Job Discussion Forums

[Jetgirly]

I may be interested in doing some graduate work in TESOL with the goal of someday working for the local school board or Ministry of Education on K-12 ESL programs. However, it seems like almost all the students in the MEd TESOL program at my Canadian university are international students. A Japanese girl from the program lives in my building, and I can barely make out what she says when she speaks. I actually haven't met ANY native English speakers who are doing their coursework on campus, and I'm quite surprised by how poorly a lot of these grad students speak the language they plan to teach. Is this enrollment pattern pretty consistent across North American universities? Do the ESL students come to North America to get their MEds in TESOL while the native speakers go overseas and do the work by correspondance? Or is my university unusual? I'll be honest: I had a lot of negative experiences working with cohort groups of international students as part of my first undergrad degree, and I wouldn't want to repeat those experiences during graduate studies.

[spiral78]

Many of the on-campus students on my MA TESL/TEFL course at University of Birmingham, England, were also non-native speakers. However, my friends who attended the on-campus version of the course
their language skill level was very high and it wasn't a big negative.

(I did mine by distance, applying theory to practice and engaging in classroom research throughout the program - which I highly recommend!)

[Gordon]

I did my masters by distance also and was in regular contact with fellow students electronically. I would say the vast majority (95%) were native English speakers and the few that weren't had excellent writing skills. This was an Australian university BTW and I'd also guess about half the students were studying from outside the country.

[denise]

I did my MA on campus and I'd say about half of the students were non-native speakers, all with excellent English. I think some of them had trouble keeping up in some of the classes, though. What sorts of negative experiences did you have?

d

[Irish]

I also did my MA on campus and about half of my classmates were non-native speakers. On the whole their English was quite good, though a few struggled in the program. I think that had to do with the fact that they didn't really want to be there. There parents had pressured them into doing the degree because teaching is considered a good, stable career in their home country. Such a shame. Still, they were definitely the exception and not the rule, and I enjoyed working with the non-native speakers who cared about what they were doing and wanted to be there.

[naturegirl321]

I'm doing mine by distance and have noticed that people make basic mistakes. Maybe unis just want money.

[Jetgirly]

I've had particularly bad experiences working in cohort groups with Asian students. For example, in a Commerce class I worked as part of a group that had to do an hour-long SWOT analysis of a major Canadian company for our class. One of my groupmates didn't see any problem creating- I SWEAR- a Hello Kitty-themed PowerPoint presentation. In a senior level Commerce class for a discussion of an OIL company! In another group a girl who had recently come from China asked me to read my notes aloud to her so she could write each point in red, then orange, then yellow (who studies in yellow?), then green, then blue, then purple. It's not like they were color-coded, they were just decorative. With her constant pen-switching she wasn't able to keep up in class, which is why she wanted me to read my notes to her. I've also found that my international groupmates aren't yet comfortable enough to speak in front of an audience in English, and often end up reading for fifteen minutes in a monotone voice off sheets of paper without ever looking up at their audience. I'm currently doing a BEd and we're expected to do many presentations, so I imagine it's the same at the MEd level.

By the way, I know I'm a perfectionist. It's not just the international students who get on my nerves! I recently did a group project and my group member wrote "pacific ocean" and "march 20" on his handout. "pacific ocean"? Don't you learn about capital letters in Grade 2? Doesn't spellcheck catch that? I also appreciate that I would have done a super crappy job if I'd gone to school in Italy when I lived there.

[thelmadatter]

Though I am not the biggest fan of the graduate program I did (which was F2F), I have to say that the foreign students in my master's program (over half the class) had some really amazing English. Great people, too, at least those from my graduating class. Im still in touch with a few of them. I would be so happy if I could function half as well in Spanish as these folks could in English. But I doubt Ill ever write a thesis in Spanish.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

Thelmadatter, except for the still-keeping-in-touch part, your post could've been written by me.