Bridging academic language barriers at Marymount

By: Plator Gashi

Photo: MU International Club Facebook page

“A lot of [international students] struggle,” said Nana Marfo, a senior originally from Ghana, referring to the challenges that foreign students face regarding English language education at Marymount University. According to recent data by the International Student Services (ISS), Marfo is one of the 459 international students enrolled at Marymount as of fall 2017, the highest number the school has ever seen.

Marfo, who first came to Marymount in the fall of 2010, says that non-native English-speaking students face problems in the classroom. Although he is fluent in English, considering that English is the official language of Ghana, he says that he has noticed this trend in class as well as out of it.

“A lot of them come from a foreign language speaking country, some of them may have had English language training in their schools, even though English is not a language of instruction there, but a lot of them who didn’t have that, they actually do have a lot of problems,” Marfo said.

As a requirement for admission, Marymount requires all international students to submit a standardized test report from either the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), SAT, or ACT to prove proficiency in English. Among universities in the United States, the required score for the TOEFL varies between 61 and 100, while Marymount has a minimum requirement of 79 (from a total of 120).

Aline Orfali, director of the ISS who has been working at Marymount for the past 21 years, says that she hears about the difficulties that students face more from faculty than the students themselves.

“Students feel like they can manage, but the faculty sometimes are concerned that the students are not prepared well enough to do academic English; they are more concerned,” Orfali said.

There is a lot of conversation on campus to find ways for supporting international students pertaining to language and beyond.

“There are some studies in language acquisition that the Associate Dean of Education, Shannon Melideo, was mentioning that show that it takes a much longer time and a different kind of curriculum that helps the student acquire the language in the format of a culture,” Orfali said. “We are trying to look at different creative ways to support the students whether we do ESL (English as a Second Language), English 101 along with a Discover course, or how can we better prepare our students.”

There are specific cultural problems that international students have to deal with in the classroom.

“Intellectual property is very different from culture to culture and in terms of individualistic societies and group societies, working together or working individually, sometimes some students have difficulties grasping that,” she said.

Despite emphasizing that the ISS does a lot of programming for international students, she says that many students fail to participate due to academic priorities.

“The ISS is partnering with the academic side to try to incorporate this cultural support in a classroom setting because, for instance, we have orientation but only half our students came to orientation,” Orfali said. “Students are stretched, if it’s not a class, they have to prioritize what they have in terms of importance that week, but if we can insert our expertise in cultural competence as part of the English 101 and Discover class, and students have to be in those classes, it might be a more practical way to do it than asking the students to go to an additional thing.”

There are different reasons why the classroom setting can become difficult both for students and faculty members.

“Sometimes there are cases when faculty members may be having a large number of one population in their classes, and that is something that is beneficial neither for the faculty member, nor for the students in the class,” said Orfali. “Students opt in or out of certain faculty members, so sometimes it comes from that place.”

Dr. Hollynd Karapetkova, Department Chair of Literature and Languages, said that there are a lot of challenges in both writing and the literature environment, but adds that oftentimes the problem is not only linguistic.

“It’s not just the language, right, it is also the culture, and so even students who come from English-speaking countries like Great Britain or Australia, they can sometimes struggle too, culturally,” she said.

According to Karapetkova, styles of in-class argumentation also prove to be an issue with international students.

“For example the way that Americans make arguments, is really weird, we’re really direct, you tell us what you’re going to tell us, then you explain it in detail, and you tell us what you told us,” she said. “Many cultures don’t make arguments that way, right. They sort of wind around, people talk and talk and talk and bam, then it kind of circles in, and you don’t get the main point till the very end.”

She says that cultural differences are also apparent in approaches towards thinking itself.

“And then we have a large number of students too who come from cultures where you shouldn’t have your own ideas, you shouldn’t have your own thoughts, unless maybe you get a PhD, then you’re allowed to think for yourself, so you really expect to memorize and spit back information, you’re not expected to have original thoughts,” Karapetkova said. “And, this is not good or bad, neither is better than the other, they’re just totally different systems of thinking, and education, and thinking about education.”

As stated by Karapetkova, there are a number of preparatory classes that international students can take to improve their language proficiency, although some of them are not mandatory.

“We strongly recommend international students who are coming here as freshmen that they take a class called English 100, and if their skills are not great we recommend they take English 90 as well. So English 90 is kind of a college reading class, and English 100 is a preparatory class for English 101, which is our basic writing class that everybody takes,” she said.

According to her, changes in class curricula and manner of instruction can help international students become more successful.

“So we’re piloting a separate section of that course [English 101] that’s designed specifically to help those students because, they need things like more repetition, specific skills, they need more student models, they need to see what good student work looks like,” Karapetkova said. “So the plan is for the ELL section…they will do the same assignments, but they will be more streamlined, so they’ll be more repeating similar skills.”

Karapektova herself instructs differently if there are international students in her class.

“When I have a class where there’s a large international presence, absolutely I teach it differently. Patience is important and just sensitivity to the needs of your students, but that’s something any good teacher is going to have, or should,” she said.

Struggling with language in the classroom is a source of frustration for many students who otherwise do well.

“I have students who are successful in their home country and they come here and they’re frustrated especially in their writing courses, they may be doing really well on other courses but they’re really struggling in their writing or their literature courses, they’re not on an even level playing field, they don’t have the same background and preparation as other students in the class. And it’s not fair but that’s the fact,” she said.

Daren Hodson, a tutoring coordinator and writing specialist at the Center for Teaching and Learning says that his department offers many outlets for international students to improve their language skills.

“What we do offer is tutoring that’s tailored for international students, one of the things we try to do is go to where a lot of the international students are, which is over in Gerard. So we have tutors over there who are available for international students, the idea is to try to bring it as close to them,” Hodson said.

Depending on the culture that the students come from, they might not be acquainted to the possibility of tutoring.

“We’re trying to get a message out that this is something that we have and they should take full advantage of it because it can be really overwhelming, if you have a class that has a lot of reading in it, the reading can be overwhelming, just the fact that now everything in your life is in English and you go home with a huge headache every night and you have to concentrate so hard,” he said. “And then also sometimes it’s not only the amount of reading that can be problematic, but also the level of nuance in reading, so typical things like a statistics class where one tiny little word can mean the difference between using one approach or another approach.”

The faculty can do a lot to improve the academic environment for international students.

“If the university is committed to having a larger percentage of international students, I think that it becomes an issue for faculty too to think about, it could be something as simple as textbooks, most come in international editions, also the kinds of examples that are used so it’s not so culturally specific, because there’s the language use but there’s also this whole cultural issue and trying to make sense of that,” Hodson said.

He explained that there is a continued effort to focus on the issues of international students.

“There hasn’t been anything specific, except in terms of workshops and discussion with faculty about this issue, so just this week in fact, we talked at school meetings with the faculty from the Arts and Sciences, what approaches, what things we can think about when dealing with international students in the classroom; there is a conversation going on.”