To start: this isn’t going to be an anti-international student rant. I want to make sure that those reading it understand that up front, because part of what I’m going to say COULD be taken that way. This isn’t that at all. What I’m hoping to vent a bit about here is a problem that I know a number of us face.
That said, I come from a discipline where being a non-English speaker is one of the worst problems to have to overcome. I’m a trained writer. I am not, however, trained in 2L writing. Somehow I received a PhD in writing and never had to take even a single class in how to handle 2L. It might be due to the fact that programs don’t tend to have experts on 2L learners. I can only think of a handful of them in comp/rhet, and none of them are in the program where I work or any of the programs I trained in.
In fact when I was a PhD student, I had a class that was almost half international (Chinese) students. I expressed to my graduate teaching mentor at the time that I was having trouble knowing how to meet their needs, and I was told “worry about your degree. It’s not your job to handle ESL.”
I think that person was right, as much as that advice stung me and as much as I didn’t want to just let it go. It wasn’t my job, though. And all these years later it still isn’t my job. I specialize in a number of things. None of them are 2L, probably because I’m only really fluent in one language, and my closest to fluency in a second is French, which is useful for Indigenous studies but is really low on the international students need list.
This is the problem I see: not only is it not my job, but it’s not ANYONE’s job at most colleges. And that’s scary. Miami, where I work now, does better than most places. We have a program called American Cultures and English (ACE) that is a one-year intensive program for students who can’t pass the TOEFL but are otherwise qualified to attend Miami. And it works. I’ve worked with those students on projects. They acclimate well and their language skills are quite impressive at the end of their year.
But if a student isn’t a part of ACE, the resources available to them are sparse. And that’s not a critique of Miami– that’s true everywhere. The number of schools with services to help 2L students is small, and the need is far exceeding the expertise that exists in the field right now. It’s an issue.
For me, it’s particularly difficult because some of my courses hit almost dead in the middle of what is a skill split. I teach a course on writing for games. One of the major criteria of that class is that things be written well; it’s a writing class, after all. But it’s difficult to talk through intricate issues of style and writerly voice and dialogue with a student who struggles to write in coherent English. Again, let me be clear; this is not a criticism of the student’s abilities. These are very intelligent students with good game ideas. It’s not their fault that they haven’t been trained to write in the sort of English prose that is required to create game dialogue.
But it’s a big problem, because *I* don’t know how to teach them that part. And even if I did, that’s not what my classes are meant to do. I can’t force a majority of fluent English speakers to sit through me trying to address 2L issues in a class that isn’t about that. And apparently there isn’t a class that does that work.
So the end result is that students who aren’t fluent in English end up creating inferior projects not because they lack the skill to do the work of the class but rather because they lack the skill to express it. And that bothers me, but because I am not fluent in their native tongue(s), I cannot let them submit in their own language and grade on those merits. But then I have to decide– as many of us have to decide– how to grade that work. If I hold their submissions to the language quality I would hold a native English speaker to, many students who obviously put in an A level of effort and who have A level ideas would receive Ds and Fs because their writing lacks coherence. And that isn’t their fault. Not really, anyway. I guess I could be cold hearted and say “you shouldn’t sign up for a writing class in America if you can’t write prolifically in English,” but that doesn’t seem like the answer, either.
My personal fear is that we do these students a disservice. I know my own limits. I can’t teach someone who isn’t fluent in English to be fluent in English and to write a good game. Not in a semester. Probably not at all, as I don’t really believe you can teach someone a language without being able to speak to them in another language they understand. But if we try to grade them under the understanding of their differing circumstances, what does it communicate to anyone else looking at their grades and skills that they have, say, an A- or B+ in a writing for games class when they cannot write a single line of dialogue for an English speaker in a way that feels authentic and real?
I struggle with this one, and I don’t think I have any ideas for an answer (short of universities hiring the people needed to bridge the gap and train international students in using American English). I worry about it, though, and Thursdays are for coffee and contemplation.