I fucking can't stand this shit anymore. I just walked out of a Stats lab because of our TA's barely discernable speaking skills. Is anyone else pissed off about the lack of ability to convey topics in fucking English?!

9/27/2005 9:07:55 AM

Shhh! They'll hear you! Don't you know you can be repremanded for your insensitivity?

9/27/2005 9:30:42 AM

dey took err jeerrrbss!

9/27/2005 9:37:28 AM

9/27/2005 9:44:30 AM

Advisor: Why did you get a C in Chemistry?
Me: Cause the TA got an F in English

9/27/2005 9:58:37 AM

you moron why the fuck did you walk out? you're not gonna do anything but handicap your own grade by pulling a stupid ass stunt like that

if you can't understand him, just keep asking him to repeat himself until you do understand. this will force him to learn pronunciation, give his professor the message to stop dickin you guys around, and result in a better learning experience for everyone in the class

but instead you pussed out

9/27/2005 10:00:34 AM

Give me a fucking break. I'm not there to be her fucking speech instructor.

I'm getting a tutor to help me get through this class at this point. I'm not concerned about providing a teachable moment for the damn TA. She knows her shit, but needs to get more conversant in English before getting into a classroom.

9/27/2005 10:11:49 AM

oh i'm sorry i thought you were a student

and students are generally there TO LEARN

but instead you walked out

i forgot you were an ncsu student

my apologies

9/27/2005 10:15:06 AM

Again, I'm getting a tutor to learn this stuff. I don't need to learn a second language at this point in time.

The TA knows her shit but doesn't convey it well. My time's better spent in study groups/tutor then going through this bullshit. You know, learning the material rather than an second language again.

9/27/2005 10:19:48 AM

you sound like a B-/C student

everyone knows that tutors can't get you good grades. you can only prepare efficiently for tests by listening to the original sources (TAs, Class, and Professor)

9/27/2005 10:21:31 AM

Spare me the lecture on education. I'm getting a PhD for god's sake.

Why does this bother you so anyway?

9/27/2005 10:22:49 AM

Quote :

"I fucking can't stand this shit anymore. I just walked out of a Stats lab because of our TA's barely discernable speaking skills. Is anyone else pissed off about the lack of ability to convey topics in fucking English?!"

Well tell you what, why don't you go find some qualified English-speaking statistics students to work as TA's part time. Or better still, why don't we go hunt down some American-born or American-raised students to go become statistics graduate students?

The reason why we have so many foreign TA's is because there just aren't any qualified American graduate students who are going into technical fields. This is simply a symptom of a greater problem in the United States.

9/27/2005 11:50:40 AM

I am pretty sure Chinese students here cheat on English speaking/writing tests.

I might have an accent, but those fuckers are just terrible.

[Edited on September 27, 2005 at 11:56 AM. Reason : .]

9/27/2005 11:56:16 AM

what english speaking tests?
The problem is there are none. I feel that in order to qualify for a TA where you actually teach, you should have to pass a speaking test. In Asia they just focus on passing written tests.

English is spoken in India, you can't really compare it to the rest of Asia.

9/27/2005 12:05:57 PM

I am pretty sure NCSU requires a Test of Spoken English for all International TAs, although I don't think that requirement is heavily enforced.

http://www.fis.ncsu.edu/grad_publicns/itainfo.htm

[Edited on September 27, 2005 at 12:14 PM. Reason : .]

9/27/2005 12:13:30 PM

^ I cant imagine it is

I had some fucking stinkers when I was in school.

next to nothing volume with a heavy asian(chinese I think) accent doesnt do me a damn bit of good.

9/27/2005 12:14:54 PM

It's not just the accent.

Some Chinese people I know can't even speak basic English...I just wonder how they were let in this country. I know I had to pass English tests.

9/27/2005 12:16:49 PM

everytime they speak something ching-chong just throw a wonton at them

that'll learn 'em

9/27/2005 12:25:33 PM

Again, no problem with folks from overseas teaching as long as they can communicate effectively. One of my committee members is from Hong Kong but has an undergrad in English. No problems at all.

9/27/2005 12:25:56 PM

they have to all take the english gre, which includes an english part. in countries like india and china, there is widespread fraud on these tests. eg paying other people to take it for you. my grad adviser complained of students he had had in the past who got perfect scores on the writing part of the gre, yet couldn't write a complete sentence to save their life.

that said, it doesn't take a whole lot to pick up on what these people are saying usually, it just takes a couple classes to get used to most accents.

9/27/2005 12:26:28 PM

I can assure you that there is no GRE fraud in India.

Shit is fully computerised and conducted by ETS reps from the US.

9/27/2005 12:27:48 PM

that is one of the reasons they switched to the computerized method.

the first-hand examples i have heard have been from china though, so maybe there isn't much of a problem anymore in india

[Edited on September 27, 2005 at 12:29 PM. Reason : second bit]

9/27/2005 12:28:45 PM

I know this one guy whose wife has to translate everything for him to communicate...and he's looking to get into grad school here.

9/27/2005 12:28:54 PM

Quote :

"The reason why we have so many foreign TA's is because there just aren't any qualified American graduate students who are going into technical fields. This is simply a symptom of a greater problem in the United States. "

It's all the lazy crackers don't want to be loser TAs.

9/27/2005 2:06:15 PM

this thread is hate-crime

9/27/2005 2:17:01 PM

I dont mind the accents so much or asking them to repeat themselves, but in some of the heavily technical engineering classes I find the foreign TA (and sometimes even the professor) simply does not have a deep enough understanding of english to explain the concepts effectively. It gets utterly ridiculous at times and shouldnt be tolerated in an engineering school of NCSU's caliber.

9/27/2005 2:38:21 PM

Quote :

"It gets utterly ridiculous at times and shouldnt be tolerated in an engineering school of NCSU's caliber."

I agree, but what is a department suppose to do then to fill the massive gap for TA's if you take away a large number of their foreign graduate students? Finding a MA141 TA is one thing, but finding someone who can TA a graduate level course is a whole different story.

9/27/2005 3:10:22 PM

True. Maybe it would help if we raise TA benefits.

9/27/2005 4:48:49 PM

this wouldnt be a problem if more of you english-speakers got PhDs

9/27/2005 10:26:56 PM

me: when is this assignment due?
TA: huh?
me: when do we have to turn this in?
TA: [blank stare]
me: so when is this assignment due?
TA: what?

so yeah I had to ask the teacher instead...every single fucking question I ask him, he doesn't really understand. He'll either say what or answer something completely off the wall and not related to what I was asking...and he does that to everybody else too. I could bitch for hours about slack TA's and their lack of english skills but I don't really feel like it

9/27/2005 10:49:28 PM

I was a TA for about a semester, but since I was "special" I quickly got a grant and moved into pure research.

9/27/2005 10:50:38 PM

I can't believe the same person who bitches about people unable to understand Ravishankar "Brian" Putnany turns around and bitches about chinese people. So pathetic.

9/27/2005 10:51:36 PM

You can understand virtually all Chinese and Indian students. You just don't wanna try. Actually, I am quite amazed at the overall length average Americans are willing to go to try and understand foreigners. Back in Russia they would start throwing shit at you if you said one sentence that wasn't fully understood. So I'm not really picking on American students. However, the simple fact is that you CAN understand even those who speak a horribly broken language. I was a TA soon after I came and I had peopler ask me to translate questions that Indian/Chinese students asked me. I mean, I have a musical ear and everything, but I'm not better than everybody when it comes to comprehension of other accents. Nonetheless I could understand those guys fine, and other Americans said they couldn't. I think they didn't really try.

9/27/2005 11:31:03 PM

I never commented about not being able to understand...if you can't understand someone you need to kill yourself.

My gripe is with Chinese dudes that just plain don't know the language.

9/27/2005 11:33:58 PM

I agree that it's not that hard to understand most TA's. I have more trouble understanding my Granny's accent, and she grew up on a farm in Missouri. More frequently I encountered classmates who wanted a convenient excuse for why they were earning a poor grades.

9/27/2005 11:42:13 PM

A lot of them speak ok, meaning you CAN understand them. It took me actually much longer to get used to the Indian accents. Indians have a different flow of the speach in their home languages. When they speak English, they don't change it, and it makes it hard to follow. Plus they speak fast, and it doesn't help either.

Maybe someone will explain it better. But for instance I often recognize someone speaking Russian in a crowd, EVEN if I could not hear a single word clearly. I don't know what was said, but I know it was said in Russian. That's cuz Russian speech sounds a certain way. This is what I'm talking about.

The Chinese often have no grammar but they speak slowly and as long as you get key words, you understand what s/he is trying to say.

9/27/2005 11:42:24 PM

^^^^ my gripe is he couldn't understand ME...I mean, I know I speak some sort of redneck english but if he has any decent grasp of the english language he should be able to understand a very basic question..not to mention he can't understand anybody else either

[Edited on September 27, 2005 at 11:42 PM. Reason : asdf]

9/27/2005 11:42:30 PM

Well, that I agree with. They should understand you. When I came, I actually got adjusted fairly quickly as fas as understanding others.

9/27/2005 11:45:29 PM

I also can't understand a damn thing he says the first time at best...he speaks with the super fast, heavy chinese accent with sentences that are just so wrong that even if he wrote it down it'd take me a few tries to figure out what he was trying to say...drives me insane. oh well, shit happens

9/27/2005 11:48:32 PM

As you become a highly educated person, you need to accept that fact that MANY of the other highly educated people in the world do not speak English as their first language. To excel in the business world, you need to be comfortable communicating with these people, and many of them speak English with a heavy accent. We should consider ourselves lucky that English has become the language of International business!

Here are some personal stories:
1) My first job out of grad school was with an Engineering firm in North Carolina. My first project was a collaboration with a group in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida.) My company was giving them large amounts of money, and the boss expected me to communicate with them to transfer some of their technology. Their main scientist was not great at speaking or understanding, but it was my job to work with him to transfer information.
2) My next project was in microelectronics wafer materials. Our main customer was Texas Instruments. Think I was talking mainly to Americans? Wrong! Their big manufacturing facility is in the Phillipines. My colleague on the project was from India. Most of the people at the big international conferences I attended were Japanese or Chinese.
3) I also collaborated with a group in the Netherlands. Fortunately for me, the Dutch start learning English in second grade as a required school subject (and about a third of Dutch words are the same in English anyway.) The head scientist travelled around the world giving seminars in English, he had spent a year living in Australia, and he was definitely fluent in English. But, guess what he confided in me after I'd known him awhile? He had A LOT of trouble understanding Vicki, our secretary who was a native of North Carolina.

Just some things for you to ponder.

9/28/2005 12:30:02 AM

I agree with that..I can definetly understand accents a lot more easily now and think I speak with less of one than I used to. I've had to deal with some people from Germany at work and I seemed to be the only one that could understand them easily...I really didn't think their accent was bad, but whatever

9/28/2005 12:36:20 AM

if you can't be patient with someone and use your brain, you need to kill yourself.

9/28/2005 1:20:04 AM

my dad works in sales w/ mostly chinese people

they always give him shitty chinese liquor as gifts

9/28/2005 1:23:03 AM

they also buy him a massage, but you just hear about the booze.

9/28/2005 1:26:32 AM

I worked as the only American on a masonry crew for two years, but I've had a couple TA's and professors at NCSU that spoke less english than some of the guys that had just sneaked across the border. I play chirades at work because I have to, but when I'm paying instructors I expect a bit more. Still, the majority I've encountered here work very diligently at improving their english.

9/28/2005 1:56:54 AM

Deal with it, we've all had too.

9/28/2005 2:06:18 AM