87% Say English Should Be U.S. Official Language

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naisho said:
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:lol: :wave:
 
Arizona Seeks to Reassign Heavily Accented Teachers
After passing the nation's toughest immigration law, Arizona's school officials are now cracking down on teachers with heavy accents.

After passing the nation's toughest state immigration enforcement law, Arizona's school officials are now cracking down on teachers with heavy accents.

The Arizona Department of Education is sending evaluators to audit teachers and their English speaking skills to make sure districts are complying with state and federal laws.

Teachers who are not fluent in English, who make grammatical errors while speaking or who have heavy accents will be temporarily reassigned.

"As you expect science teachers to know science, math teachers to know math, you expect a teacher who is teaching the kids English to know English," said Tom Home, state superintendent of public instruction.

In 2000, voters passed a referendum which stipulated that instruction of these classes be offered only in English. Then in 2003, President Bush's No Child Left Behind act stated schools couldn't receive federal funding unless an English teacher was totally fluent in the language.

For the most part, the state is in compliance, but not all teachers are up to standards. Of the 236 total districts in the state, nine were cited for not being in compliance with fluency regulation this year.

Critics say with deep cuts to education thanks to the failing economy, the state should focus elsewhere. The Arizona Education Association, a union representing some 34,000 teachers, refused speak to Fox News.

Of the 1.2 million students in Arizona public schools, roughly 150,000 are learning English as a second language.

"It's my jobs to make sure they're taught English in the most rigorous, possible way so they can learn English quickly, can compete with their peers, and succeed academically," Home told Fox News.

The state says this move has nothing to do with the new law that requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the United States illegally.

In Creighton School District, 35 percent of students are "second language learners," said Superintendent Charlotte Boyle.

"In Creighton's school district, we do have several teachers who do not pass the fluency test," she said.

"For the past several years, we have provided opportunities for those teachers to increase their fluency," she said. "We have enrolled them in community college classes. We also have classes within our district for those teachers."
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Jiro said:
After passing the nation's toughest state immigration enforcement law, Arizona's school officials are now cracking down on teachers with heavy accents.

The Arizona Department of Education is sending evaluators to audit teachers and their English speaking skills to make sure districts are complying with state and federal laws.

Teachers who are not fluent in English, who make grammatical errors while speaking or who have heavy accents will be temporarily reassigned.
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Oh the tax dollars wasted on these audits! :run:

And pardon my ignorance, but when did it become federal law to speak clearly without an accent? There would be no teachers left in Texas, New York City, Boston, and many other locations if that were true.

If this idea moves to the live telephone support sector of Comcast, I would be in favor. :wave:
 
Seriously, I've come across people with foreign accents so bad I couldn't even understand what was being said in English. And I wasn't alone when those times happened, too. My friends could hardly understand them as well, and they're hearing. Twice I've had professors at George Washington Univ. who were an Indian (India) and Japanese. The Japanese professor in engineering was tolerable but the Indian guy, you could only understand half of what he was saying and I there was a roomful of hearing students who sat next to me and behind me who concurred that they too had problems understanding him. And that was in my Adv. Partial Differential Equation class. So, yeah, it can become detrimental for students to understand what's going on affecting his/her quality of education. If a teacher is unable to make him/herself clear for everybody to understand, then that teacher or professor ought to leave. These people do exist. This is a serious problem in many universities, colleges and schools affecting quality of education.

Daily Orange - Instructors' foreign accents can hinder student understanding

UTEP Students Complain About Professors' Accents | KTSM News Channel 9

Teach Impediment - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Say Anything Addressing The Professor Accent Problem
 
Come on man.

Those are the guys who got degrees and were probably very successful, it's possibly due to their accents they were shunned and landed a teaching job or starter job instead.

Even then it's not like they are teaching Linguistics, English or American History, or Sociology dude.. From my experience usually they are isolated to areas where the speaking is not the major factor, such as math, computer science as a few to name.

Get rid of those guys? Who fills their spots? You want some watered down monologue Mr. Mac who doesn't know what he's talking about?
 
naisho said:
Come on man.

Those are the guys who got degrees and were probably very successful, it's possibly due to their accents they were shunned and landed a teaching job or starter job instead.

Even then it's not like they are teaching Linguistics, English or American History, or Sociology dude.. From my experience usually they are isolated to areas where the speaking is not the major factor, such as math, computer science as a few to name.

Get rid of those guys? Who fills their spots? You want some watered down monologue Mr. Mac who doesn't know what he's talking about?
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better than being taught by a professor who you cannot understand. my terp had hard time.
 
my physics professor - japanese - was incredibly difficult to understand. because of that - the class had a huge failure rate... Dean had to step in and fire him. The dean gave students an option for do-over.
 
naisho said:
Come on man.

Those are the guys who got degrees and were probably very successful, it's possibly due to their accents they were shunned and landed a teaching job or starter job instead.

Even then it's not like they are teaching Linguistics, English or American History, or Sociology dude.. From my experience usually they are isolated to areas where the speaking is not the major factor, such as math, computer science as a few to name.

Get rid of those guys? Who fills their spots? You want some watered down monologue Mr. Mac who doesn't know what he's talking about?
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It's a fact. Bad or thick/heavy accents do affect the quality of education in a classroom. There is no getting around that fact. Heck, might as well not have class because no one in the classroom would be able to understand what the heck is that professor saying. You should've seen the faces of students on the first day of class in my math class at GWU. They're like, "WTF?" after listening to the professor talk for 10 minutes before they realized the waste of time they'll have to spend sitting there trying to get the gist of what he was saying. It does and can affect the quality of education.
 
I've had my share of those profs too in the past.
Had C++, Java, VB with Vietnamese English which was hard to understand him because of his accent (he said things like constrictor for constructor) but if we followed the book it usually covered what he was trying to say. Most of PC programming is done on our own anyways.

Then there were the guys for math - Romanian, Chinese, a few I remember. Can't understand them at all but the key is to understand the arithmetic.

I guess I was a lot more visual than audio from those courses.

I realize that students who take the course for breadth requirement (ie not their majors) its probably a different story.
 
My Stats Prof was from India.......Real tough to understand. Luckily it came pretty easy to me. At least half the class dropped or changed sections.
 
college tuition is not cheap. time is money. we students are not made of money. our parents are not made of money either. if we're going to spend that much for college - I expect to have a professor with no communication issue.
 
Jiro said:
college tuition is not cheap. time is money. we students are not made of money. our parents are not made of money either. if we're going to spend that much for college - I expect to have a professor with no communication issue.
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Excellent point.
 
You know, I think I always did better in the courses that the prof had the lecture written out where you could download it or obtain it prior to going to class.

This was even true for those who didn't have accents.

Maybe they should make that a standard.
 
about the article I posted - please notice that they are NOT being fired.

Teachers who are not fluent in English, who make grammatical errors while speaking or who have heavy accents will be temporarily reassigned.
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"For the past several years, we have provided opportunities for those teachers to increase their fluency," she said. "We have enrolled them in community college classes. We also have classes within our district for those teachers."
Click to expand...
 
TXgolfer said:
My Stats Prof was from India.......Real tough to understand. Luckily it came pretty easy to me. At least half the class dropped or changed sections.
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Shoot....that happens in ALL stats classes! It is the nature of the course material that does it! My stats profs were all American bred and born...still always lost half the class. At the grad level, we started with 25 and ended with 7!:lol:
 
naisho said:
Come on man.

Those are the guys who got degrees and were probably very successful, it's possibly due to their accents they were shunned and landed a teaching job or starter job instead.

Even then it's not like they are teaching Linguistics, English or American History, or Sociology dude.. From my experience usually they are isolated to areas where the speaking is not the major factor, such as math, computer science as a few to name.

Get rid of those guys? Who fills their spots? You want some watered down monologue Mr. Mac who doesn't know what he's talking about?
Click to expand...

Gotta agree with that. I want the knowlege of the most knowlegable. If I have to work a little harder to understand, or ask them to repeat something, oh, well.
 
naisho said:
You know, I think I always did better in the courses that the prof had the lecture written out where you could download it or obtain it prior to going to class.

This was even true for those who didn't have accents.

Maybe they should make that a standard.
Click to expand...

Yep. Many people are visual learners.
 
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