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<p>Perhaps that may be due to our own college experiences where instructors with foreign accents were still intelligible, and that foreign accents tended not to be the reason why some instructors were not as good as other instructors.</p>
<p>I had a professor who was Chinese. The text we were using was terrible. I sometimes found that asking the professor if they had or could recommend another text with a similar approach helpful, so I approached the professor in his office to ask about other relevant texts. He asked “are you ■■■■■■■■?” I’m sure the shocked look on my face before I registered his meaning alerted him to the possibility of a language faux pas. As to the text he was no help. </p>
<p>Sometimes the language barrier is more than the accent, or even the usage of the language. There can also be significant cultural barriers which prevent the student from being able to communicate effectively one-on-one with the professor. (For example attitudes towards women in some countries, or inability to engage in casual banter or understand colloquial usage.)</p>
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<p>It’s one of many topics undergrads…especially first years feeling put upon love to endlessly kvetch about to anyone who will listen when complaining about Profs “being too hard” when the real issue is they can no longer get by on work habits and/or being as much in their academic comfort zone as in high school. </p>
<p>Funny coincidence how the ones who do this sort of kvetching tend to be known among classmates in the same major/class as academically marginal students better at making excuses than in getting their act together and doing what needs to be done. </p>
<p>In the olden days, so long ago, when you had instructors with foreign accents, they would more likely have been Italians or Czechs or some such coming from a European language background. These days, the vast majority of cases will be Asian, and it is far, far, more difficult to come from Chinese or Japanese or Korean to a high level of fluency in English.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a problem that’s unique to ESL TAs, though. It has a lot more to do with the professors and the culture of PhD programs than the TAs themselves.</p>
<p>In a PhD program, you are trained to believe that research is what’s really important and teaching is a distraction. What earns you the competitive, desirable jobs is great research - lots of publications and research presentations. Teaching only takes away time that you could spend doing that, so many professors overtly encourage you to spend as little time as possible on teaching and really spend the bulk of your time doing research.</p>
<p>But as for not knowing what’s going on in the class - some professors are just <em>terrible</em>, and it makes the TAs look bad. First of all, TAs don’t have any formal education training - they’re simply thrown in and expected to work. Some people are naturally good at explaining things to newbies or have more experience doing that, but if you don’t, there’s a learning curve attached to that. Second of all, yes, there’s a good chance that the person got stuck TAing a class they don’t have expertise in. As a social psychologist, if I get hired in a psychology department no one will expect me to teach cognitive psychology. BUT in a general psych department, I might get stuck TAing cognitive psychology even though I know very little about it as a doctoral student. I had a friend who was in the social subfield who got stuck teaching a neuroscience course. These problems aren’t limited to ESL speakers.</p>
<p>One of my professors does interesting research and finds that if you expect not to understand someone, you won’t. So if you expect someone’s accent to be unintelligible before they even open their mouth, you’re more likely to report that you don’t understand their accent once they do start talking. People who are patient and don’t stereotype are better at understanding accents, even if they don’t spend a lot of time around ESL speakers.</p>
<p>Personally, I think many students are not patient enough with professors and TAs who are not native speakers. Generally speaking, I’ve found that with some patience and careful listening, I can usually figure out what the professor is saying just fine. If students are sitting in the back fooling around on Facebook and shopping (which I saw often in my large survey class), then they may find it difficult to understand what’s going on.</p>
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<p>Still, funny coincidence how so many students in multiple campuses kvetch to you about it, and you are able to check that the teachers concerned speak English just fine, and you can then ascertain from the kvetchers’ classmates that they are in fact the weak students.</p>
<p>Do you think that as colleges and universities increasingly implement required outcomes-based student-assessment tools (meaning: instructors-assessing-the-students), there will be consequences for poor communication by professors and other instructors? Any early evidence on this? Faculty will have to “prove” their students are learning. What if the data show the students are missing the mark, and it can be tracked back to verbal communication problems to some degree? </p>
<p>Some of you are making me wonder if I, and the rest of the class, that actually had an unintelligible teacher, were deaf without realizing it. Sheesh.</p>
<p>You were deaf, lazy, wasted, lacking sleep, addicted to computer games, out of your depth academically, and prejudiced.</p>
<p>Not prejudiced, because I had a mumbler, not a non-English speaker. All of the others, though.</p>
<p>Being someone who has never experienced this or whose kids have not experienced this, I have a slightly more distant W<em>T</em>F take on what I am reading. </p>
<p>This reflexive attitude that literally all students who report as much are deficient or irresponsible in one way or another strikes me as a professional cop-out, as it requires no effort to do anything because it is automatically assumed there is nothing wrong and only window dressing responses are required. Well, that is sure one way to reduce one’s workload.</p>
<p>I find this fictitious “all students” cohort certain teachers have created from their (the teachers’) most negative aspects of student encounters rather professionally unsavory. If I ever got that automatically negative about anything I do and about what someone tells me, I would quit because I would have clearly stopped being helpful and productive.</p>
<p>I get it now though. There is a philosophical difference here. I still care about what others say to me, even if I have heard it before; I do not automatically take comments by others and label them in terms of my most negative experiences with that group; and I certainly do not dismiss someone just because they are a student. </p>
<p>I do hope my kids are spared the introduction to such jaded professionals, and if my kids ever do need to speak up that they are taken seriously. </p>
<p>The main issue here is that many students/young adults have not been exposed to any accents and are not adept at hearing through difference. Anecdotes: When I was 16, I was riding a bus, and a cute Australian sailor tried to pick me up. I didn’t understand much of what he said. I was flattered that an “man,” a real adult, was flirting with me, but I worried that I was agreeing to things or appearing a fool as I tried to respond to the conversation I didn’t understand. 30 years later I’m standing in the front of a class room in Chicago, the boy in the front row has his hand up, I call on him, “MawK” (Boston accent). He doesn’t respond. Looking directly had him, I say “Mawk” again. When he doesn’t respond, I realize the problem and with great effort say “MarrrrK.” At which point he starts talking. . .</p>
<p>Universities require TA’s to take tests in spoken English (TSE, SPEAK) and receive a decent score. I suppose somewhere there is a school that doesn’t require the test, but none I know. Furthermore the level of proficiency is pretty high. I am regularly amazed at the confident, competent, even articulate TAs who fail it (perhaps from
anxiety). </p>
<p>Learning to hear accents while taking a class can be difficult, but learning to hear accents is part of the education of a citizen in the global era. In most of the world, t has long been a part of leading and community building.</p>
<p>A million years ago my now BIL had an into econ class with a thickly accented Asian prof. People have talked about lack of understanding being due to poor scholarship, unpreparedness, unwillingness to be open to that material etc. I still remember BIL coming back from class aghast that he has not recognized his own name (VERY familiar material) when the prof took roll let alone the econ (which was new material at the time). </p>
<p>At Cal, also a million years ago, I had calc from a French prof and my TA was Greek. They both had thick accents very different from one another. Yes, my quiz section was 8am and I attended sober and of clear mind. Between the two I found it tough. When one is learning something new - particularly math and chemistry (likely CS, although I never took it) - one is decoding a different language. If someone with a thick accent or other challenging speech patterns is teaching one is forced to first decode what they are saying then move on to decoding the actual material. If the lectures and class moves on apace that duel process can leave a person always one step behind. By the way . . . since when is it not OK to be entering a freshman class needing to learn the material?</p>
<p>I think it is important for students who are having difficulty understanding an instructor to talk with the chairperson of the department in question. If the department has someone with administrative responsibility for undergraduate education, the student could start there, before going to the chairperson. Our department will replace an instructor during the semester if the level of teaching is not good (fact, backed up an an actual instance, though the person was a native English speaker).</p>
<p>Our teaching assistants are all required to score at least 50 on the SPEAK test, before they can be assigned as TAs. This has improved the English level of the TAs since the early days of foreign TAs, although I think that the SPEAK test is an imperfect assessment tool.</p>
<p>If a student literally cannot understand a word the instructor is saying, then it is hard for me to understand why the student would do nothing at all about it until after the final exam. It should be apparent on Day 1 of the class whether anything can be understood. If the student prefers not to speak with department administrators, or doesn’t think of talking with them (a freshman, say), it is still plenty early to change sections in a multi-section course–or in an extreme case, to drop the course and take something else instead. If the student alleges that he/she did not understand a word all semester, but first mentions it after the final, I probably would have a negative impression of that student, though I have a very positive impression of students overall.</p>
<p>I am curious about the level of the university where incomprehensible profs are assigned to teach anything.</p>
<p>An observation about language training: You can pass tests, take accent-reduction classes and keep improving your language skills and STILL be incomprehensible at times. I speak a couple of foreign languages and can attest that when I’m nervous, or tired, or stressed my ability to express myself in a given language plummets. (Those people from India or the Philippines on customer service lines that you can’t understand? They took those classes too!) So just because a person passes a test in an ideal setting doesn’t mean they will always perform up to that par in the classroom. True mastery of a language (especially when we’re talking about dramatically different languages such as Asian tonal languages and English) takes years. </p>
<p>I’m curious…those on the side of 'students need to figure out the accent…it’s up to them"…are you willing to have a physician/surgeon/therapist …who spoke with an accent could not decipher work on/with you? Would you hire a lawyer whom you had extreme difficulty understanding? How about sitting with an escrow officer who was explaining very important document details…in an accent you just could not decipher. Would all these be acceptable…or would you ask for outside assistance or for a different professional to work with you.</p>
<p>If you figure out accents in your teens, then when you are an adult and having to make decisions about accetnts and issues with your health or legal situation, you will be in a position to do so or to know how to find an alternative. I know that sounds harsh, but there is something flawed with the idea that people shouldn’t have to figure out accents. The question is when and with what support system. Learning to hear or navigate in a college class–with a textbook, study partners, tutoring centers, deans and provosts available for appeal, where the teacher has been pre-screened–seems reasonable. </p>
<p>^^^ I was raised by immigrants - Slavic and Germanic accents galore. </p>
<p>Recently my Germanic accented mother (still accented after 50 years in the States) was assigned a new PCP when her Doc of 20 years retired. Mom complained she could not understand the new doc. I was doubtful…until I tried to have a phone conversation with Doc. This doc gave mom a memory test - which she failed - she couldn’t understand the question. I would say the hospital who did the assigning is responsible for the mismatch. Yup, mom could and did ask for (well, I did it for her) another physician. And was promptly assigned to an Italian - a match made in accent heaven.</p>
<p>The point, mom had not only a right but also an obligation to herself to quickly find an alternative. This, regretfully is not something available to most college students. To simply ask them the suck it up is not ‘harsh’, it is blaming the victim. If these students are not absorbing the information because it’s presented in a undecipherable manner - then to fault them for their lack of ability, willingness and ‘culture’ is again, to blame the victim. And, for STEM majors it is often more than just one class per quarter or semester which presents this problem. How much extra time is to be expected from the students to overcome their inabilities - all the while still trying to actual master the subject matter?</p>
<p>@dietz199 - The answer to your several questions a few posts up is an emphatic “No.” </p>
<p>The reason is all those situations deal with their money. They could care less about the students’ money, and the value students receive for it. But, the value of their money is protected beyond belief. There is a word for that - hypocrite. </p>
<p>@mamalion - The answer to your example about this need to have to figure out accents is also “No.” When doing important things, documents etc., if the person cannot explain what is being done in a way I fully understand, I do not sign or do anything and find someone else. It is silly that the onus is on me to learn an accent; the onus is on the person who decides to work in a English to learn English well enough to be fully understood.</p>
<p>For college students, changing schools is really not an option, as I described in an earlier post - too darn expensive to do, and I would think for many a loss in established financial aid as well. </p>
<p>PS: The responsibility lies with the person who switches languages. Not sure why people do not get that part of this equation. </p>
<p>When I lived in Europe, it was my responsibility to learn to speak well enough to communicate with native speakers. It was also my responsibility to learn the accents, so I understood them. It was NOT the French or Italians or Germans responsibility to learn to DEAL with my English accent speaking their language. I was in their country, and I was the one who chose to speak their languages. The responsibility is on me, not them, to get their languages correct enough for them to understand me. </p>
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<p>Several times I found myself with a group of Germans/Austrians/Swiss who spoke to one another in English because they could not follow each other’s regional accents nor their mutual attempts at supposedly standardized Hochdeutsch.</p>