I Could Not Understand Anything They Said! : Non-Native English Speaking Instructors, Online Learning, and Student Anxiety

Non-native English speaking (NNES) instructors are often rated lower within course evaluations and are typically criticized for their accents (Rubin, 1992; Subtirelu, 2015). Reasonings behind this have not been researched much in terms of online education, though the relevance of this topic is continuing to grow through online learning. The current experiments aim to determine if the presence of an NNES accent causes more learning anxiety compared to an instructor with a standard American accent. Two experiments were conducted to gauge participants’ anxiety level and learning performance. In both experiments, participants were given a set of four videos divided into two segments: one containing videos with an NNES instructor and the other containing videos with a standard American accented instructor. After each video, participants were asked recall questions over the information that they had just received before moving on to the next video. In between the two segments, participants’ anxiety levels were measured. At the end of each experiment, participants were asked to fill out a Chinese language experience form and demographic information. Our findings indicated the instructor type influenced recall and anxiety

Students\u27 Perceptions of Foreign Professors at a Historically Black college and university (HBCU)

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of gender, teaching styles, student cultural awareness, professor’s accent, and ethnicity on students’ perceptions of foreign professors at a Historically Black College and University. Multiple regression was used for the analysis of this study. The predictor variables were analyzed through a pilot study to ensure that they were related to the dependent or criterion variable, as required of multiple regression models. Two hundred students participated in this study, during the Fall semester of 2021. All the subjects completed a questionnaire on students’ perceptions of foreign professors. The results revealed that gender, teaching styles, cultural awareness, and student ethnicity had a statistically significant effect on students’ perceptions of foreign professors. Teacher accent was not statistically significant on students’ perceptions of foreign professors. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that students should learn and familiarize with foreign culture. Accepting cultural differences and embracing them can enhance student-teacher relationships with foreign professors

Effects of Instructor Accent on Undergraduate Evaluations and Learning at a Catholic College

Catholic institutions of higher education are called to form citizens who fight against injustice, including persistent racial oppression. To do this, Catholic, public, and other private institutions must provide students opportunities to learn about and confront racism (Johnston, 2014). It is important that these institutions confront these issues because they employ faculty and staff who may experience systemic racism and can provide cultural knowledge to aid deconstructing racist ideologies. Undergraduate student evaluations of instructors or faculty, however, indicate discrimination against those perceived as non-white and with non-native English accents. This study focuses on one form of racism at a Catholic liberal arts college: bias against instructors who speak with a non-native English accent. This between-groups experimental study was guided by critical sociolinguistic theory and sociocultural theory to examine patterns in undergraduate engagement with material that varied only by instructor accent. Participants (n=98) completed a pre-assessment, a microlecture (randomized by accent), a post-assessment, and a microlecture evaluation. The study’s theoretical frameworks suggest that students would demonstrate bias against non-white presenters, despite the Catholic context and having no visual cues about the race or ethnicity of the presenter. Pre-and post-assessment results indicated that the microlecture had some limited effects on student learning regardless of instructor accent; however, instructors that were perceived as white had significantly higher ratings in terms of the student belief that they “showed enthusiasm about the subject matter” and that “watching this microlecture improved [their] score on the quiz.” These findings suggest continued work is needed to understand and confront issues of systemic racism in higher education

Higher Education Experiences of International Faculty in the U.S. Deep South

Immigration was one of the key issues from within the Obama administration. One focus of the administration was to retain brilliant foreign scholars who have studied in the United States (U.S). Rather than let International Faculty return to their countries after completing their programs, employers found it advantageous to retain these professionals to boost the United States workforce. Higher education was one of the government sectors that experienced an increase in the numbers of foreign nationals choosing to remain in the United States after completing their degrees. What many International Faculty may be oblivious of, and which their programs of study may or may not have prepared them for, was how their lives will be impacted by the U.S. American culture and their new Deep South environment. The purpose of this study was to determine the obstacles and opportunities for foreign born college faculty to contribute to the internationalization and globalization of the higher education in U.S., in Southeastern colleges. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews and online surveys. The researchers provided an overview of what International Faculty feel about colleagues, students, and the educational system in a region known for its Southern Hospitality, along with politics and racial biases. Interviews provided insight into International Faculty’s positive and negative experiences and what administrators can offer to help new International Faculty become more comfortable in their new environments. Findings also provided insight about International Faculty’s perceptions about the Southern culture, the people, and the community

Talking the Talk: The Effect of Vocalics in an Interview

Our voices carry more than just content. People continuously make assumptions of one’s intelligence, credibility, personality, and other characteristics merely based on the way we talk. As the diversity of individuals in the workplace increases, so too do the differences in how those individuals talk. It is important that we understand how these different ways of speaking are being perceived in the workplace. More specifically, how are individuals being perceived prior to being hired via the interview process? This Honors Capstone project aims to understand the impact that vocal characteristics in an individual have on the interviewer’s perception of the interviewee, and how that impacts the hiring process. This project will offer professionals of all ages tangible advice on ways to increase one’s chances of receiving a job just by altering aspects of one’s voice

Exploring Language Education

The overarching aim of this book is to offer researchers and students insight into some currently discussed issues at the Swedish as well as the international research frontline of Language Education in a selection of up-to-date work. Another aim is to provide teachers, teacher educators and policy-makers with input from research within the interconnected disciplines of Applied Linguistics, Language Education and Second Language Acquisition. The volume includes five examples of topical research on language education and the authors are internationally renowned scholars. The chapters are based on a selection of talks presented at the 1st ELE Conference (‘Exploring Language Education’), which was held at Stockholm University in 2018. Employing a broad thematic scope, the volume reflects the variety of perspectives on language education brought together at the conference by authors working in diverse areas of the field and in different parts of the world. With the first ELE conference the organizers wished to call attention to the intersection of the global and the local, in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity, which may inform both research questions and language education practices. Issues related to multilingualism, Global Englishes, and experienced tensions between research and practice are examples of generally shared issues that were brought up by many speakers. The chapters of the book represent this variety of themes and illustrate how different regions and communities are contingent on local prerequisites and circumstances, leading to a number of particular challenges and assets when it comes to language education. The chapters represent different parts of the broad array of research directions that can be discerned under the large umbrella of Language Education, zooming in on the Western context, specifically Sweden, Canada and the United States. Two of the plenary speakers from the conference, Nina Spada and John Levis contribute in the volume. In Spada’s text different ways to bridge the gap between research and practice in language education are discussed, an issue highly relevant to all of those interested in collaborative research between researchers and teachers. The second chapter, written by Levis, presents current research on phonology and the importance of pronunciation in second or foreign language communication. These two are followed by three chapters reporting on empirical studies. Amanda Brown and colleagues present their work on translanguaging in the English L2 classroom, giving an extensive overview of ideological stances from the last decades on the use of mother tongues vs. target language only in the language classroom. Liss Kerstin Sylvén reports on a recent study on very young Swedish learners of English, their exposure of English before school age and outside school and the role that this exposure plays for the development of English language proficiency. Finally, Gudrun Erickson and colleagues, present a questionnaire answered by a large number of modern language teachers in Sweden. The study explores the teachers’ answers on questions about their professional satisfaction, their use of the target language in the classroom, and the curricular status of foreign languages studied after English. Despite many critical points raised by these teachers, the survey reveals that they would not change profession, were they given the chance. The book ends with an Afterword by Stellan Sundh, University of Uppsala

Closing the Communication Gap Between Undergraduates and Mathematics Professors

This research sought to determine the sources of communicative difficulties that exist between undergraduate students and international faculty (the communication gap) specifically within the field of mathematics. The hypotheses were as follows: 1) The communication gap results from students\u27 perceptual difficulties in understanding their professors and their own biases against international faculty. 2) The communication gap can be addressed by administering to students a training program that not only provides instruction on accent features, but also attempts to confront accent bias and persuades the student to adopt a more accommodating view of their professors\u27 accents. Fifteen experimental sessions were conducted in October 2009, in order to collect both quantitative data and qualitative data on the communication gap and students\u27 views thereof. Quantitative data was collected through testing sessions that assessed students\u27 baseline performance on mathematics assessments and their performance on one of three assessments after completing either the linguistic training program, a program meant to simulate bias creation, or a control program. Eighty-one undergraduates at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, took part in one of six testing sessions. Each assessment was tied to a video lesson taught by a professor from India, and the training program was specifically engineered to address the features of this professor\u27s accent. The variable of interest was each student\u27s improvement in scores between the baseline and post-training assessments, as following from Hypothesis 2, I hypothesized that the students who participated in linguistic training program would produce greater improvement scores than the control group. I also hypothesized, on the basis of Hypothesis 1, that students who participated in the bias program would produce significantly worse improvement scores than the control group. An analysis of the data resulting from the testing sessions revealed no significant difference in improvement scores arising from membership in one of these three testing groups. Qualitative data was collected through discussion sessions with testing session participants two weeks after the testing sessions and through questionnaires administered at the end of the testing sessions. Fifty-seven undergraduates from the original sample of 81 participated in discussion sessions. The discussion sessions addressed issues surrounding the communication gap, including classes with international professors, frustrations with communication breakdown, and suggestions for solutions to the communication gap. Data from these sessions were analyzed using an ethnographic approach, revealing substantial cross-group trends and themes. While students did not universally embrace the idea that they contributed to the communication gap and so bore responsibility for closing it, almost all agreed that further research on the issue was vital. A quantitative analysis of response data on the post-testing questionnaire revealed a significant effect of linguistic training on linguistic attitudes. Therefore, although it was not reflected in assessment scores, the use of linguistic training did have a positive effect on students. Further research in this area is vital to determine a reliable application of this result to greater professor-student communication

LANGUAGE TEACHER IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING ASSISTANTS

Language teacher identity has been studied in several contexts in English Language Teaching (ELT) field; however, looking at language teacher identity in a United States context in which teachers from other countries teach their native languages as a foreign language has been a rare topic so far. Therefore, this phenomenological qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of four foreign language teaching assistants who lived and taught in the United States through Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) Program. The findings indicated four main emerging themes: (a) pedagogical shift, (b) cross-cultural awareness, (c) challenges, and (d) goals and expectations. These dynamic components shaped language teachers’ identity in this context. The results are presented under the framework of language teacher identity.  Implications as a guide for future FLTA teachers and for teacher exchange programs are provided. &nbsp