Xref: utzoo comp.edu:1865 sci.math:5360 sci.physics:5531
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <6790@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 15 Jan 89 02:19:45 GMT
References: <5354@pdn.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 28

in article <5354@pdn.UUCP>, reggie@pdn.UUCP (George W. Leach) says:
>       I found out how one university screens applicants from foreign 
> countries.  Traveling to the US to visit the university is not always
> possible, so students must take some sort of English proficiency exam
> and have one of their instructors write a letter confirming their skills.
> Often this does not work because the filtering mechanism is in the hands
> of the offenders!  I once had a student from Taiwan who after six weeks

At the university I attend (University of SW Louisiana), there is a
large percentage of foreign students (mostly East Asian now... was
once a lot of Latin American and Middle Eastern students, but the
economic troubles in those lands have curtailed that). In addition to
the scores sent in with the application, each student, upon arrival in
the U.S., is required to take the test over here. If the score either
there or here is below a certain point, they are required to take
remedial courses entitled "English for Speakers of Other Languages"
(ESOL for short). I'm not up on the exact details (though I count many
foreign students among my friends), but it seems like remedial efforts
of this type are what is necessary if the U.S. is to continue to
import the talent that it needs (just another example of something the
U.S. no longer produces domestically and has to import -- engineering
talent!). 

--
Eric Lee Green    ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
          Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509              
Netter A: In Hell they run VMS.
Netter B: No.  In Hell, they run MS-DOS.  And you only get 256k.