Graduate students speak out on tougher language standards

The University's recent plan to use a tougher test for evaluating graduate students' English language proficiency before allowing them to become TAs has drawn various reactions among those whom the standards will affect most — graduate students.

Many said they believe that stricter standards would be beneficial to both graduate and undergraduate students.

Geng Wu, a third-year chemistry graduate student from China, said he believes the test would be advantageous to both the teacher and the students. "Maybe it's better for the undergraduates," he said. When there is a language barrier, "it is also more difficult for graduate students themselves," he added.

Vadim Kaloshin, a fourth-year mathematics graduate student from Russia, said he believes he can communicate with his students "without any problems." Though he did not know about the administration's recent announcement, he said, "I think it's a good idea to have a more difficult test."

All graduate students currently are required to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language before entering the graduate college. Kaloshin said the test was easy to pass because it does not test fluency.

"It has nothing to do with being fluent in English, but understanding what people are talking about or not," he said. "Some can write on the test very well, but it doesn't show who can communicate well. You are just answering questions showing whether you understand what's going on or not."

Though he passed the TOEFL, Christos Leonidopoulos, a fifth-year physics graduate student, said he experienced difficulties speaking English once he entered graduate school. "I found that the English I needed was much more advanced than the TOEFL tests," he said. Though he sometimes struggled, he said, "I did not have problems with my teaching duties, maybe because I would always work in advance on what I was going to say in the lab."

Wu said that as a lab instructor, he is not required to speak much English. "You can still get through," he said, adding that if he had to take a more difficult language test, he would take courses in English to become more proficient.

One-third of graduate school departments require their students to teach undergraduates. But teaching is valuable to those students in departments without teaching requirements, Kaloshin said. In the field of mathematics, he said, teaching challenges the instructor to explain problems clearly. "You have to bring knowledge to the light," Kaloshin explained.

Jie Chen, a third-year computer science graduate student from China, said fluency is not crucial for teaching in her field. As a teaching assistant in COS 111: Computers and Computing, she said she knew English "well enough" because she only had to lead a lab.

"Most of the time I spent solving problems with the students," she said. "If you know the problem and how to solve it, the language is not the point. Even if you couldn't say it very well you could demonstrate it."