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I delivered an excellent lesson, the second in a series tracing the evolution of the English language. The first covered the credit earned by early Greeks for alphabet orthography showing my students the origin of prefixes, roots, and suffixes--Greek and Roman. I presented handouts detailing root/affix presence in present vocabulary for which the students already had an awareness from English study in their home-country. The lesson went well.
The second lesson introduced the breakdown of the Roman Empire and Charlemayne's military unification of the vast country which became Europe. While Charlemayne's scourge was the bloodiest in history, his deep seated belief in Christianity provoked him to force his conquered subjects not only to be Christian, but to read the doctrines; thus--by force, Latin was imposed even onto those with no written language because it was the language of the scriptures. This action implanted roots and affixes into the English language giving it a common ancestor to other European languages--thus, cognatives exist. I enriched this lesson with a video clip showing Charlemayne's movements into Saxony explaining the Anglo Saxon influence as the origin of Angloland which became England. I felt I had done a wonderful job with the lesson...until Midori, a Japanese student, tapped my arm and asked if she could visit with me in my office because she hadn't understood anything about my lesson. I shelved my plans to correct my English 111 papers and granted her request. As we walked into my office together, my mind was shouting, "How could anyone possibly not understand this lesson? It was so clear, and I presented it so well."
This scenario is recurrently familiar to Ricks college faculty. Many times International students get lost in lessons and ask for personal appointments which steal instructor's time designated for other tasks. Once behind closed doors, the problem can be solved for the student, but the time lost for the instructor is unrecoverable and pushes teacher efforts into unpaid hours or, even worse, sacrificing other responsibilities. Without a language emergency room unavailable, the individual instructor must function as support--which is what I had to do to aid Midori.
Once enclosed in the security of my office, I began to probe Midori's confusion. It didn't take long to find the bingo. Midori was from a STRICT Buddhist family. Non-members have attended my classes before, but usually they are well-studied in the gospel. Midori was different. She was an embryo in the gospel with a strong Buddhist background. Expressions such as, "Charlemayne was a close friend of the pope," or "Aquinas accompanied Charlemayne as the teacher of writing, so the people were no longer considered heathens," meant nothing to Midori since she didn't understand about popes or heathens. She only understood what little her friends had taught her and her driving desire to study where she could learn more of the precious Book of Mormon given her by the missionaries. She believed the book to be true, but while she had a deep love for Christ, she knew virtually nothing of other Christians. It took only minutes to connect the lesson together for Midori once I knew the problem. She left my office, happy to understand. I laid my head on the desk and said to myself, "If only I had know known. I won't ever leave those clarifications out of my lesson again in case I ever have another UNSTUDIED non-member! I needed to know I should include that clarification in my lecture. Thank you, Midori."
The whole experience reminded me of another student who lacked simple communication. Nancy, from Brazil, had tried to make sense of the word "itch" in a health class. The topic for the day had been disease, and as the symptom itch was mentioned, Nancy searched her bilingual dictionary for meaning. The phonics equivalent to the short "i" in her language is "e", so she never thought to go to the "i" section of her dictionary. As she found the word "etch", meaning cut design, the instructor moved the lecture to another disease which also had an itch, but Nancy's located meaning of "etch" didn't fit. Nancy remembered "h" is silent in her language, but she'd heard the English word hitch when hearing of pioneers hitching up wagons. She began to look for "hitch" thinking maybe hitch had a second meaning she didn't know. In her country, parasites often hitch onto a host carrier. She thought this might be the meaning. She found the word "hitch" in the dictionary and read that a hitch could be a connecting mechanism. The dictionary listed a synonym--hinge. Nancy concluded the meaning of the word hitch in this context must mean that something about the disease is hinged (connected) to some part of the body tissue.
Nancy searched for the word hinge for further enlightenment and concluded that the disease must leave a flaking of the skin that didn't break off--similar to stories she had heard of leprosy. By this time her instructor moved to another disease which also had an itch. Nancy's sorted-out meaning didn't apply at all to the new disease. Nancy frantically consulted her dictionary again to see if there were a second meaning to the word hinge that might apply to this new disease. As her instructor moved through the lecture, Nancy continued flipping through the pages of her dictionary. Conceivably Nancy was totally focused on finding the "H" section when the instructor said "...don't scratch!" that she imposed "H" on the word "scratch", for Nancy's thought was, "What shouldn't hatch?" Nancy's prior knowledge provided that in her part of the world parasites can lay in the intestines for years and then hatch in colonies creating lumps on the back or shoulder areas. She tried to mentally piece together how a hinged piece of skin, such as with leprosy, could hatch something like the colonies of parasites with which she was familiar. She had only contemplated this for a moment when she heard her instructor announce that the class would have a test the following day on the lecture of diseases. The class was dismissed. The lesson had ended with Nancy still trying to find the meaning of the word "itch" introduced early in the lecture.
Nancy tearfully hit my office because she felt she faced failure on "...tomorrow's test". She was sure she hadn't understood enough of the lecture to be tested simply because of the word itch. I remember laughing as I shared that the lesson was probably about the childhood diseases Chicken Pox, Roseola, and Measles. I shared a health book immediately available from my shelf since I often have foreign students asking about nutrition or sickness. I showed Nancy the sections on childhood diseases. She recognized them immediately from what she did catch of her instructor's lecture. Once the missing piece was in place, she realized she HAD heard enough of the instructor's lecture to face the test. Nancy was an excellent student lacking only one key--the meaning the word "itch".
In my smugness at solving the problem, I picked up Nancy's English/Spanish dictionary to show her the translation of the word itch. It wasn't there. I was shocked. Together we found translations for rash, irritation to the skin, and a feeling of movement on the skin, but no literal translation for itch was in the dictionary.
I'm glad I was able to put a bandaid on Nancy's language problem in her moment of crisis, but my mind flushed with other memories of students whose emergencies were likewise whole concepts from misunderstanding one word--one simple key to frustration. One Korean was frantically studying how the lottery worked because he had heard they gave scholarships, and he wanted one. After spending hours on his lottery pursuit finding no connection to scholarship money, he came to me for help. Knowing that many Asians hear "l" for "r" and being well-schooled in the virtues of American culture, I immediately knew he was talking of the Rotary who do give scholarships. My explanation was an academic bandaid for him. Since hearing of the scholarship, this student sacrificed many hours of precious study time seeking a way to gain scholarship funds to secure his college success. It was unfortunate his time was spent studying the lottery.
Once a Japanese student requested help rearranging her schedule because "...she was petrified of the dark and needed to avoid a night class." Investigating her fear revealed the Japanese news broadcasts (her only live coverage of the U.S. as she was leaving Japan), were about the Los Angeles riots. As she had flown into what she thought was a riot-torn environment, a fellow passenger had confirmed her fears by telling her that Rexburg was famous for its crimbing, especially mountain crimbing. This student want to be a victim of crimbing after dark. Her anxiety was very real.
The proper pronunciation of "r" requires the strengthening of the muscle in the middle of the tongue--which doesn't happen to most Asians since SPOKEN English is not available to them as they study English reading and writing skills. Without the "r", the speaker will substitute sound. "r" may become lottery for rotary or ugly for agree. Sometimes the substitution is "W" so college sounds like a Bugs Bunny version of "caw-ege" making the international student sound disgustingly childish. Sometimes the "r" doesn't sound at all. When Makito, a nursing major, was asked about her major, she replied "nothing" instead of "nursing". She couldn't pronounce the "R". Makiko was embarrassed when casual acquaintances decoded her answer as unfocused or lazy, but the time remembered with trauma was when a well meaning instructor accusingly chastised her in front of the class for choosing "nothing" as a major nearly through her sophomore year. Makiko's cultural background respect for teachers disallowed her to correct the instructor, so she lives with the memory or the public reprimand and disgrace.
International students often have sound exchange problems or encounter words with no literal translations such as Makiko and Nancy, but language is also notorious for idiomatic expressions, double word meanings, and reduced forms. Instructors are not immune to indulging in these informal forms of English, so the additional cultural difference makes it a miracle any international student survives. I'm convinced that if Ricks were not a student supporting institution, they would not survive at all.
The international students will probably always be part of Ricks since the church is both devoted to academic excellence and it has become worldwide. Theoretically, foreign students are encouraged to attend college in their home country and study in institutes the same as high school graduates in the U.S., but one look at the Ricks student directory shows it doesn't work that way. How empty our campus would be without the Californians.
Additionally, some third world countries have no academic institutions available while others have so few that getting into them is a problem. Nancy's father taught geology for a University in Brazil, but not being male denied her entrance into the very university where he taught. Sometimes entrance problems are cultural; other times they're technological. Some countries are so far behind in technical knowledge, the desired academic discipline is lacking. How can a student learn to irrigate in an institution in Timbuktu? Did you know there actually is a Timbuktu? Timbuktu is the capital city of Mali, Africa near the Sahara Desert. My student from there was one of two church members, and he was helping with the translation of the Book of Mormon into his group's (tribe) language. His group is the largest of eight groups in Mali, a country of eight million people. This young man came to Ricks to study irrigation after serving a mission in Canada. He came here to learn what he could not learn in his own country.
Yes, foreigners will probably always attend Ricks, and no matter how high we place the Toefl entrance score, the language odds are not in the favor of either the language student nor the instructor. Nancy sought my office because she could find no other halfway house for emergency support. She had tried the Learning Lab first, but found no college Freshman or Sophomore with enough experience in language problems coinciding with expertise in the discipline to be immediately helpful? Students will continue to impose on instructors in their offices as long as academic bandaids for the simplest of miscommunications are needed--because there is no where else to go. Every instructor who serves this way is an unsung hero who usually knows that passing the required Toefl test with appropriate scores does not prepare nor test SPOKEN English, especially INFORMAL spoken English. The English mastered by international students is Standard English--the type learned from English textbooks. Who in Idaho speaks such a pure language--even among college professors?
The notion that language is a special-needs situation traps the church into considering special-needs support. Designating a language emergency person or place other than an instructor's office carries cost the same as with any special-needs student. Because a language problem carries:
1) the phonetic element of accent reduction (speech therapy),
2) the cultural element of animation and flow patterns (communicative competency),
3) the element of individual experience and personality (individual self-esteem/confidence),
Spoken fluency often presents a serious special-needs situation requiring an emergency bandaid from someone with expertise.
The government demonstrated recognition of two separate problems in public schools: Title I (physical/mental handicap), and Title I-Migrant (movers/language). Their model dealing with two separate problems, follows with two separate money units. Between the government's attitude toward equal education and the church's attitude toward a global gospel, there doesn't seem to be much chance international students will be locked out of Ricks, and since the federal government subsidizes special-needs students academically because it is responsible for its citizens, it seems justifiable that the church subsidize special-needs language students because of its global membership contributing tithes and offerings worldwide.
With global entrance considered, can admission include Canadians but not Japanese or Russians? And if language becomes a requirement, can refusal be directed to those whose English is British, Creole,or Pidgin? African and Caribbean first language speakers have the same problems as Japanese and Russian second language speakers--lacking cultural and speaking experience. But, if these students are allowed admission, they should be served as any other student with special-needs: the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the handicapped.
Admittedly, the Midoris, Makikos and Nancys enrich teaching days, but availabilty only on certain days makes me scarcely one of many "significant others" who serve the needs. Someday there may be a full-time language emergency room available for international students, but until then--all instructors who offer special services from their offices deserve applause. BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO FURNISH BANDAIDS!