What happens if students don't speak English too well?

[reinhard]

I was invigilating a statistics exam and someone asked me what a "trend" is (in a graph). I was going to utter the words "pattern" or "shape", but I stopped myself before then and simply said "I can't tell you..." (because for some reason I felt like it would have given him the answer.)

 

Was that a really bad move on my part...? What could I have done instead...?

[lewin]

My policy as an instructor is that I'll define any word that's not a course term. So, depends on which category "trend" falls into. Frankly it's so simple it sounds like fishing, but who can say. As a TA I never invigilated an exam without the instructor present and would have just kicked it upstairs. 

 

 

....also, sometimes I get asked about words from native English speakers too, words that they really should know.

[TakeruK]

I agree with lewin. If you thought you would have given away the answer by defining that term, I think the best thing you could have done was to ask the professor / instructor. I do agree that this is a tough TA situation since you don't want to have students with lesser English skills disadvantaged (after all, you are testing their stats knowledge, not their English) but at the same time, you don't want to provide an unfair advantage/disadvantage either. 

 

If there were no one else left to ask the question to (you're the senior TA or the instructor is not present), and there are no stated course rules (some courses have a rule that no questions, even those of a clarifying nature, are allowed during exams) then I would have gone with my instinct (what else could you do?). 

[danieleWrites]

I'll add my voice to the you-did-the-right-thing chorus.

 

I would also suggest that you, at the least, look at your university's grad school website to see the minimum requirements for international students in terms of speaking English. Now, not every student that doesn't speak English well is an international student. I've had to wade through a composition class with an American citizen that spoke poor English. She would not have been able to pass the TOESL enough to be admitted into the university. At any rate, this will give you an idea of the baseline that the university expects regarding the use of English. To an extent. A TOESL score isn't necessarily an easy to understand indicator for people who never have to deal with the TOESL.

 

The next step would be to email your supervisor for guidance should something of this nature happen to you in the future. If nothing else, you will have a paper trail, as it were, should the student or a future student complain about your handling of this or a similar situation.

[Karoku_valentine]

Unlike those for their graduate peers, English requirements for undergraduate international students are not that rigorous. Therefore,  I have found many undergraduate students with a poor command of English. I think you should have given a simple synonym, or rephrase the question in a simpler way.

[Taeyers]

I would think that for any student in a statistics class, not knowing what the word "trend" means by the time they're taking an exam would have to be the result of negligence. How is it possible for this to be the first time the student has seen this word during the course? Yes, this particular student was at a disadvantage, but in theory he or she should be prepared and dedicated to learning basic coursework terms in a foreign language when starting a whole program in that language. However, if the term had been anything that they might reasonably not have seen multiple times before, that would be a different story.

 

Ultimately, I go with my gut feeling. I can usually tell when I'm being taken advantage of, and in those cases I have no problem choosing to be largely unhelpful. If the student is truly confused though, I would do my best to either give a synonym or rephrase the whole question, depending on which is less likely to indicate which answers may or may not be correct. 

 

For what it's worth, I once TA'd for a science professor who allowed all international students to have their phones out during (multiple choice) exams, and we were responsible for walking around during the exam and making sure that they had Google translate on the screens and not something else. I can't overemphasize how much I disagreed with this policy, so maybe I'm particularly jaded. 

Edited February 14, 2015 by Taeyers