Language barrier can be problem for TAs, students

During his three semesters as a teaching assistant for the physics department at Pitt,… During his three semesters as a teaching assistant for the physics department at Pitt, Yanjun Ma has continued to improve his English because he has taken advantage of being in an English-speaking environment.

Still, he finds it difficult to explain ideas at times.

“You have to be able to picture [a concept] in your mind. This picture is not easy to transfer from one person’s mind to another’s,” Ma said. “When I don’t know how to say something, I do feel panic because I am afraid that I am confusing [students] instead of helping them out.”

Ma’s case is not unique; if international TAs can’t communicate with their undergraduate students, students’ ability to learn and understand material can be jeopardized. Pitt recognizes the problem and requires a speech evaluation for international TAs. The University also offers programs that are meant to improve their fluency in English.

All international graduate students who plan on becoming teaching assistants must take the English Comprehensibility Test created by Pitt in 1999, according to Lois Wilson, the testing supervisor.

The test, which is administered by the Department of Linguistics’ English Language Institute, is a three-part interview in front of two interviewer judges, and it lasts a maximum of 30 minutes. They are asked to speak about such topics as their area of study.

The international graduate students are graded on their pronunciation and fluency in English.

To be accepted to Pitt as a graduate student, foreign candidates must take an English proficiency exam and score adequately on it, but the scores do not reflect their actual fluency, Wilson said.

“Can they communicate with someone else? Can they explain things? Can they understand questions asked to them?” Wilson said. “This is what we look for when they speak.”

Graduate students receive their scores at the end of the interview. If they score a four or a five, they are allowed to teach recitations, and they are considered able to speak and understand English fairly well. Ma received a four the first and only time he took the test.

If foreign graduate students receive a three, they are allowed to run lab sessions and to grade students’ work.

Those who score a two are allowed to grade or to help students one-on-one. They are also required to take an English course offered by the Department of Linguistics. Only four people are enrolled in the course this semester, Wilson said.

Regardless of what score the students receive, they all can choose to attend free, small-group tutoring to improve their English. A TA may participate in these groups for as many semesters as he would like. This semester 30 people are involved in group tutoring.

Students can take the test multiple times, but if a department feels like a foreign graduate student’s English is not improving, the department may solely use the person as a researcher, or the student may lose his financial aid from the University.

Wilson said those who are outgoing, who make friends or who sincerely care about improving their English usually do end up improving their scores on the test. She also said that almost everyone improves his score if he has to take the test a second time.

The average score on the test is a three or a four, according to Wilson.

Even though graduate students earn passing scores, undergraduates have trouble understanding their TAs.

When Brian Perlik, an engineering major, is in class, he must first determine what his TAs say before he can begin to understand actual concepts.

He said that he only usually understands what a foreign TA says if he or she explains it in multiple ways. He doesn’t like this, he said, because “you shouldn’t have to reason out what you’re learning” just because you can’t understand your teacher.

Students, too, need to phrase questions a few different ways before a TA can understand what students are asking, Perlik said.

Perlik said that he never talked to a professor or a department chair about a communication problem that he had with a TA because he didn’t think the situation would change.

Wilson, however, said that departments have begun to take complaints seriously over the past few years.

“I know that departments are sensitive to complaints,” Wilson said. “They do not want bad publicity.”

She said that she has not received a complaint for a couple of years. If students do want to make a complaint, they should speak with the professor of the class or talk to the department chair. She said that problems are usually fixed after speaking with those people.

The chemistry department only receives a small number of complaints each semester, according to Michael Golde, a chemistry professor who works with graduate TAs. He said complaints usually involve only one or two TAs and very few students.

In order to handle complaints, a TA mentor, a senior graduate student, is told to visit a lab section or recitation. The mentor evaluates a TA’s entire teaching performance – not just speech. The mentor and TA will then sit down and talk about how to improve. Golde said that the problems are usually resolved after this.

Golde admits that students are still exposed to some TAs who cannot communicate well, but he also said that they work on improving their speech.

“Overall, our TAs work hard to improve their skills, we work hard to try to help them and the vast majority of our students are satisfied with their TAs,” Golde said.

Ma has picked up a few techniques over the past few semesters to improve his speech in class. If he does not know how to say something, he will memorize words and phrases from the class textbook and then will recite these phrases in recitation.

Ma has worked on improving his English because he wants to be able to clearly explain concepts to students.

“As a TA teaching in the recitation, if you cannot communicate with your students well, it will affect what they can learn from you.”