English skills vital for classroom

Some recitations are doomed to fail. Too often, it is because the teaching assistant barely speaks English.

Penn has a distinct international flavor.

If you're not from New Jersey or Long Island, there is a good chance that you are from halfway across the world.

As Penn President Amy Gutmann's trip to India last month demonstrates, Penn is trying to embrace the global age.

This is a worthwhile effort for no other reason than because it makes "So, where are you from?" conversations much more interesting.

However, there are clear pitfalls.

Penn lacks an adequate system of determining whether international students are proficient in English.

Even worse, foreign students who have significant difficulties with English have a very limited support system to help them.

This lack of support became apparent last semester for writing tutors at the Penn Writing Center.

"We became a kind of [English as a Second Language] program. ... More and more of the appointments were taken up by ESL students coming from graduate schools," said Valerie Ross, the director of the Critical Writing Program.

The problem was not that international graduate students were coming for help with written assignments -- the amount of help that many of these graduate students needed was beyond the means and the mandate of the program.

Several international students had trouble communicating with their tutors in English.

Many of them were also bringing written work that was "really incomprehensible," as described by one Writing Center tutor, who was not allowed to give her name because of confidentiality agreements.

The Writing Center was simply not designed to help "ESL students who needed help with the English language. When you're translating word by word, ... it's painstaking," Ross said.

Over the course of the tutoring sessions, many of these struggling students talked about the hardships they were undergoing.

"Many felt isolated and deficient in ways that they probably never felt before in their lives," another Writing Center tutor said. "It was even difficult for them to express those feelings because their mastery of English just wasn't that good."

According to Ross, undergraduate students tend to be quite proficient in English.

The problem appears to be most prevalent among graduate students, who can become TAs for undergraduate courses.

While TAs are given an English-language crash course, it is clearly not adequate.

The primary recourses for struggling international students are costly ESL programs administered by the College of General Studies and International House, which is not affiliated with the University.

Given the high costs of these programs, many graduate students, struggling with their English, hoped that the Writing Center could help them.

This just wasn't the case.

Ironically, many of the international students who visited the Writing Center were students at the Graduate School of Education learning how to teach English as a Second Language.

Admissions departments across the University rely on the Test of English as a Foreign Language to determine the English proficiency of many international applicants.

However, as one Writing Center tutor noted, "Passing the TOEFL [doesn't] translate into being able to fit in socially or fully participate in a classroom experience."

Penn must either put more resources into ascertaining the English proficiency of international applicants or provide more resources for helping them once they arrive.

The University is fortunate enough to attract a diverse group of students from across the world. Yet, this is also an English-language institution.

And while we embrace diversity, it is useless if we can't even understand each other.

Eric Obenzinger is a junior history major from New York. Quaker Shaker appears on Wednesdays.

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