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Old 03-05-2014, 05:08 PM
 
Location: Maryland's 6th District.
8,358 posts, read 25,164,021 times
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In all seriousness, this mainly limited to science, math, and engineering because graduate students in these disciplines tend to go work for private industry and the highest paying jobs. Do you honestly think that universities want to hire people no one can understand to teach some of the hardest courses on campus?

Outside of social work and perhaps psychology, practically all Ph.D. students studying in the liberal arts are aiming for academia.
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Old 03-05-2014, 07:00 PM
 
3,085 posts, read 7,218,235 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TabulaRasa View Post
Are you talking about instructors whose accents are so thick you have difficulty understanding, or people who legitimately are not fluent in the language of the majority of their students?
This!!!

The material is complex enough as is, going fast and mispronouncing words just makes the course more challenging.
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Old 03-05-2014, 07:03 PM
 
4,749 posts, read 4,303,427 times
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Not technically, but I usually switch professors (during the drop/add) period if they cannot speak English fluently.
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Old 03-05-2014, 08:03 PM
 
16,825 posts, read 17,645,194 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FreshFresh View Post
Usually when I take challenging courses in math and science I have professors who are incoherent. And they have this attitude like something is wrong with me if I have trouble keeping up.
Most of the schools I am familiar with require passing scores on the TOEFL for TAs and profs. I have never had an issue at my NE university chock full of foreign TAs and profs. I have heard MANY students complain about those same teachers but it is almost always due to an accent and not actual issues with language. Now to be fair, I have lived abroad and even studied in a foreign country in a foreign language. I have great respect for people who pass the TOEFL and then teach in a language that is not their native one.

In reality, part of a higher education involves learning to understand other accents. In most fields, particularly STEM ones, you are likely to have to work with colleagues with heavy accents. This is just a step in becoming comfortable with that.

Now if it is an issue with them actually not being able to speak the language, find out why your school is hiring people who cannot pass the TOEFL.
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Old 03-07-2014, 12:50 PM
 
161 posts, read 171,353 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FreshFresh View Post
Usually when I take challenging courses in math and science I have professors who are incoherent. And they have this attitude like something is wrong with me if I have trouble keeping up.
All the professors that I have had speak English fluently. Usually it is just a tiny subset of the population that whines because it is just an accent. I say, just get over it.
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Old 03-07-2014, 06:46 PM
 
Location: PHX -> ATL
6,311 posts, read 6,737,968 times
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The professors in lectures here at my school are, for the most part, all fluent in English (and usually natives of the US) and their accents aren't as noticeable if they have one. But the TAs, who either lead discussions in Geography or lead the labs for Chemistry are usually foreign. My Indian TA for Chem was not hard to understand but he usually pronounced words wrong. There were many others who had a hard time with this TA though. And at my school, if you fail Chemistry lab you fail the entire class, even lecture. I knew a lot who complained about this to the department for their TAs. I don't think the University did anything about it.

My TA for discussion in Geography was from Seoul and had spent some of her time in LA before coming to my school so her English wasn't terrible but she constantly had problems explaining material mainly because her vocabulary wasn't strong. She just didn't know a lot of words. Good thing the discussion didn't really matter, because this would have been terrible. Sometimes she would say antonyms for the words she really meant.

I think if they have an accent it should just be let go, but if it's like my second example where they barely knew English vocabulary, then there is an issue I think.
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Old 03-09-2014, 12:31 PM
 
Location: somewhere flat
1,373 posts, read 1,644,553 times
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"do you have to speak English fluently in order to be a professor at a university"?

It does not seem to be a priority at many universities. Sad.
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Old 03-09-2014, 02:14 PM
 
Location: Wisconsin
19,480 posts, read 24,987,010 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lkb0714 View Post
Most of the schools I am familiar with require passing scores on the TOEFL for TAs and profs. I have never had an issue at my NE university chock full of foreign TAs and profs. I have heard MANY students complain about those same teachers but it is almost always due to an accent and not actual issues with language. Now to be fair, I have lived abroad and even studied in a foreign country in a foreign language. I have great respect for people who pass the TOEFL and then teach in a language that is not their native one.

In reality, part of a higher education involves learning to understand other accents. In most fields, particularly STEM ones, you are likely to have to work with colleagues with heavy accents. This is just a step in becoming comfortable with that.

Now if it is an issue with them actually not being able to speak the language, find out why your school is hiring people who cannot pass the TOEFL.
Both great points.
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Old 03-09-2014, 11:54 PM
 
Location: Striving for Avalon
1,431 posts, read 2,471,810 times
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Important point: These faculty members were almost certainly hired based on the quality of their academic/research background. Accent isn't a major concern of departmental hiring committees.

As a student, I think accents become easier to understand with greater exposure. I am just fine with accents now that would have baffled me 6 years ago.
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Old 03-10-2014, 12:54 AM
 
1,425 posts, read 1,378,958 times
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I had several professors with horrible accents. After the first class with one of them, I asked an American student, did she understand him or not (I thought it was my bad English problem, not only his). She said she can't and will be dropping his class. The class ended up being fun and easy (prof made us teach each other thru daily presentations ~40 minutes long and discussions that followed. The problem was, the class wasn't elective and he was the only prof teaching it. Same thing was with several other classes. But most funny thing happened when my daughter signed up for Engl111 (intro to acad. writing) taught by a foreigner with dyslexia. She dropped it right away after getting a syllabus with a ton of grammar and spelling errors.
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