including a three-week intensive workshop.^15 International TAs must
successfully complete the workshop and also must pass an oral proficiency
screening before being allowed to teach. Those who do not pass the oral
screening continue to take English classes until their English is acceptable.
In an open letter to the student body, the Dean of the College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences drew up a set of proposed remedies for the students’
unhappiness about faculty with foreign accents. While the university
recognizes its responsibility in screening and training non-native speakers
of English who will be given teaching responsibilities, there is no parallel
recognition of the need to educate undergraduates to discern between real
communicative difficulties and those stemming not from language, but
from stereotype and bias.
These issues are also relevant for faculty with advanced degrees; a
Ph.D. cannot render anyone accentless. Undergraduate complaints,
however, focus almost exclusively on graduate student teachers, which
indicates that the underlying issues are complicated by the power and
authority structures of any university setting. Undergraduates who come
into the university system directly from high school are often very unclear
on the organization of the faculty and the degree system; they might not
even realize what roles a graduate student instructor plays. As a body,
graduate student teachers seem to occupy a role in the minds of the
undergraduates which is both subordinate and superordinate: because they
teach, evaluate and grade, they have a significant amount of power.
Conversely, because they are themselves still in training and perhaps close
in age to their undergraduate students, they may be perceived as socially
subordinate in ways which clash with origin, academic expectations and
language, thus undergraduate willingness to challenge the graduate
students’ authority seems to rise exponentially (Table 6.1).
Table 6.1 Language conflict in the university classroom
Problem Proposed solution
Graduate student speakers of English as a
second language have special hurdles to
deal with in order to become effective
classroom teachersIncreased and more diligent screening and
training of non-native English-speaking
graduate student teachers