Latitudes: A Language Barrier

International teaching assistants are required to take English tests to teach. Do they really test proficiency? ADVERTISEMENT [Latitudes Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. English tests may miss the mark on measuring intelligibilty, new research says For international graduate students, English-proficiency exams are often a rite of passage, a not-always-welcome hurdle to jump through to become teaching assistants. At many institutions, non-native English-speaking grad students must pass an oral language exam to teach in the classroom. In some states, such testing is required by law. A [new paper]( published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology questions whether these assessments measure what they set out to appraise. Rather than gauging intelligibility, the researchers argue, they often end up evaluating students based on their ability to assimilate to American classroom norms. The researchers — Edwin K. Everhart of the University of Pittsburgh, and Julia Nagai of the University of Tsukuba, in Japan — focused on a pair of unnamed universities in California. They observed in-person exam sessions; interviewed test administrators, graduate students, and the undergraduates they taught; and reviewed testing policies and procedures, as well as exam notes and assessments. They found test takers were being docked for using words or phrases that may not be standard in American English but are commonplace elsewhere, like “marking” rather than “grading” an exam. In other cases, students lost points for minor pronunciation or grammatical errors, even when examiners had clearly understood what they said. At one of the institutions, test takers were penalized for factors seemingly unrelated to their linguistic ability, such as poor eye contact. “There’s cultural performance that is demanded in these tests,” Everhart said. We spoke about the history of English-proficiency exams, the pressures they place on international graduate students, and what America undergraduates lose when they don’t learn to adjust to different accents. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.) How did English-proficiency testing for TAs become widespread? They were generally mandated by state legislatures in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was a trend of lawsuits being brought by the parents of undergraduates, saying that my child can’t understand this professor. You didn’t get this kind of complaint when the foreign professors were white, when it was the Hungarian refugee from a totalitarian government or the Italian refugee from the Fascists. These tests set out to measure intelligibility, but you argue they don’t do that. How do they fall short? The tests operate on a mistaken understanding of what intelligibility is. They overlook how communication is achieved, how people come to understand each other. TAs do things all the time to be understood. They’re not taking an input and an output and seeing how much came across. It’s much more subjective. It’s much more, sit there and listen to a presentation and make some notes on what stands out to you. One of the sources is the imagined listening subject, that U.S.-born undergraduate student who is going to raise a complaint or file a lawsuit. We are testing people defensively. How were test takers being assessed? Many of the things that were flagged were not an absolute barrier. One of my favorite handwritten comments on the feedback forms is when they say, Well, you pronounce this, but you should have said that. Sounds like the correction is in your head, my friend. Sounds like you were able to deal with this. It’s fully intelligible. One of the goals in this paper is to create a concept of intelligibility that people can use in other contexts. We’re thinking of it as a state of social interaction. You need to have some shared knowledge, some shared vocabulary. On top of that, you need a willingness to try. It’s like the classic example that Bosnian and Serbian are totally mutually unintelligible despite sharing like 97 percent of vocabulary. It’s a political choice. You can overcome quite a lot with desire, or you can inhibit quite a lot with desire. Then the third thing is a sort of metaskill skill of knowing that you can do this and knowing what techniques to use: Just slow down, repeat, try writing it, ask another person, say it in different words. How does culture inform communication? The tests demand assimilation to a specific set of cultural norms in a U.S. context. On one hand, repeating yourself can be an important pedagogical tool to make sure everyone’s on the same page, but there are cultural contexts where it is seen as you’ve been disrespected, and people should have listened the first time. The expectation is that it’s on international grad students to do the work to make sure they are understood. Why do you see that as problematic? The effect of that assimilation is to make certain that out groups do all of the work. I think it’s very important to emphasize: International students who are going to be teaching assistants, they’ve passed through processes that have guaranteed their ability to communicate in the place where they’re working. They’ve gone through tests to get admission. They have to establish a relationship with their research mentors, to take classes at the university. They may have done conference presentations. All of these things are presumably happening in their second language. It makes people feel excluded, it makes people feel undesirable. It makes them into sort of second-class citizens. These tests were born out of concern about undergraduate students and their educational experience. Isn’t this the university looking out for those students? We take seriously the need for undergraduates to have a relationship of solid intelligibility with their instructors. That is vital. Our question is, how do we realistically get there? Maybe we need to increase sensitivity to language in the classroom. If you want to get students used to how their TA talks, as a professor, on the first day of class, you could have each of your TAs come up and talk for five minutes. You can model the behavior you want from your undergrads. Allow a little bit of time and give some training in skills to understand people who are different from you. Is this the last time students will meet somebody who has an accent? It’s a skill recognizing that you can learn how to deal with different styles of speech. I mean, sometimes your TA says a weird phrase, and it’s a cool weird phrase. You want to borrow that? Let’s have fun with language. This testing is meant to make everyone richer by getting efficiency. But I think it impoverishes us a huge amount. Go deeper: NPR’s podcast Rough Translation did an [excellent episode]( on how “bad” English might actually improve comprehension and understanding. What’s your take? International grad students, linguists, teaching experts — I’d love to hear your perspectives. Share your feedback with me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. ADVERTISEMENT Competitiveness bill without international-student provisions misses “the mark” President Biden signed legislation authorizing more spending for research to counter China. But some observers argue it could be a hollow victory if American policy doesn’t change to make it easier for talented international students to stay in the United States after graduation. A provision to make it easier for for international graduates and other immigrants with science and technology degrees to get green cards was pulled from final legislation to ensure passage. Proposals to help increase the pool of Americans with education and training in STEM fields were also jettisoned, including language that would have expanded Pell Grant eligibility to students pursuing career-training programs. (As I’ve noted before, the competitiveness legislation does include a number of new [research-security mandates]( for American scientists collaborating overseas, including new requirements to report foreign gifts and contracts and a ban on participating in talent-recruitment programs run by China and Russia.) Politico has a [deeply reported story]( on what’s at stake through the lens of the microchip industry, which hires large numbers of foreign-born students to fill advanced, highly technical positions. And in a [column]( in The Hill, Esther Brimmer, executive director of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, warns that America’s efforts to retain its global competitive edge “will miss the mark if the U.S. does not do more to attract and retain international students.” SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. A shift in educational attainment among immigrants In 2005, roughly the same share of foreign-born workers in the United States had not finished high school as had a bachelor’s or advanced degree. Today, there are about twice as many foreign-born workers with college degrees as those without high-school diplomas — a marked shift in educational attainment among this country’s immigrant population. It’s one of the findings of a [paper]( from José Iván Rodríguez-Sánchez, a research scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. In it, Rodríguez-Sánchez argues that the United States needs to increase legal immigration to deal with labor shortages. One of the reasons for the shift is that more immigrants are coming to this country initially as students. An earlier study found that nearly 80 percent of foreign-born start-up founders came here for education rather than work, making colleges, in the words of one scholar of talent mobility, “[the new Ellis Islands]( SPONSOR CONTENT | University of Birmingham [Quantum mapping breakthrough proves real world applications of a frontier science]( Around the globe The U.S. government has extended [special emergency employment authorization]( for international students from Syria. The United States and Iraq are discussing how to expand academic exchange and [scientific collaboration]( between universities in their countries. A Central European University graduate student has been [pardoned and released]( by Egyptian authorities after 18 months in detention. One of two candidates to be Britain’s next prime minister has vowed to close all [Confucius Institutes]( in the country if elected. Canada is rolling out measures to help international students stuck because of pandemic paperwork backlogs [stay in the country](. The U.S. Agency for International Development will spend $14 million over the next five years to help [modernize]( three Vietnamese universities. Undocumented students who graduated from Texas high schools should be eligible to receive in-state tuition, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration said in an [amicus brief]( filed in a case challenging the state law. The U.S. State Department has awarded grants to 44 colleges to expand and diversify [study abroad](. A new online resource offers government guidance for noncitizens, including recent international graduates, to [work in the United States]( in STEM fields. A top French university is reckoning with its [Nazi past](. ADVERTISEMENT And finally … A Japanese passport is a ticket to travel. Japanese passport holders can go to 193 destinations without prior authorization, according to the latest data compiled by the [Henley Passport Index]( more than any other country. The United States ties with four other countries for seventh on the list, with 186 destinations, while Afghanistan ranks last. Its citizens can travel easily to just 27. Such policies don’t directly apply to international students, of course, who must come to the United States on special student visas. But they’re still worth thinking about in an international-education context: Certain students, for example, may have face obstacles studying abroad because of the passports they hold. And graduate students and [foreign-born scholars]( may find it more difficult to get visas to attend international conferences or to conduct research overseas than do their American colleagues. Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line, at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on [Twitter]( or [LinkedIn](. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can [sign up here](. SPONSOR CONTENT | University of South Florida [Higher Influence]( How a free certificate program connected 135,000 people to one university. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. [Manage]( your newsletter preferences, [stop receiving]( this email, or [view]( our privacy policy. © 2022 [The Chronicle of Higher Education]( 1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037