Are schools becoming to lenient?
So I rarely post but I was sitting in my night class tonight and we were doing presentations on children's books that we analyzed and blah blah blah. And something happened where it made me start to wonder if our educational system (mostly college level) is becoming too lenient on their standards when it comes to non English speaking residents. Well let me tell you a little about my class and the assignment first.
This is a Children's Literature course and for the class we have to buy a few children's books. Well for this assignment we had to take a list of books that was in one of our text books and we had to choose one of the books and write an essay and do a presentation on it. This list does not have any of the books we already had to purchase for lessons later in the semester. So today the essay and the presentations were due
Well all of a sudden one of my classmates goes up to do his presentation and the book he chose was not one of the books on the list but one of the books we are going to be working on later. As he is presenting I am having a very difficult time understanding him. Not because of his accent but because his fluency in the English language was not up to par for a college level class. It began to make me wonder how he was going to be successful in a class that you have to have completed Comp I and II to be in. Now please don't get me wrong, yes he could have been nervous speaking in a language that is not his native one, and he probably does have the intelligence to be in college, and he should be able to go to college. But I am wondering if our educational system is doing him a disservice by allowing him to take these classes without being able to speak correctly. And by correctly I mean in coherent (excluding accents because people can't just "drop" those) complex sentences. Also this student may not have been able to understand the assignment and therefore, while he did it, it was still incorrect. Is our educational system allowing these people to continue in more difficult classes because they are afraid they will anger people if the insist they take some more English prep classes? Do schools not have the funding?
Another example is my online class I am taking. A student recently asked a question on the discussion board.
This is what was typed: "Hi teacher shannon, I did not understand how to convert time in a different places in the world, I also did not understand how to convert latitudes and longititudes, so may you please help me out of that. thanks teacher. bye"
Now this is not a terrible example by any means and lord knows I do not have the best grammar qualities! But to me this just makes me wonder because shouldn't everyone in college be able to address a professor? Whether it be Professor blah, or Shannon, or Mrs. blah.
I don't know. I really don't mean to be closed minded or rude about other cultures because I don't know how to go and take courses in another language. But I just think that students in college should be able to speak fluently, write, and understand English. And to stress again, I DO believe EVERYONE should be able to get any sort of education they want! I am just concerned that schools are allowing some students to move faster then they should.
So what are everyone's thoughts on this?
You can agree or disagree I am just curious! :)
This is a Children's Literature course and for the class we have to buy a few children's books. Well for this assignment we had to take a list of books that was in one of our text books and we had to choose one of the books and write an essay and do a presentation on it. This list does not have any of the books we already had to purchase for lessons later in the semester. So today the essay and the presentations were due
Well all of a sudden one of my classmates goes up to do his presentation and the book he chose was not one of the books on the list but one of the books we are going to be working on later. As he is presenting I am having a very difficult time understanding him. Not because of his accent but because his fluency in the English language was not up to par for a college level class. It began to make me wonder how he was going to be successful in a class that you have to have completed Comp I and II to be in. Now please don't get me wrong, yes he could have been nervous speaking in a language that is not his native one, and he probably does have the intelligence to be in college, and he should be able to go to college. But I am wondering if our educational system is doing him a disservice by allowing him to take these classes without being able to speak correctly. And by correctly I mean in coherent (excluding accents because people can't just "drop" those) complex sentences. Also this student may not have been able to understand the assignment and therefore, while he did it, it was still incorrect. Is our educational system allowing these people to continue in more difficult classes because they are afraid they will anger people if the insist they take some more English prep classes? Do schools not have the funding?
Another example is my online class I am taking. A student recently asked a question on the discussion board.
This is what was typed: "Hi teacher shannon, I did not understand how to convert time in a different places in the world, I also did not understand how to convert latitudes and longititudes, so may you please help me out of that. thanks teacher. bye"
Now this is not a terrible example by any means and lord knows I do not have the best grammar qualities! But to me this just makes me wonder because shouldn't everyone in college be able to address a professor? Whether it be Professor blah, or Shannon, or Mrs. blah.
I don't know. I really don't mean to be closed minded or rude about other cultures because I don't know how to go and take courses in another language. But I just think that students in college should be able to speak fluently, write, and understand English. And to stress again, I DO believe EVERYONE should be able to get any sort of education they want! I am just concerned that schools are allowing some students to move faster then they should.
So what are everyone's thoughts on this?
You can agree or disagree I am just curious! :)