Minnesota students push for bill to foce professors to speak clear English

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=122425

College students make jokes about it but at times it can be a problem: a college professor who doesn't speak English clearly.

State Representative Bud Heidgerken, R-Freeport, told the House Higher Education Committee Wednesday that it's no laughing matter.

(snip)

Heidgerken's sponsoring a bill that would require instructors at public colleges and universities to speak English clearly. His bill, as originally drafted, would allow students who can't understand their professors to withdraw from a class, receive a tuition refund and have any record of the course expunged from their college transcripts.

The bill in its original form would call for the removal of a faculty member from the classroom if at least 10 percent of the students complain that the professor's speech is not understandable.



The bill is being proposed by a Rethug.. Why am I not surprised?

but as a college student, I do find it difficult to learn from a professor who can't speak a language well enough for me to understand. (And that could mean Spanish as well, as I am also fluent in that).

But, really, I wish they'd do somthing about boring professors. :boring:

:shrug:

My infamous keyboard dyslexia strikes again.

so i could have slept thru my classes and have those C's expunged by saying i couldn't understand the professor.

why couldn't this genius come up with this idea back when i was in college.

A person unexposed to different cultures who is too lazy to make an effort to communicate with a professor?

A person who covertly aims to make universities less diverse?

A person who doesn't realize the professor is NOT unclear, just that the student doesn't recognize the words that the professors are using?

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Communication is a two-way street. Professors ought to make an effort to be understood, but students need to make an effort to understand.

you SHOULD speak English. Many of the TAs at the U of MN literally DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH, yet they are still required to teach undergrad courses as part of their graduate work.

It's not a matter of "cultural" misunderstandings, or students not "making an effort" to understand a teacher-- especially if that class has 2,000 students and takes place in an auditorium. It's a simple fact of the teacher not knowing the language. If I take a class at the Sorbonne or the University of Moscow, I sure don't expect the professor to teach it in English.

I don't think it's unrealistic for students to expect that their teachers be conversant in the language of their country. Especially if they're paying tuition to learn the material.

The university shouldn't hire teachers that are incomprehensible. However, that applies to English-speaking Professors as well. In addition, most universities allow students to drop classes with no penalties after the first day. If you can't understand the professor - through no fault of your own - then you can already switch without penalty.

Not to mention, many professors don't need to speak English. My Spanish teacher was a French citizen. Very little English. However, she only taught advanced French and immersion-style Spanish classes.

And, 10% of students can be as few as two or three people. And, how many students would abuse this system? Too dumb or lazy?? No problem! Pick on your professor.

The teacher-to-student ratio for undergrad, intro-level survey classes at the U of M is around 100 to 1, if you're lucky. Most of my friends attended their intro classes with a couple hundred other students-- or a couple thousand.

And these TAs are usually not in professorial positions-- they are grad students who are put to work as TAs to pay for their tuition or because it's part of their degree requirements. Oftentimes they are in the sciences or mathmatics where there is not much emphasis on language.

And no matter what area of study you are in, you NEED to be at least conversant in English these days. It is the de-facto language of not only commerce and diplomacy, but science and math, too. Almost anything that gets published in professional journals these days gets published in English. It is the national language of at least one country on every continent on the planet. If you are a PhD-level academic of any sort, you NEED to have a grasp of the language.

That's not me being Anglo-centric, it's just how things are. English is used as an intermediary language by people in almost every walk of life-- from truck drivers in Africa to executives in Singapore to scientists in Korea.

If you plan to live here or work here as a professional, you should have more than a passing familiarity with the language.

Instead of lecturing themselves, they pass teaching duties on to their TAs, and since fewer Americans are going to grad school these days, the TAs have to come from somewhere.

Now I must say that when I was taking classes at the U of M 25 years ago, one of the best instructors I had (in a college algebra class) was from Korea. She had a strong accent, but her English was grammatically correct, and she used good teaching techniques.

On the other hand, I took a computer programming class that I had to drop, not because of the lecturer, who was from the Philippines, but because of the TAs, who were from various Asian countries, none of them countries whose language I spoke. I'd go in there with a computer program that didn't work, and I'd show it to the TA, who would say something like, "Oh, good program."

"Yes, but it's not doing what it's supposed to do. I'm supposed to generate 12 different numbers, but I'm in a loop, and I keep getting the same result over and over."

"Yes, loop! Good loop!"

"No, I don't want to have a loop. I don't know how to get out of it."

"Why you want out? This is good program!"

"No, it's not. It's not doing what it's supposed to do."

"No, this is really good program. Clever loop." etc. etc.

I also had a bad experience at Portland State University when I took a Chinese class and got two Chinese graduate students as instructors. Since it was a second-year class, their inability to speak English well should have been an advantage, a great opportunity to have a class in which we learned Chinese IN Chinese. (It's called the "direct method" and is common practice in ESL classes, where the students may be of mixed nationalities.) However, the instructors not only tried to teach the class in English but did it execrably. One of them in particular would just tell us Chinese legends in English and then read the vocabulary lists out loud.

The three adult students complained to the professor in charge (an American), but he just blew us off. I stood it for fall quarter, and fortunately, we got a tolerable instructor for winter and spring.

However, when I attended my first third-year class, there was another native speaker instructor just reading vocabulary lists and b.s.'ing in English.

As a former foreign language instructor, I found it intolerable, so I dropped out after two weeks.

So foreign TA's need more than English. They need training in how to teach, especially in foreign language classes.

Combine their lack of teaching experience with the language barrier, and you've got a recipe for trouble.

I've had friends at the U have almost the exact same experience you had. The profs were absentee, and the TAs couldn't speak English. I know of at least one prof who deliberately avoided the students in his survey-level classes because he simply didn't want to teach undergrads. He pawned off his classes on incompetent TAs, instead.

:shrug:

I have heard several students complain about a professor at my university. They claim he is too hard to understand, that his accent is too difficult to figure out, he should not be allowed to teach, they failed classes because of him. Some have said his "Italian" accent is just way too thick.

I have no trouble understanding him, but then again, I was raised in the south, which is where this man is from. That's right - this professor has a southern accent (not Italian), he was born and raised in the U.S. and speaks like most Tennesseans and some students in Minnesota say they can't understand him. They really need to get out more.

Believe it or not, we DO get out quite a bit, thanks. In fact I've lived in another country, and dealt with English accents that would make Bubba from Suthun' Jawja sound like Dan Rather. Have you ever tried to decipher the drunken speech of somebody from Tasmania, or western Africa, or Singapore? Give it a shot.

It has little to do with difficult accents, but with teachers who lack basic English abilities. They may be outstanding in their field of study, but they just don't speak enough English to carry on basic conversations, much less teach a complicated subject at the university level.

I am one. And I also get out quite a bit, including overseas. I'll wager that I have taken far more courses than you from instructors with poor English, I know how difficult it is to finish a course where the instructor is either hard to understand, madly disorganized, or even senile. So, yes, I've definitely had plenty of experience talking with people who speak very poor English, including *in the classroom*. I get out, and you get out.

But by and large, the students at my university do not "get out". The majority of them have never left the midwest, even briefly. Perhaps you missed my points. One is that I frequently deal with students who complain that they can't understand their instructor and I know for a fact that their instructor's English is just fine, but the students can't handle the accent.

Secondly - I wasn't saying there are not many instructors who speak poor English - there are many, although they are largely graduate teaching assistants and not employees that this bill is likely to touch. I was saying that this bill isn't going to solve the problem. If you read it (and the Kare11 link doesn't have the exact bill's text), you might see what I'm talking about.

But then again I was taking Spanish and I was really bad at it...

But then again I was taking Math and I was really bad at it...

I can think of a couple specific examples where this would have been necessary. I don't think that any amount of complaints should remove a professor from a classroom. That should be solely up to the university. I do however, think that the students shouldn't be punished for someone being hard to understand.

I had a close friend who lucked out and got a calculus teacher in college who DID NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. She was I think chinese, and barely spoke english. I didn't believe him and called him an ignorant prick, etc, but he had me come sit in on the class once. There was very little spoke, and when she did it was a mystery. People dropped that class like flies in the first week apparently and a packed full required course had more than half the students drop apparently.

I personally had another professor who I could better communicate with in german than in english, and often times he was really hard to understand. Basics were easy to get, but he would get frustrated when needing to use bigger words. Every day usually there was a guessing game poitn where he would stammer and people would start yelling out the words they thought he might be looking for. It was tough.

...but that's because I was high and they weren't so we were pretty much on different planes of reality anyway.

It only takes a tiny bit of effort to become used to someone's accent. You just have to train your ear. I suppose this bill is directed at foreign teachers? They're in MN, so what happens if someone with a severe southern drawl, say from Alabama is the teacher, what happens to them?

this has been an ongoing issue at the U of MN for decades. I had friends who attended the U and would end up in low-level undergrad science courses that were taught by TAs who literally did not speak conversational English.

It's not just about accents-- up here, we can understand accents just fine. It's about the U of MN making inexperienced, non-English fluent grad student TAs to teach courses to undergrads because it's cheaper than hiring qualified full-time faculty to do the job.

They are students.
Perhaps the solution is for the university to impose a more stringent English test on their TAs. Instead of giving students "get out of jail free" card because they are too lazy to learn and want to blame it on something other than themselves.

Lazy kid claim is BS in many cases...
My sister had to rely on text with a professor of Russian descent that was very difficult to understand, she by no means is one of those kids that is "lazy to try to understand" people. We have attended International schools, known ton of international students, but this guy was BAD.

I don't know if this should be a legislative thing, but it can be a problem...I think this should eb a dean problem....

tech support that is outsourced?

I know these people are speaking English, but damn it's hard to understand an India or Philippine accent when you are trying to fix something on your computer.

when a human listens to anyone who talks different than their own language, or even in an accent, they get really tired of listening in a matter of minutes. It actually causes fatigue.

i see where these students are coming from. but i mean, thats life, you just have to get used to understanding people who are different.

with a thick Polish accent, even though he'd been in this country for 25 years and had gotten his Ph.D. from Harvard. One day, he said something that sounded like "the emasculation of the naked Russian saints". Well, I was half dozing, but I perked up quickly. I thought I was going to hear something interesting for a change. Turns out what he said was "the canonization of the native Russian saints". *sigh*

whose English was impossible to understand (I'm Italian and I'm actually very good with languages and accents). That class was not that hard, but the only way my friends and I passed it was because we were self-taught. Those who didn't try to self teach C++ failed or dropped out.

This person was very nice and a good guy but it was impossible to understand him. I can understand not requiring Shakespearean-like mastery of the English language for foreign professors; at the same time, it's impossible to learn from someone who barely speaks any English.

The same goes for very strong accents; I went to HS in rural NC and it was a struggle to understand teachers whose thick southern accents were impenetrable (especially to me, since I hardly knew any English at that time).

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

Yeah, it's English. Bite me.

Had to memorize that fucking prolouge in school.

What about speech impediments? It's a matter of effectiveness. The students are there to learn, not fill a quota. If the teacher can't be understood in English by a number of them something should be done. :shrug:

There are certain professors teaching at the University of Minnesota who do not speak conversational English. They are usually non-tenure-track, PhD candidate TAs who are teaching lower-level undergraduate courses, usually in the General College, and usually math or science.

In a class with 2,000 other people in an auditorium, this can be a real problem.

A good friend of mine had a teacher who could barely put an English phrase together teaching his astronomy class. The poor teacher was literally right off the boat and had no teaching experience, and not much knowledge of English. The teacher was under a lot of stress and could not perform his job, and the students were angry and resentful that they had to pay for a class where it was impossible to learn anything.

The U of M is one of the largest land grant universities in the nation with an enrollment of 60,000+. It attracts enrollees from around the world in many fields. It has been a problem before when graduate-level students who are not proficient in English are required to teach undergrad courses to newer students.

I don't think a bill is the right way to address this, but it has been a recurrent problem with the U of M.

Last I heard of him he was co-sponsoring an anti-pr0n initiative with Rep. Heidsalami.

In that state ever again.

At a university I frequent, there are many Engineering, Science, and Math professors (and TAs from various countries, but mainly China, who literally can't speak English. I mean, they can't. It's not their accent... they can't speak the language. And, most of the students can't understand wtf they're saying. This is a diverse campus, and even the Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese students can't understand them. The professors put their notes online, but this isn't the same thing. I've had them speak to me, too, and it's like... wtf? I have several Chinese and Japanese friends who speak English with a very heavy accent... but the people I'm talking about are barely above Dick and Jane level speaking. Seriously.

And, some of these kids are paying 20k a year.

This isn't xenophobic, it's what's practical and fair.

So... what to do?

it's baloney that they can't speak English but are still allowed to teach.
It's their accent you obviously have a problem with.

Rent Fargo - you'll see. :hide:

It's the resta yoo folks who can't talk worth darn

Here's a solution: Rep. Heidgerken could write a bill to pay for some decent schools in his state and reward teachers who can motivate kids in math and science. Then maybe Americans will actually be interested in doing graduate work in math and science, and the U of MN graduate programs won't have to go looking all over the world to find someone to TA Astronomy 100.

:popcorn:

I hope they at least make an exception for classes on other languages...unless they figure there is no reason to study another language any more.

n/t

the professor. 60% failure rate in his class, he was indeciferable, we frequently did the wrong homework, studied the wrong chapters, and got the information just plain wrong. Not only did he have a thick accent, he mumbled. MUMBLED BADLY.

i can try and work with an accent- but don't fucking mumble if I am going to be tested on what you are fucking saying!

by the by- this legislation seems to have some roots in racism, and I don't like it.

He was about 80 and German. He had a very thick accent, and he would mumble.

For a simpler topic, he might have gotten by; however, this was differential equations -- really high level calculus. The highest score on the first exam (out of a class of about 40) was a 42%. No one had a clue what he was talking about most of the time. It really screwed up my schedule; I had to drop the class as I couldn't ever really make out what he was talking about, and about half the classes I was supposed to take the next semester had this class as a requirement.

That one professor ended up extending my stay in college by an extra semester and ended up costing me quite a bit of money in the long run.

drop a class by a certain day without a penalty. How long would it take for them to figure out they can not understand a professor?
Clearly they can drop the class without stupid bills like this.

The prof only shows up on the first day for many of the large classes, and the TAs take over after that day. Oftentimes you don't even KNOW that going into the classes.

The professor may speak and teach clearly, but the TAs who do the bulk of the teaching may not. And there's the rub-- you don't actually find out that the TAs can't speak the language until after the first day, or the first week of class. By then it's more difficult to drop.

I don't like the legislation myself, but I can see the frustration that's behind it. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to be in that situation, especially at a place like the U of MN, where frosh-level classes often have literally hundreds of people in them.

TA's. I would wager that the vast majority of instructors that students can't understand are not on the tenure track, and are probably grad student TA's, or other temporary help. Passing this bill will not noticably change most students lives. Not only that, tenure track faculty (and tenured!) are protected by so many other rules/laws that this would never have any teeth in it. Not to mention, the way the bill is written now is just opening the door for abuses by students who want to drop a class for another reason, but end up using the "I can't understand" excuse.

The tenured professors can not be fired. The students can drop the class several weeks into the quarter anyway. The bill basically opens the door for abuses, where a lazy student would decide to get his/her money back,using " I don't understand" excuse.

I'm not sure this guy WASN'T speaking Japanese. He seemed like a great guy, but I spent an entire semester LABORING to understand this guy. He also didn't UNDERSTAND English very well.
------------------------
Prof: This period in film history gave rise to idea of movie stars. Before this point actors in film were pretty unknown. Does anyone know any film or movie stars?

BB Player in Back of Room: Denzel Washington.

Prof: Who?

BB: Den-zel Wash-ing-ton.

Prof: WHO?!?

BB: DEN-ZEL!!!!

Prof: I sorry, I no understand... who???

BB: <sigh> Jackie Chan....

Prof: Oh!! Oh Yes!! Jackie Chan is BIG film star!

Smart Ass Freshman: John Stamos

Class: <giggle>
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Anyway, you get the idea.

When a Bio prof doesn't speak english, WTF are you supposed to do? I just wish they would do this with dish network call centers.

Several students should get together and visit the Deans office. When a resonable number of the students present themselves and agree to schedule a meeting tewith the Dean to discuse it. Your complaints will (Or at least should) be listened to.

No offence professor. Your pronunciation of Phase Lock Loop always brought a chuckle to your students, myself included.

Having had a bad professor or two in my lifetime. Which were delt with by the students taking the issue to the Dean. I wonder why this needs to be delt with in the Legislature? Unless it is to give licence to a minority of students to intimidate the faculty.

which apparently meant "star cluster". The students are paying tuition, I would say they should have teachers that speak the language (unless it's a foreign language class).

The U of MN has 60,000+ students, and an ever-shrinking staff due to budget cuts from the state legislature. Most first- and second-year undergrad classes have a minimum of 100 people in them. The support staff is overworked and underpaid, and have probably heard the complaints before. Sometimes complaining to the Dean doesn't work.

A law may be a little heavy-handed, but if I was paying for an education I would at least expect to learn something in the class with a little effort. If I can't understand the prof. because s/he doesn't speak the language, it's nearly impossible to do so.

should be ever able to teach a class, is that it? Unless you are born in US, don't even bother?

you probably shouldn't be teaching in it. I don't speak Mandarin, but I would not dream of teaching a course in computer programming at Beijing University. Teaching at the undergraduate level is difficult enough (I used to do it), but compound that with not speaking the language fluently, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

irrelevant, of course, but your phonetic spelling was such a perfect rendition of how that would be pronounced by a "non-native" that I knew immediately it was star cluster.

Seriously - if you want to fix this problem, fight the good fight with the graduate teaching assistants. Arizona State is just one university that did this recently, you might see how they put in "speak tests" for their grad students who had already passed the Toefls.

many of them are required to TA as part of their program, or need the $$$. The profs don't give a damn, because they're trying to juggle teaching and churning out research. Administration is underfunded and overtaxed, and they've heard it all before, anyway.

The leg bill probably won't help, either. It's going to take something from every area to fix this.

for this reason. However, there was a twist: the professor was from New York City and the student was from rural South Carolina. "I just cain't understand that ma-yun." The professor did have an accent by our standards but could be understood without any problem by normal English speakers. I encountered the same problem while working for a professor from England.

I've had foreign or foreign-born college instructors who had such heavy accents that they were difficult to understand. After awhile I got used to it, but some of the students never did. I think speaking English clearly in an American classroom is a pretty small favor to ask. Mine weren't that bad. They had been in the USA a long time, but it was still a chore. I can see it being a little worse and completely incomprehensible.

In case it matters,one of the instructors was from India and taught accounting. It took awhile before I realized that "ee-coop-ment" was equipment. Another was from China and spoke half a dozen languages, all with a heavy Manderine accent. Lastly, I had a German language istructor filling in for a history class who was from Austria. (Instructor: "You mean you (the class) have never heard of Att-lah?" Me: "She means Attilla the Hun.")

That last instructor was a hoot. The class was medeival history and she was surprised that we did not know a few medieval epics. I mean obscure ones, not just Beowulf or the Song of Roland. She said the NAZIs made sure everyone in her class knew them. I guess she was not aware that we did not have NAZIs for teachers.

one the one hand, suck it up, stop bitching.

On the other hand, i've had professors that were damn close to those standards, and it did make the class harder. I seriously doubt a russian university is going to hire a prof that speaks no russian, so why is it different here? The problem is how to implement it without discouraging international profs, who i think add a whole lot to the university.

And to address a few concerns raised in this thread:
1. The students aren't lazy. They're trying to learn.
2. You can't just drop a class. It's not that simple. Example: I have 4 quarters left in school (counting this one). I am currently in American Sign Language 101, which is my foreign language requirement. If I dropped it now, 2 weeks in, there would be no penalty. BUT, there's a waiting list of 300 to get into the class. I would immediately move to the BACK of the line. And that would be the same for any 101 language, so i couldn't just switch languages. The requirement is for 4 quarters of a language. Thus, I would have to go an extra quarter, costing me a LOT more money, just because I dropped that class. The same is true for a lot of limited availability classes that are required for graduation. A freshman can drop; a senior can't.

Nobody is making you. But I guess you would like an excuse to drop it because you "can't understand" the professor, without having to pay any penalties? Does the professor uses sign language with an accent? How exactly does it work?

for that reason, or wanted to. And yes, sign language most certainly has an accent. Not only are there regional dialects, but individual signers are very different.

Anyway, I was only using that as an example. Obviously, language is kind of an exception for the "can't understand professor" thing, but it's an example of a class that I cannot drop for any reason. I tend to be of the first take in my post: stop bitching, and read the book. But that's me, and I can't speak for all the other students who have had a real problem.

you can fuck off?

I think that's BS.

This is a big problem at a lot of research institutions that don't give a shit about the education their undergrads are getting. I had a couple GA's and visiting professors that were nearly impossible for the class to understand.
If you want to bring in people from other universities to enhance your graduate programs, that's fine. But, the college administration shouldn't be dense and inconsiderate enough to force those with difficult to understand accents, or sometimes those who barely speak english at all, into teaching positions.