What should I recommend for a foreign student with problems on the country language?

Question

Later this week one of my undergrad classes have their first written test and one of the students is not from my country, and he said he's been having some problems both understanding my lectures and the recommended book

And now he desperatedly sent me an email asking for advice on what to do.

The thing is: I don't know what to recommend either... I never have this case before... What could I indicate/advice him that would help?

Answer 1

He needs to improve his language skills fast...

When I studied in France (and this was engineering, which means a different vocabulary), we watched tv, worked with our French colleagues (ie other students), we helped them with English and they helped us with French... Total Immersion was what we practiced - limiting our use of our mother tongue to increase the French as fast as possible.

We also did evenings where we provided food & beer / wine to increase opportunities for conversation as well as getting our work checked.

Also, watching France V England at rugby was good for a laugh... :)

Are there any courses in the institution he could enrol in? but these courses need to be accelerated...

Answer 2

First thing first, I'd suggest focusing on what you can do to minimize the impact to the student. For example, what can you do to lower the impact to his GPA: is your course an elective/required course? And has he passed the date to either drop or withdraw? Having him dropping the course, and focusing on language learning for another semester before (re)taking your course may be the best for him.

If he will have to stay in your course, then do an inventory of what you can supply. For example, how much time, man power (including TA), and resource that you can allocate to help this person. Here are some measures I have seen people doing:

1. Allow the student to record your lecture.
2. Make your lecture outline/script available. Or make some of the Q&A scheme available so that he can get a sense on the style.
3. Provide a longer duration of time for tests/examinations. (Based on policy you or he may have to file for accommodation, check with your school.)
4. Inform your TA about this, so that your TA can use simpler wording with him if necessary.
5. Be somewhat conscious about your speech: minimize the use of i) local colloquiums, idioms, or jokes ii) somewhat indirect expressions like sarcasms.

Informally, you may also encourage the student to identify some textbooks that are in his language as a reference. It may also be prudent to first see how he did in the test this week first. He may be confusing the language understanding and the content understanding; or he could have some worrier personality that is aggravated by the looming test.

If it turned out to be really language barrier, programmatically you can also consider the followings:

1. Check with the admission/student office of the program and see if they can connect the student with language service. Some of them may include paid lanuguage tutors, editors, etc.
2. Connect the student with any kind of student life organization in the school, which may have resources on activities like workshops, peer-writing groups, social hours, etc.
3. Contact the student's academic advisor, so that he/she may be able to suggest some relevant language courses for the student.

My advice is that, be professional and diligent in helping, but do not take this as your personal responsibility. Making your course understandable to every non-native speaker is not the job. Remember he i) knowingly applied for the institute, and ii) had likely produced relevant language competency during the application process, so the lion share of the responsibility falls onto him and the admission. Time to time, a student with great language test score may not come with an equally good listening or speaking; so, if you detect that the student is unlikely to make it, you should suggest him to withdraw for now and come back when he's more ready.

Answer 3

I have this problem every year.

There are a few recommendations but in the end the student will have to put lots of effort into catching up on the language and you can not fix it for him. You can recommend:

• Language tandems (there are lots of options in social networks)
• Mobile phone apps for learning
• Maybe the university offers language courses?
• Private courses/classes
• 1 to 1 private language classes (most effective but expensive)
• Watch TV with subtitles in the language
• Taking the book you recommended and a dictionary and struggle the way through the pages. This will be really hard for the first few pages but after a few the words and phrases will start to repeat and it becomes easier.

Answer 4

I'm not sure you can tell the guy this, but if I were freely talking to the guy would advise him to get a your language speaking girlfriend (unless he is hitched). Drives your learning fast. Plus there are the added benefits.

In any case, the more he socializes with locals and gets himself out of the immigrant clique the better. Consider how kids dumped into a foreign land for the summer (sans parents, sans bilingual education) get up to speed just from playing with the other kids.

Of course the timeframe for this will not likely help with your class. Probably if all he cares about is your class, the most efficient thing would be just to get a textbook in his own language and use that as an accompaniement. If he reads it (and works problems) AHEAD of your lectures, he will have a much easier time since the content will be more familiar. [This is true even without a language difference...prereading makes lectures easier.]