It’s undeniable that graduate programs in the sciences have a larger emphasis on research, and that there is a shortage of qualified candidates within the US. When I was in graduate school, teaching was a requirement that was considered of the lowest priority, and was mainly a way to provide a stipend for students who had not yet secured research grants. Since that’s the lot we find ourselves in, I think it’s critical to learn to communicate with others despite their accent. After all, it is likely that, upon graduating, a lot of these students will encounter similar accents in the workplace if they remain in science.

Or, in other words, what everyone else said.

Many Americans leave their high schools ill prepared for college. They will get into the very bad habit of trying to mention everything including contradictory things in the hope of nailing whatever the Professor was looking for as an answer. When I saw answer like that, I would not give credit. And, yes, the students complained.

Aren’t these poor whiners going to encounter real live human beings in the real world as their colleagues, bosses, clients, partners…and perhaps those human beings just might have accents? Suck it up, lazy college kids- quit expecting your education to be spoon fed to you, and accept the fact that you might have to translate something said by a foreign-accented TA to terms comprehensible to you, on top of trying to learn. oh, waah for you… it all further enables the apathy and laziness.

I’m trying to restrain myself here, but there are many educators in our family and I just think complaining to a teacher when the student themself is not taking advantage of the educational opportunities available is setting a bad behavioral trend of deluded self-entitlement. -Like these brats deserve an A just for showing up??

agh. now I sound like my mom.

A few years ago I heard a paper at an Asian American Studies conference that dealt with this issue. The researcher had found that when a group of students believed that a passage was being read by a Chinese American, they reported lower comprehension, and perhaps more important, they scored lower on comprehension tests, compared to a control group.

If anybody knows of similar research, and can provide links, it would be interesting …

If you’re talking about a projectile aimed at a human, that’s not far off Anyhow, afte my time at Berkeley I’d gladly take incomprehensible TA’s in exchange for professors who are good teachers. The one math prof whose clarity I loved used my note of appreciation (well after grades were released) as a job reference Sadly, his teaching was much better than my grade.

Cough cough, I don’t mean to be snotty, but I’ve been told, at other top tier research schools, by several people including a Nobel laureate, that Berkeley is generally regarded as having less grade inflation than most when it comes to the sciences.

At large research universities, education is self-service anyway, accent or no accent

Absolutely true. But I have to say my undergraduate education (at Berkeley, in physics) was very, very strongly influenced and serviced by top notch graduate students. When I wonder “what might have been” had I gone to a liberal arts college, I’m always struck by the gaping hole that would have been left without dozens of talented, smart, warm grad students to teach me, counsel me, encourage me, help me with my homework, inspire me with their research, and caution me with their woes. I’m a little biased because a lot of these people are still some of my best and closest friends in the world, but that just goes to show you the extent to which they took a strong and positive interest in my education. At least three of them were double majors in English, so that should give you some idea about their communications skills. Casting my memory back, I only ever had one TA who didn’t have an absolutely great command of English–it was a little painful to hear him say over and over again, “force = mass time laceration! Calculate the laceration!” He was adaquate besides that.

I just thought I’d put some counter anecdotal evidence out there. The problem fundamentally boils down to a shortage in the pipeline starting as early as middle school and high school. If middle schoolers aren’t tracked into Algebra they may not make it to Calculus; if high schoolers don’t take Calculus in high school they can find a way to avoid it in college. If college students stay away from the hard courses there’s no one to apply to grad school. Mean while in China the government sponsors GRE workshops that pretty much eat up the higher percentiles; and we all know how much experience our Indian cousins have at taking exams. Professors need warm bodies to fill their labs and will get them where they can. Everythign else equal, they certainly don’t prefer foreign students–they’re much more expensive to fund at the graduate level. So part of the problem is that American students are, on the whole, a bit lazier and less well prepared then they should be. But another part of the problem is that research universities are always going to pick their graduate students based on research expectations, not teaching ability, and are always going to use those same graduate students to teach basic classes until they’re funded. You can gripe and moan about that, or you can work with it, taking advantage of it where it helps you, and finding alternatives of it when it works against you.

And there are plenty of alternatives. I took that same freshman chemistry class with those same premeds. Right off the top of my head I can tell her what to do. Freshman chemistry at Berkeley always, always has grouped office hours, where you can go get help from another TA, not your own. If you live in the dorms there are tutors in those dorms for classes like Chemistry. You can also use the Student Learning Center for free. I don’t know if it’s still active, but if there’s a student branch of the American Chemistry society, there are often juniors and seniors on hand to help out. Not to mention that freshman chemistry often has associate TAs–seniors who are working on an education minor or somesuch–and they also hold office hours.

Don’t get me wrong. Berkeley’s incredibly hard, and whipped me many many times. There are a lot of things I’d like to change about it. But this does seem a bit whiny.

If I hadn’t read the book and kept up with the work, that might have confused me.

But I read the book and kept up with the work, and made an A in the class. The accent was not so much of a barrier. I feel very little sympathy for a student who gets a C and blames it on her TA’s accent.

Now if the TA did not understand or speak enough English to get the ideas across, THAT I can understand. However, don’t all international students have to take and pass the TOEFL to even get admitted to grad school here?

Abhi’s right about the grade inflation though. As an education professional, let me say that it is ridiculous – and ubiquitous. There’s a lot of students who actually believe that by forking over thousands of dollars of tuition money, they deserve an A, or at the least, a B. The concept of actually having to study and work for that A don’t even play in. Don’t take my word for it though.