Week 4 - Teaching Across International Borders (Randazzo)

While doing the readings, I was struck by how much of what was discussed about working with international students had been reflected in my own work as an instructor here, and in my tutoring sessions so far. One of my students is from Vietnam, and since Vietnamese sentence structures are oftentimes longer, she and I had to work on cutting her sentences in half. Last semester as well, I had a student who was Chinese and whose writing style reflected everything in the handout. So, I wish that instructors received copies of this as well, since it would make cross-cultural editing practices much more fluid.

My questions for today:

  1. What do you do when you encounter a situation where neither you nor the student has any idea of how to "translate" what they are trying to say? I've encountered this a bit and found that having them tell me what they're trying to say works, but it isn't always successful.
  2. This is less a tutoring question and more of an instructing question: I've had professors in the past who were very harsh on grammar for international students. What is a way to approach this in terms of grading? I try to be more lenient, as I do know some students are still learning English as they arrive here (such as the student I had who was very smart, but had some difficulties with English syntax and grammar).

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