w w V V w V V w w v v w w w v Why complaining about your GSI's accent is a waste of time (and racist) Some students are blaming their academic troubles on their GSIs' accents. It's an easy way out. It's also the wrong one. By Gabe Nelson I Daily News Editor Likemanystudents atthe Univer- sity, Business sophomore Eric Brackmann can't understand his graduate student instructor. Brackmann tried to under- stand his economics GSI's accent, but he found communication "impossible." "I just gave up," Brackmann said. Now Brackmann lets his mind wan- der during class. "I tend to zone out for about the first 10 minutes as the GSI speaks," he said. Experiences like Brackmann's have become increasingly common in the new, global world of higher education. With an increase in the number of inter- national graduate student instructors at the University, administrators have dealt with an upswing in complaints from students saying their GSIs don't speak English fluently. Scott Kassner, a student advisor for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, said at least one student per semester asks him for advice about a GSI the student can't understand. But unrest about accents is more significant than that number indicates, he said. "They might not be bringing it to our office, but we hear it and it happens," he said. Many students will drop out of a class or switch to another section of the same class if they find the GSI too hard to understand. Some stay in the class. Some mock the GSI's speech and treat the experience as an unpleasant rite of passage. And some actually learn more than they signed up for. In a world where many occupations require employees to be able to under- stand people from other countries, understanding people from different areas is increasingly important. While a student might be able to avoid taking a class with an international GSI now, they might regret that decision when they're working for a Chinese-owned company with co-workers who didn't grow up in the Midwest. For many, however, the prospect of sitting in a corporate board room trying to figure out what everyone else is saying isn't as frightening as failingcalculus. One solution would be to forbid non- native English speakers from teach- ing classes, or on an individual level, to make sure all your GSIs speak Eng- lish well. To quite a few students, that doesn't seem like a terrible idea. It is. THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE CHAMPIONS While some students give up when confronted with a hard-to-understand GSI, others learned from the struggle. Although it made the class harder, it with their teachers, said mathematics lecturer Karen Rhea. All six GSIs currently teaching reci- tation sections for Mathematics 216 are international GSIs. Science and math classes tend to elicit the most complaints about hard-to- understand GSIs because the classes are more difficult. Students will often blame their problems on an international GSI to avoid blaming themselves, Kassner said. "Let's say a student is having trouble in calculus," the LSA student advi- sor said. "Is that difficulty in calculus because of the way the GSI is speaking or is that because calculus is tough?" Kassner said international GSIs are an important element of a modern under- graduate education because they expose students to diverse cultures and accents. "One of the great advantages of being at a university like the University of Michigan is that you get to encounter people from all over the world," Kassner said. "Students should ask themselves, 'What canI learn from this person?" Not trying can be a form of racism. SOFT RACISM Mocking international GSIs and blam- ing them for communication problems remains seenaslargely acceptable on cam- pus, even though other forms of discrimi- nation are increasingly taboo. The Every Three Weekly, a campus satire publication, published an article making fun of foreign professors called "North Campus Adopts Bloken Engrish As Official Language" last month. "Engineers, we all in same boat, and boat take you across watel, and watel is ranguage," the article read. "Is a metaphol. Okay? Meta- phol?" Linguistics Prof. Kathryn Campbell-Kibler said articles like that draw on old stereotypes but use them in a new way. Asian language stereotypes have traditionally been used to depict Asian characters as stupid or inept. Although the characteristics of the mock lan- guage have remained the same - for example, an inability to distinguish between the letters "1" and "r" - it is now used to say Asians are good at math and science and bad at language skills, Campbell-Kibler said. Research shows that college students react differently to teachers from dif- ferent national backgrounds. In a 1990 experiment by sociolin- guists D.L. Rubin and K.A. Smith, undergraduates said a recorded lecture was easier to understand when played See ACCENTS, Page 7B English LearningInstitute tutor Carson Maynard (right) practices tongue-twisters at an infor- mal pronunciation session with graduate students working on minimizing their foreign accents. taught them how to communicate with could be seen as a good thing," Charl- people who don't speak English clearly, ton said. "Eventually, I could figure out LSA sophomore Corinne Charlton what they were saying." said she had trouble understanding her Many intro-level science and math foreign economics and calculus GSIs at courses at the University are taught by first but eventually learned to commu- GSIs rather than by professors because nicate with them. it allows for smaller, more intimate "It forced me to pay attention, so it classes where students can interact