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.

I’m doing an MSc at the moment. Out of about 100 students, 3 of us are English. They are lovely but it’s a bit weird sometimes. I haven’t noticed any communication problems but they don’t really talk to me.

Off topic but I left my NHS front line B6 job last year among others things because my team had gone from 100% western trained to 100% developing/third world trained. I'd say possibly only 15-20% of them could speak English to the extent needed to communicate with other colleagues, let alone confused, elderly patients.

The other reasons was their frighteningly poor technical skills....

However, it was made clear it was considered racist to bring any of these issues up. A recent independent 'culture change' investigation there made mention of this refusal to acknowledge glaring problems thus the inability to fix them.

I don't know who is testing them, but the standard has to rise. Many would claim to have been educated in English or even for it to be a primary language at home, but it's not an English we can understand, or they can effectively communicate in.

This post illustrates the problem.

Yes, many foreign students and staff have poor English. The problem is exacerbated by home students who are not much better.

I'm confused. It was the lecturer's English that DD struggled with. She couldn't follow his lectures. DD is English and has excellent communication skills.

I was speaking to my DD last night who was complaining she's doing a group project at uni with two Chinese students, who don't speak English.

They are doing a Speech and Language Therapy degree. How are they supposed to do their placements in schools and the NHS?

Can she speak to her lecturer about this?

I managed to get out of doing any graded group work by having polite conversations with my lecturers and only had to do group tasks in seminars which did not count to my grades.

Many home students wrongly assume their written English is excellent, but this is far from true. Poor writing skills are not limited to international students, which adds to the challenges faced by many universities.

Additionally, you are not in a position to evaluate your DD's communication skills when you make so many mistakes yourself.

Did you mean to be so rude @AquaLeader ?

👎🏻👎🏻

@AquaLeader please could you provide examples of my terrible writing.

"DD had a lecturer who was so difficult to understand she didn't chose his module for her second year."

Should have been choose.
I accept that.

My experience of working with overseas staff is that everyone struggles with everyone else's accent at first, then we all get used to it and are able to understand each other fine (most of the time)
It's not always as easy for the service users, though, unfortunately, but another member of staff is usually available to "translate"

@AquaLeader her written English on here does not mean her daughter's listening skills are shite. No one really writes properly on here.

We had lecturer 90% of class could not understand. I did purely because I was familiar with the accent a bit. Shame because it was also an interest subject.
I get her DD's complaint.

Also, it’s one thing being in a group of English speakers, of which some have poor writing skills; it’s a whole different ballgame being put in a group with people who cannot speak a word of English in an English university that you’re paying ££££ to attend.

Mine was a typo, but thanks for the support.

My written work is better than my typing skills - honestly.

This is an excellent point. Students who achieve on their IELTS or other English language exam to the standard for their degree programme may believe that this shows they have the necessary language skills for their course. They are entitled to do so, even if they know through informal channels that this is likely wrong.

We are focussed here on the drawbacks to Home students and later on to English speakers in the world of work. It is also unfair to accept huge tuition fees from students lacking the English language skills to thrive fully on their courses. However no university is going to raise its English standards in the current financial climate.

I can't workout commas, because my native language teacher was such a hardass, she beated it into our brains😂 and they are slightly different in UK.
I have first class degree still and had many, many corrections by my professors AFTER I told them off for not correct my English. How am I supposed to get better? 😂

Post Perestroika, foreign students are cash cows at Russian universities too. The Russian language foundation year is still mandatory but it seems that few foreign students reach fluency during that year. A friend of mine giving a lecture veered off the lecture topic onto football. The unchanged expressions of the students confirmed his suspicions!

😮

That would not have gone down well with our lecturers - mind you, some of them had lived through the war, so they weren't prone to suffering fools lightly.

One thing I have noticed is that the standard of English in some academic journals is so poor that I can find myself struggling to work out what the authors are trying to say.

You have to wonder about the peer review:
Did it even happen?
Was the English so atrocious that this is the corrected version and the reviewers couldn't handle any more?
Did the reviewer understand the article?

Where I have encountered these problems, "learn English " would not be my recommendation. There are lots of different specific aspects. Eg one document arrived with technical terms directly translated from the consultant's home country. I had to ask them to have an English native correct the technical terms. That didn't offend anyone.
In another setting a colleague's spoken English was incomprehensible to clients. Her grammar and vocab was great, but the rhythm of each word was drawn from her native language. She took conversation practice lessons to resolve it.
You can be polite and specific when describing the problem.

Slightly different topic, but there was an interesting article in The Times yesterday about how HR is stopping organisations operating efficiently due to over zealous interpretation of their role to protect individuals.

It argued that HR uses their power to move organisations in a direction that causes lots of the issues described here. Inertia and inability to assess problems and deal with them effectively for the greater benefit. The individual over-rides the outcomes for everyone else, eg other employees and clients. HR was seen as a business partner until recently but now, in some organisations, it’s driving culture, a community where fair comment is dismissed and not acted upon and thereby a failure to improve. That’s what I took from the article anyway. I think it’s borne out by feedback here.

Thanks, @TizerorFizz . I also saw that, unusually, and thought of this thread.

@poetryandwine I was MCIPD until I retired! I was interested in it.