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Ditch the island mentality
4 September 2008
British academics must stop being monoculturalists and embrace the influx of foreign students, says William Burns
Earlier this summer, it was reported that British universities gave degrees to overseas students whose English was far short of fluent. The newspapers, liberal and conservative, blamed the university administrators who had got us so hooked on overseas fees that we now had to sell certificates to the pathologically stupid.
Or perhaps, it was said, the real culprits were the backstreet visa agents who recruit a motley bunch of idiotic foreigners with faked English language test scores and ghosted personal statements.
The stories came from anonymous academics, who did not have the balls to give their actual names in print.
All the same, the mind boggles if we really are handing out fake degrees, and for the following reason: when the vice-chancellor takes home £300,000 a year while the masters student from Guangzhou hands over his family's life savings in fees and lives on instant noodles, one has to wonder if we haven't invented a new, more convenient, form of colonialism - minus the Delhi belly and mosquito bites.
For me, however, the media debate was actually an object lesson in what I would call the Nuremberg Defence, otherwise known as passing the buck.
Let's be honest here; we, the foot soldiers of the higher education system, the lecturers, tutors and supervisors, are the real reason why our overseas students cannot put a sentence together.
I think we need to shoulder the blame manfully and start giving them real value for money.
To begin, we should adapt our teaching to overseas students' needs by putting them, at least for some of their lectures, in different classrooms from their colleagues who speak English fluently.
That way, we can take their language difficulties fully into account by, for example, giving them subject-specific composition exercises. They should be able to practise speaking out loud without the fear of more assertive Anglophone students, or even staff, jumping in or ridiculing them.
There is an attitude problem in our ranks, especially towards overseas students who don't have white skin.
It seems to be assumed that they will collude, plagiarise and fake as if this is a cultural norm in their own country. Yet how many of us have an intimate knowledge of, say, the Chinese educational culture?
I think one of the reasons why we adopt such a thoughtless attitude is because British academics - particularly in the blinkered world of the natural sciences - are monocultural beings who cannot understand what it's like not to be British.
I always feel depressed when I hear colleagues moan about Chinese students because they don't talk in English to each other. If I meet an Englishman in Beijing, do I speak Chinese to him?
We regularly need to step outside our Anglo-Saxon Green Zone by, for example, attending an elementary foreign language course. To get maximum benefit, it must be a boot camp, say in Arabic or Chinese, that will remind us about the trials of dealing with unfamiliar words, but also with an unfamiliar culture and way of thinking.
It sounds a small thing, but the effect could be big. For without empathy, what hope do we have of teaching anything to an overseas student?
I have been learning Chinese for two years - I need it for my research - and I spent most of the last decade learning French, mainly for fun. I constantly use my experiences as a learner of languages to relate to overseas students who come to me for help.
In a decade's time, the current fuss over standards may look like growing pains in the development of a globalised higher education system. As we get more used to engaging with non-native speakers, we're going to learn about their needs and get better at teaching them.
We should always be aware of how long it takes to learn English. Sending students for occasional remedial lessons at the university's language centre won't do much good without follow-up. So, yes, we will have to spend more time and money - but then, we're charging exorbitant fees anyway.
One thing is for sure: we need to cherish the efforts of overseas students who are trying so hard to communicate in our mother tongue. University teachers who cannot adapt to this new way of thinking should not be in the classroom.
William Burns teaches scientific writing at the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, University of Queensland, Australia.
Readers' comments
COMMENT ON COMMENT BY WILLIAM BURNS (TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION, 4 SEPTEMBER 2008) ENTITLED “DITCH THE ISLAND MENTALITY” <p>It is of interest that Burns should ask how many of us are familiar with the Chinese educational culture. Perhaps he ought to have asked whether or not any familiarity with it would do academics much good. I myself have been teaching Chinese university graduates and senior year students for the equivalent of seven semesters in central China. <p>Burns, who neglects to say whether he has direct experience of actually teaching Chinese students in China, implies that he would not speak to an Englishman in Beijing in Chinese merely because they happened to be there. Is this another case of one Anglo-Saxon believing that a white man must necessarily speak English just because he is white? <p>For all I know, not all Oriental people in Beijing may necessarily be Chinese; they could be Japanese, couldn’t they? However, the chances are that he and the expatriate (my preferred term) are not necessarily undertaking any course in Chinese that would require them to ensure that they stick to a level commensurate with being broadly intellectual. Asking local people the price of local delicacies is hardly intellectually taxing, even if we tutors say that those foreign students desiring to come to Anglophone countries should, in any event, do all they can to ensure that they keep up their English. <p>Part of the problem, which Burns appears to have conveniently omitted in his comment, is that, from my observations, Chinese students are hardly ever taught how to use language properly, and they are barely ever encouraged to use it in the classroom partly because many so-called “teachers” of English lack the confidence to speak the language themselves. When my students first come on to their pre-master’s preparatory programme, virtually all of them do not want to say anything. For these students, therefore, this “island mentality” that Burns speaks of is inevitable; for them, acting somewhat insularly is a natural act. <p>Notwithstanding the fact that Burns wants to focus on the attitudes of academics towards foreign students rather than the converse, one wonders whether adopting some of his ideas can really work in practice. Burns mentions segregating students into monolingual groups in order to help them make the transition from their own educational culture to that which they wish to enter. However, this would render such people no more than guinea pigs in quasi-random controlled trials. Would, then, conducting classes in the students’ own language while in a university (say) whose normal language of instruction is a completely different one actually act as some kind of placebo in which the students are made to believe that they are making the transition? <p>Indeed, I have noticed that pre-master’s programmes are springing up like wild flowers in practically all British universities, yet one wonders if the motives for so doing are more concerned with generating much needed revenue as with whether they really do want to help the diffident students improve their English before going on to do whatever course they (or, rather, their financial sponsors) want (them) to do. <p>Burns’ idea that some student in Guangzhou must hand over his family’s life savings and still live on instant noodles is incredibly over-simplistic, even if it is meant to serve as a general example. Some of my students’ parents may have more money than they care to give away to beggars, but that does not mean that instant noodles constitute the diet that their offspring live on. Far from it! The students have their posteriors on seats in our halls of learning because, for the most part, their parents want them to be there. I have already had the personal experience of having to deal with a very angry young man because he claimed he had been “forced” to come onto my programme in order to further his parents’, not his own, ambitions. He left the course at the end of the first term. <p>As my colleagues can testify, no matter how many times one tells them to do something that is designed to increase their chances of success, they will (nearly) always slip back into their own comfortable ways with their peers who act as props for their own attitudes and acts. After all, social relationships in many foreign countries, not just China, are very important and a citizen of such a one is therefore not going to risk being alienated by rocking the boat and actually doing what we say if it means being thought of as thinking and different “like us”! <p>It is all very well for Burns to say that Anglo-Saxons should start to embrace the cultural diversity of foreign students, yet the fact is that this is a two-way matter. Can we as tutors start reasonably assuming that foreign students will automatically embrace the cultural diversities of Anglophone countries just because they are located in them? Sadly, that is a naïve assumption that we should all be aware of. As they say, you can take the person out of the country, but not the country out of the person. I am no more Chinese just because I have been in China for nearly seven whole years, so we cannot expect foreigners to think and act like “us” just because they are in our countries pursuing our qualifications! <p>CHRISTOPHER CROSSLEY is a Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes on the Pre-Master’s Programme at a private education training centre in Wuhan City in the People’s Republic of China
How about this for an idea: <P>Universities develop partnerships with overseas universities, particularly in the regions where most foreign students come from. <P>Allow international students to complete answers to tests and assignments in their own language and have academics in the field from the partnersip universities mark tests etc. <P>There will be obvious issues associated with this, but if the right people and universities are targetted, then we can assess the difference between a lack of language skills and those people who just haven't done the study needed to learn and pass the courses. <P>Research Fellow <br>Charles Darwin University <br>School for Social and Policy Research <br>Gambling Research Unit
It is all very well saying we should help foreign students to improve their English (don't forget that many of the natives of these shores also need the same help. When I do this for my students, by correcting their written work for errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation, I am told that I am not supposed to do that and to focus on the content (assuming, of course, that I can make sense of it in the first place). <P>Of course, what my idiotic line manager forgets, is that employers expect university graduates to be able to string together coherent English both verbally and in written form. By not correcting, I am not helping my students learn Business English or how to survive in a world that expects them to be able to compile reports in an instant. <P>Stop blaming the foot soldiers. We are compelled to do as we are told or face the penalties, which can be great.