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From: matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <18958@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Jan 89 02:36:27 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <558@mccc.UUCP> <3350@arcturus>
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Reply-To: matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff)
Organization: EECS, UC Davis
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In article <3350@arcturus> kathryn@arcturus.UUCP (Kathryn Fielding) writes:

>3) An instructor who's English communication skills are so poor that the
>   class (including the TA) is unable to understand him.

In my experience, the problem is not really with the person's ENGLISH
as it is with his/her GENERAL communication skills.  In other words,
I think that most foreigners who are poor teachers in English would
also be poor teachers in their native language.

I do have some direct confirmation of this.  For example, we had a
TA from China whose student evaluations quite consistently gave him
very low ratings, and they blamed his poor English for his teaching 
problems.  Yet his English in fact was fairly good; even our secretaries 
were surprised to hear that the students felt that the TA's English was
bad enough to impair his teaching.  So I visited a couple of his class 
sessions, and found that he was making the classical mistakes of a poor 
teacher  --  talking into the board, being poorly prepared, pitching his 
explanations at a level much higher than that of the students, not 
pausing for questions from the students, etc.  --  all things that had 
nothing to do with his English.  I pointed these things out to him, and 
the next quarter, his student teaching evaluations were very good  --  
and NO ONE complained about his English, even though of course his 
English had not changed at all.

   Norm