2 U. THE NATIONAL COLLEGE NEWSPAPER News Features MARCH 1988 *1 2 U. THE NATIONAL COLLEGE NEWSPAPER News Features. MARCH 19880 Fluency Continued From Page 1 The tudntssai isnotShe took the TA English Prog- The problem, students said, is not When Jeongla Chung began as a that foreign TAs lack knowledge, but trams class spring quarter. At the that communication-in either direc- what to expect. tion-is very difficult.' Chung, a philosophy TA from for one quarter, Chung said he was For example, a female respondent r a- taught to gesture while teaching and who took a calculus course said of her versty fall quarter 1986-two quar- tionived hramm r p foreign TA: "He couldn't teach. He knew t e r s b ef ore a r e d any daonuycation and g asmurema math but he couldn't relay it under- training. to e s ae standably." very helpful to me. When I speak The survey was based on the hypoth- my recitation sometimes," she said. Eng)ish. I a se a cn et Ayr esis that if there is a widespread prob- "In that case, I try to put my idea on (teac ing) four classes, I can get y lem with foreign TAs, it is mainly due to the hiacke)ard, sa I think the main MraU. n t vi language and cultural differences, problem was resolved. CiCes causing difficulty in communication be- tween students and foreign teaching pared the responses of 214 students dents taking the same courses in sec- assistants, taking lower-level courses taught by tions taught by foreign TAs. To avoid The survey, conducted last year, com- American TAs to responses of 213 stu- bias, students were asked not to com- pare American and foreign TAs, just rate their own instructor. The students were randomly sampled from 130 clas- ses taught in 14 departments. The survey did not detect any bias against foreigners. Almost all students, whether they had an American or fore- ign TA, said TAs should be allowed to teach, but first should receive training. More than half the respondents inter- viewed about a course they took from a foreign TA (55 percent) agreed that their instructor's English "was often difficult to understand." Nearly all of the respondents, howev- er, agreed that their TA, whether fore- ign or American, "was knowledgeable." A male respondent who took a statis- tics class said of his foreign TA: "I know she knew her stuff, but I don't think she knew how to present it." Racism Continued From Page 1 1 cluding Jeffrey Ross, campus affairs director for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. "The boundaries of civility seem to have been shattered," he said. Although most incidents are directed by whites against blacks, other minority groups-including Jews, Hispanics and Asians-are also affected. "When in effect it becomes open season on one minority, all others will eventually feel the heat. In effect, you've let the demons loose," Ross said. Howard Ehrlich, research director of the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence, monitors the trends of violence against ethnic groups. "We're seeing a normative accept- ance of low-level prejudice," he said. "For a good period of time, this kind of action has been unacceptable. That has changed." Also changing is the prevalence of physical assaults, which now are the most frequently reported form of vio- lent attack, Ehrlich said. About one in four minority students experi- ences some form of attack in any academic year, he said. "Wherever you have a rapid in- crease of a highly visible minority, especially with groups that had no contact with each other, you will have expression of prejudice," Ehrlich said. He said the upsurge in racial ten- sions was indicative of economic dis- parity across the country as well as on college campuses, and was in part due to the Reagan Administration's unwillingness to confront the issue. As a result of racially-motivated , incidents, students said they had be- come more conscious of racism. Membership in ethnic and anti- racist student groups such as North- western's Students Together Against Racial Tension has in- creased dramatically at many uni- versities. Michael Stoll, a U. of California, Berkeley (UCB) student and chair- man of the African Student Associa- tion, said his group's membership has increased over the past few years to encompass half of UCB's 1,500 black students. "In the last year or so, we've been through a great deal," Ross said. "My hope is that there will now be a period of healing." 0 0 V U AR N E T. When you're the best, you see things differently. You're invited to send for information: Vuarnet-France, Dept. 17, P.O. Box 823, El Segundo, CA 90245 4 A