IMO offering your advice to your D about the options is fine but this is her battle to fight - not yours. Unfortunately it probably won’t be her last battle either so she may as well learn how to go about it.</p>
<p>“Why should the school favor your d. over all the others in the class?”</p>
<p>Because she is letting them know that she views this as a problem. As far as the university is aware, the non-complaining students are happy. And perhaps they are, if they don’t care very much about this lab.</p>
<p>“Your daughter is no different than any other student in the class - her request is NOT “reasonable” if it is based on the same set of facts that apply to everyone else.”</p>
<p>Wait a minute – so the university doesn’t have to meet any kind of minimum standards, as long as it treats everyone in the class equally poorly? I think that’s insane. What if it were the professor, not the TF, who was unintelligible? What if the instructor just sat mutely at the front of the class and didn’t attempt to teach? Would it still be unreasonable for a student to complain to higher-ups, given that everyone else in the class is being cheated equally?</p>
<p>It is my job, as a student or a parent, to look out for ONE person’s education and make sure I get good value for my time and money. It is not my job to do that on behalf of other students. If they are unhappy, they can accept the status quo, or they can speak up (or transfer) too. But the fact that I am one of many in a sinking boat will not change my determination to get out of that boat and into a better one.</p>
<p>Thanks again everyone for the advice/suggestions. Let me ask this: Do you think that as parents and students that we are enabling these colleges by just accepting the “status quo” system of TAs and Profs that our students have difficulty comprehending and have to work around the problem? Shouldn’t we all be appalled that this continues to occur for 30+ years in the US and we just shrug our shoulders and say “Oh well”? IMHO colleges are far too expensive to expect anyone to put up with this level of “teaching” quality. Should my daughter just get used to the problem and lower her expectations of her professors and TAs? How about next year when the next wave of freshmen enter school, will I be one of the people suggesting that it is what it is and you should just accept the problem? God, I hope not.</p>
<p>Hopefully we can separate the above issues from any more suggestions about by my parenting technique(s). While I appreciate the advice, ALL of you opinions have been noted and considered. Thanks.</p>
The question is ‘what can one do about it’? If there was a way to determine beforehand the numbers of profs/TAs who aren’t adequately proficient in English to conduct the course effectively then we could make a decision with our collective pocketbooks by rejecting that college. The problem is that we don’t know this info up front. It’s not something tracked as far as I know and even if it was, there’d be subjectivity in it because there are lots of profs/TAs from other counties who are fine, they have accents but can make themselves understood, so at what point is it called that the level is too low? </p>
<p>So many colleges are filling many of their grad school slots with people from other countries (which may be a separate topic of debate) and these students are generally TAs, a subset of which don’t have reasonable English speaking skills, and hence the problem. Some ‘visiting profs’ from other countries and even regular profs have the same understandability issue. Many of the colleges obviously don’t care whether the TA (or prof) can make themselves understood or not.</p>
<p>So firstly, we usually don’t know the situation until the student is already attending the college, and secondly, there’s little we can effectively do about it once they’re there other than to ‘work the system’ to try to cope as best as one can. If enough people found the problem intolerable enough to quit the college due to it then it might influence the college but that doesn’t seem likely.</p>
<p>It’s really very easy to solve this problem. </p>
<p>Get more American students to pursue higher degrees in sciences and math. Until they do, non-Americans will have to do. Unless you’d prefer lesser-qualified American undergrads. Which I assume none of us would.</p>
<p>I spent several years teaching in a university in Europe where I wasn’t very good at speaking the language. It wasn’t much fun for me or them but fortunately, my students there were overwhelmingly understanding and kind. </p>
<p>I feel for this TA, who is getting used to living in a new country that is wildly different from where she grew up, trying to cope with her own courses, and likely teaching for the first time. That is a challenge, even without other issues. </p>
<p>There simply aren’t enough American students going to graduate schools in STEM fields. Solve that problem and the TA issue will take care of itself.</p>
<p>Is the problem actually that Americans won’t pursue grad school opportunities in the sciences and math, or is it that foreign students have better stats and are filling a greater proportion of the grad/TA slots? I’ve heard for many years how the US can’t produce enough engineers to supply it’s needs and needs to allow more visas to foreign engineers. Yet many (most?) US engineering colleges have enrollment caps because there are more engineering applicants than they can handle. I wonder what the truth is about foreign grad school applicants and why there are not more Americans in those spots.</p>
<p>uscd<em>ucla</em>dad: You make many excellent points. That said, if SOME method of fixing the problem isn’t found, our grand kids may eventually ask us why we weren’t part of the solution.</p>
Couldn’t agree more. My issue is should this young lady even be in this position. Evidently this college is not overly interested in her feelings or in the ability of their students to learn the material she presents. I have difficulty believing that they (the school) couldn’t find someone that can speak English (well) to teach intro A&P. Just my opinion…</p>
<p>aglages, the issue you’re bringing up is something that the US struggled with for several years. google it, and you’ll find a great deal written about it. And in fact, there IS something being done to address the problem of growing STEM illiteracy. The current president actually is investing in a lot of STEM initiatives, building middle/high schools that emphasize science. (My son attends one of them.) But it’s a complex problem and will take a long time to rectify. We need to revamp school curricula nationwide and find ways to make going into STEM teaching more rewarding financially and personally. When it becomes both lucrative and prestigious to be, say, a university anatomy instructor, the shortage of TAs in those fields will disappear. But until that happens, math/science types will be far more drawn to banking or even computer science, where big bucks can come a lot quicker. And all our children will have to keep dealing with foreign TAs.</p>
<p>Is she teaching A&P? or is she reinforcing what is covered in the lecture by the professor? From what I can remember from my A&P lab, our TA was there to answer questions but we pretty much followed the directions from the lab manual/hand-outs. We were assigned to a team, worked together then wrote up our reports for the TA to grade.</p>
<p>They probably can’t. The graduate students who have been here longer and thus speak better English are also further along in their studies and are likely needed for the more advanced courses that a brand new student wouldn’t be qualified, yet, to teach. </p>
<p>TAs are compensated with tuition remission and a stipend that is barey enough to live on. If the school wanted to go outside the pool of graduate students to find TAs, they’d have to pay a whole lot more.</p>
<p>Disclosure: I’m ethnic Chinese (native-born citizen according to Wong Kim Ark), I graduated from a large state university where TAs were common (Georgia Tech), and I myself was an undergrad TA responsible for biweekly discussion sections. I’d like to share my thoughts on the whole “accent” thing.</p>
<p>I’m a first-year doctoral student in the business school of a private [Top</a> 15](<a href=“http://somweb.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/searchRanking.php?t=n]Top”>http://somweb.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/searchRanking.php?t=n) research university. I took a math refresher course in the econ department over the summer. Of the forty of us in there, at least half were international students. Given the quality of my new university, I sincerely doubt that we are not “good enough” to attract domestic talent. (In other words, I don’t believe that the reason we don’t have more U.S. students is because they all went to even higher ranked schools. Possible but improbable.) What I am not sure of is which the bigger culprit: not enough interest among domestic students or not enough qualified domestic students?</p>
<p>Some of you are talking about a “solution” to this problem. There is only one: encourage your children to pursue doctorates. If they don’t, then future generations will have to suffer the ignominy of listening to Turkish professors who say “vah-RAI-a-ble” instead of “var-EE-a-ble,” Chinese professors who can’t distinguish between “Allen” and “Ellen,” and Indian professors who say “bee-ta” instead of “beh-ta.” Oh the horror!</p>
I do think it’s ridiculous to place someone in a position where their primary objective is to communicate, in English, in the USA, yet they lack the basic skill to do this because they’re from China or someplace. I do sympathize.</p>