Poor English -foreign students

[mids2019]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mzdejg1d3o

I have to confess I am seeing the end result of this problem with M.Sc. students entering the workforce with a level of English such that academic reports require significant edits to make them acceptable.

The employees are incredibly intelligent especially mathematically but the poor English is something that requires resource to address and you simply can't bring the subject up in a PDR without accusations of racism. I can't simply say as a development objective to improve Englsih as there isn't time in a demanding career and it becomes increasingly difficult to learn foreign languages as you age.

I am glad this subject is being raised as it does undermine HE institutions in my opinion.

@poetryandwine that's a real shame. Wanting to help people understand and communicate in the language of where you're choosing to develop your career? I think it's so not what discrimination is about. Why is it so taboo? It's almost like people are so used to communicating online that they don't even see the value of language as much as they used to?

My Mum was an English for Business teacher for about 20 years. The place she worked was very successful but then went bust.
It was the norm for employers to send their non UK born staff to these classes (if they needed) and they were all really happy to be there.
It feels like those days are long gone.

One of my DC did an MA at the Royal College of Art last year. Very high proportion of Chinese students. Many of whom could not speak English at all or communicated with the staff via apps. I presume they hired translators or tutors to explain the actual work.

I agree with all the comments above as we now have someone on a graduate training scheme where written report work often has grammatical anomalies , wrong use of tense etc. I correct the errors as it is the correct thing to do but we are faced with possibly having to do this for his entire career unless the employee significantly increases mastery of the English language in his early 30s while pursuing a demanding career.

This is where appropriate AI programmes could help.

My experience of non-native English speakers (and my own experience in the other language I haltingly speak) is that their passive comprehension is generally good, but they are nervous about speaking, and writing academic English is difficult.

Judicious and acknowledged use of appropriate AI could be a game changer here.

I am always aware how lucky I am to be a native English speaker; it's a hard language to learn. And we are lucky that because of the old British Empire, and the new American empire, English is becoming a lingua franca.

It's difficult to discern the real concerns from a kind of knee jerk racism, particularly when my university (and others, I expect) automatically requires Indian and Nigerian & Kenyan students to have IELTS test results, when they are native English speakers, educated in English. That is pretty racist ...

@YellowAsteroid

I think your response shows why I am so hesitant to comment on English quality as a white British native. It would be so easy for the criticism of grammar to be misconstrued and s complaint made on the basis the same criticism isn't in general levelled at British natives and I fo see the optics of this.

The trust is very wary of people using poor communication skills at interview as a reason yo discount foreign applicants so this really is a minefield (and I just am too old to tread on mines!)

You need another esols on the interview panels then probably.

@YellowAsteroid

Point taken.

In general in my experience with health care at least it would take someone extremely brave or secure to state someone's English is insufficient for the reasons you stated

I expect that advice to me will be to continually support the staff member through revising work and clarifying any potential miscommunication.

@mids2019 - no criticism of you was intended - apols if you inferred that. Just that I think there are tools we can use to help non-native English speakers, so that we can retain talent - I'm always aware that the Chinese students I teach are very clever & extraordinarily hard-working. They have to be to be sponsored to study here, and a lot of families put a lot of resource into one child studying in the West. I have great admiration for them.

But yes, the apparently poor English is a problem. I don't think it's as poor as we assume (passive comprehension is often not noticed), but there are ways to assist. AI is one of them.

My dad was Eastern European. He was given the chance of a good promotion, but declined it. His passive knowledge of English was native speaker level, but his active knowledge wasn't as good - although he could communicate well verbally, he knew that he'd have reports to write and his English wasn't quite up to the mark.

Obviously Dh wasn’t in the health field but he would not see “talent” as someone who could not communicate effectively. It’s a very narrow concept of talent to just look at academics and gloss over other competences. In many fields, colleagues do need to understand each other, especially in critical decision-making. Therefore talent only goes so far if it’s purely academic. In the world where employees need to use accurate language, that skill must be a measure of talent as well as academics.

Having lived in Nigeria for many years I can understand why this may be the case. Whilst there are some high end schools there, a lot of the school teachers use pidgen English, which is not the same as being educated in English. See below from Wikipedia (awaits flaming from other posters for quoting Wiki!) Pidgen English is nothing like English, honestly, and it takes a while to learn. However, I am not at all saying that lots of Nigerian students don't speak perfect English - I know that they do. I'm just trying to explain why this requirement may have come about.

From Wiki: "Nigerian Pidgin is commonly used throughout the country, but it has not been granted official status. Pidgin breaks the communication barrier between different ethnic groups and it is widely spoken throughout Nigeria.[7]
In 2011, Google launched a search interface in Pidgin.[8] In 2017, BBC started BBC News Pidgin to provide services in Pidgin.[2]"

Good point

I don't know what to say about this, other than I am so sorry. Of course you need to be able to communicate accurately with your specialist in these circumstances. You're absolutely not being racist to raise these very real and troubling communication concerns. How awful and worrying for you. I'm so sorry.

You're right. People are too scared to challenge.

Throughout a four-year degree tutors did not (appear to) challenge the lack of English of one of my peers. Anecdotally from fellow students who were on the same placements and from experience, all placements struggled with her lack of English. Early on in first-year her lack of English meant she failed to understand a patient's condition or to communicate properly with the patient when moving her. She stood on the woman's necrotic foot from which the woman was dying. The woman lashed out, although it looked more like a reflexive jump/flail of the arms. Anyway, student said it was a racist attack. I refused to be on later placements with her because she constantly pestered me and couldn't understand simple things. Finally, her assessor on her management placement said she was not safe to pass. She undertook remedial weeks at the same placement but the nurse assessor maintained she was unsafe to care for patients. Probably a fear of a backlash and the £20k in annual fees got her almost all the way to end of the course and the point of registration.

I mentioned this on another thread a while ago and got flamed but it is a massive problem for all my friends who work in the sector. DC is studying music and most of the continental European students on her course have worked hard to get their Cambridge certificate and really resent that the Chinese students come in unable to understand basic things like - "lets go from bar number x ". Its clear these students have not taken the English exam themselves. Most of them do then go back to China so probably don't feel an incentive to improve their English whereas the European and south Asian students tend to think that the opportunity to improve their language skills is a bonus to studying here.

I have also had this when mentoring a student on a PGCE course. They were unable to use past and present tenses correctly and plurals were always missing. They were not able to communicate with the children in full correct sentences.

They were from an Asian country then did a business degree in Canada. They had no support with the development of English speaking and listening skills but their writing was ok when they had time to spell and grammar check it.

When I addressed my concerns as they were supposed to be building up to 80% teaching time including phonics, they were removed. I was accused of discrimination which was hard to deal with as I have had and passed many teaching students over the years.

I have also had this when mentoring a student on a PGCE course. They were unable to use past and present tenses correctly and plurals were always missing. They were not able to communicate with the children in full correct sentences.

Evidence from MN posts suggest that grammatical ignorance isn't unique to non-native English speakers ...

Why have we allowed the word discrimination to be used when students or employees are patently not good enough in terms of their skills? If we need clear and accurate communication to pass a course, be effective at work including talking to others or writing English accurately, it is not discrimination to set tests and observe some people don’t meet the standards required. They simply are not good enough on fairly applied critters which are demonstrably needed for the career or job. Since when is that the employers’ fault or discrimination?

I think many Chinese students do go home but the Chinese students DD1 was friendly with at school are all still here. They all have great careers and speak English fluently. The big issue is arriving for HE I think.

@YellowAsteroid I am sure not but I was just describing what happened recently to me regarding this issue. I really felt for the student who described studying for her degree and being left to get on with it because her English was 'ok'. She was really distressed about how her English level was fine for her business degree in Canada but not for teaching in a primary school here. Apparently her school qualifications counted as equivalent to GCSE English but she really wasn't working or performing at that level.

Many schools are now giving skills tests to applicants for teaching and support positions. I had to do a year 6 maths and reading comp paper for a teaching job recently.

@Expletive (love your username!) - “This is sometimes a problem and in my experience of SSLC meetings, students are not shy in complaining.”

DD hasn’t managed this yet. She asked to speak to the equivalent of her form tutor (sorry, I can’t remember the actual name!) and he said he could only help her with welfare issues, not course queries. She’s made two appointments to speak to the lecturer concerned in her office hours - both times the appointment has just been cancelled. She didn’t want to complain - just to understand what was required of them for the group project, as no-one understands. It’s pretty frustrating!

IELTS Listening and Reading are far too easy - plenty of high school students in European Union countries get 9s in both of these. IELTS Writing is only difficult if you haven't learned and practised the technical skills to meet the mark scheme. Plenty of graduate native speakers who take IELTS (often for fun/to see how to help their children/students) do badly on the Writing element because they haven't nailed the mark scheme. The Speaking element is barely any better - native speakers who use more nuanced language get marked down for not being literal.

Are some foreign students grasping more than they can handle in wish to make a life for themselves in the UK? They may know in their hearts their English isn't great but will be in denial of this as their wish to work and live in the UK is quite strong?

I think another thing that makes me reluctant to mark down for poor English is knowing that failing people could be detrimental both to the employee's career but even their whole life of they can't get jobs to extend a visa. It really reaches life changing stuff when it gets to employee level.

This is why I was hoping HE made the hard decisions but possibly because of finance staff are dissuaded from overly criticizing poor communication?

@mids2019 Can your organisation afford to carry such employees? Many smaller ones cannot. There’s simply not the spare hours to teach English in this way. Being scared of the outcome for the young person should not be ahead of what the job requires. Yes, they want to be here but other countries have jobs too. Unless you are desperate for people why are they not filtered out before you get them? Just seems poor practice all round.

Tizer

It's the NHS and yes to an extent. Performance managing staff due to poor English unless it constitutes an immediate patient would be looked on as discriminatory bullying ultimately.

@mids2019 I would have put money on it being the NHS! It’s becoming a world of its own with its own set of values. I think if it had to make money instead of spend it, it might have different views on recruitment and performance management. It’s not discriminatory or bullying to review performance based on a set of pre agreed competencies the employee should carry out. Obviously some coaching should be offered when lack of competence is identified but ultimately do you need the staff to read and write and speak English to a certain required level - or not? Why can private companies expect, and get, standards that meet their requirements?

I can't simply say as a development objective to improve Englsih as there isn't time in a demanding career and it becomes increasingly difficult to learn foreign languages as you age.

I have worked with (white male) European nationals and they have been given the development objective to improve their written and/or spoken English communication to enable them to work with others who are not technical. They have been offered and have taken up English courses. Some of their written work has never improved but to be fair some of the people I work with simply don't like writing documentation regardless of what languages they speak/write in are.

I have studied and worked with many foreign nationals. There are simply some people who don't mix with others and will stick with their country folk who speak the same language so they don't have to use English. This means they simply can't improve their English as they aren't using it at least 7 hours a day continuously. There as the ones who do will at least improve their spoken language significantly in a 6 month period regardless of age. Obviously you can work out which ones are kept on.