International students: how to teach them alongside native speakers

What is the greatest way to assist overseas college students in their understanding knowledge? Photograph: Neil McAllister / Alamy/Alamy

As I stood with a professorial colleague outdoors a coffee store on our London campus 1 November morning, a group of Chinese students spotted me and ran in our course. Each and every took off 1 glove and threw it at my feet. They then picked them up and ran away waving and giggling. They had each and every ‘thrown down the gauntlet’.

In their 1st term at an English university, these students had been beginning to comprehend Shakespearean English. The preceding day I had taught them approaches of understanding English idioms and metaphors, like the casting off of a single ‘gauntlet’. Useful demonstrations, I have identified, operate properly when explaining unfamiliar phrases.

Overseas students face a variety of issues when they arrive in the Uk, not least in the knowing of English idioms. In distinct, the prevalence of continual assessment and student presentations can put them underneath considerable pressure to execute as nicely as native speakers.

They have all undergone tests to assess their capabilities prior to arrival, and most acquire added assist with the language following they arrive, but occasionally the language – just like the environment – can be quite specialised and new to them. A little added encouragement and tailored support on our part, as lecturers, can go a prolonged way.

College students coming to the Uk to research English literature are, of program, only a little number of those who arrive in the country. But the query of how greatest to aid overseas college students in their understanding experience, how to educate them alongside native speakers, is the two an essential and a timely one particular.

According to the Higher Training Statistics Agency’s most recent figures, international college students are steadily on the rise in the Uk: numbering 435,230 in 2011-twelve (an increase of 2% on the previous year).

In 2012, China topped the ten non EU nations sending the highest amount of college students to the Uk, with 78,715 college students studying at British universities at graduate and postgraduate level (compared with India, in second spot, sending 29,900 college students).

By far the most popular subjects studied by international college students in the United kingdom are enterprise and administrative scientific studies (36% of complete student numbers) and engineering and technology (32%). The general increase in numbers can be observed on both sides of the Atlantic.

In excess of the previous few years I have been studying at Harvard University and observed the increase in college students arriving from China.

My time here has enabled me to discuss pedagogy with non-Uk lecturers, including these from other countries outdoors of North America. Comprehending how students are taught prior to their arrival in the Uk has proved invaluable and enabled me to see more plainly the teaching approaches and culturally-grounded modes of discussion with which they are acquainted.

Prof Huiawei Kan is a going to fellow at Harvard, from Shanghai University, exactly where she teaches English. Our mutual educating interests have led to some fruitful discussions about pedagogical approaches to teaching students for whom English is a second language.

“When I educate undergraduates in China (including those preparing for research abroad), we generally discover from textbooks with various components reflecting distinct variations of written English (formal and informal),” says Huiawei Kan. “They also get to read periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and even some novels and poetry.”

Kan adds: “For listening and speaking, by way of example, I motivate them to listen to the BBC, and to record themselves speaking the exact same phrases, in buy to assess their model with the authentic and, in the long run, to increase their pronunciation and intonation.”

She also lays wonderful emphasis on conversational discussion in class: “They will inevitably have to examine their function with English-speaking peers during their time abroad. It is important that they have each the resources and the self-confidence to do this.”

Our analysis demonstrates how self-confidence can falter on arrival, because, till that moment, speaking English has been minor more than an academic workout. Suddenly it is their entire planet. It is essential that lecturers assist in this transition period.

Teaching students for whom English is a 2nd language can be a hugely rewarding expertise, resulting in a cultural finding out exchange. Harvard is able to select students whose skills are at the quite apex of candidates, but not all universities can entice students of such a large linguistic and academic caliber. Some college students will want much more help with the linguistic challenges faced in the course of their degree, notably during their initial 12 months. As a consequence, lecturers need help also, to ensure that they are conscious of prospective problems and how to recognize them.

In the Uk, support requirements to be highlighted as accessible the two to students and lecturers. As numbers of global students improve, so need to the entry to – and emphasis on – this kind of sources. A lot of universities presently offer you personnel improvement courses on teaching overseas students, and attendance need to be encouraged.

It is also critical that lecturers are encouraged to supply feedback on their experiences, in the knowledge that their observations are listened to, acted on, and examples of great practice promoted. It is only when the two students and university employees are completely supported that we can allow worldwide students to flourish inside our greater education program.

Elizabeth Evenden is a Marie Curie Global Outgoing Fellow in the history division at Harvard University and senior lecturer in English literature at Brunel University – stick to her on Twitter @codexhistoria.

Huiawei Kan is a visiting fellow in the classics department at Harvard University and associate professor of English at Shanghai University

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International students: how to teach them alongside native speakers