Listening (2) transcript

- For this week’s podcastinenglish.com we’re going to be talking about the experiences that international students have living in England. And with me today is Jenny. Hello, Jenny!

- Hello, Jackie.

- Tell me first of all, what’s your job?

- I work as a lecturer in a university in London teaching students on their master’s degree in international development and education.

- And the students that you have, come from, they are international students, they come from various countries around the world?

- Yes, from all over the world, really. Some of my students this year come from Brazil or from Pakistan, from India. And then some from Japan or Poland. A whole range of countries.

- So what kind of problems do these students have when they come to the UK and study here?

- Well, obviously all of the students have achieved the required level of English to be able to study. But many students still find it difficult to cope with the language both in classes and socially, because they haven’t been taught the kind of jargon that people use as related to the subjects that we teach. But also in everyday language, the kind of slang, the kind of expressions that we use are quite difficult for students from other countries.

- So therefore they have problems both in the class, in the lectures while they’re studying as well as problems socially as well then?

- Both those things can be the case. And with writing as well. It can be quite difficult to write essays in the style of the British education system when perhaps you’ve been taught in a very different way. Similarly with things like reading, taking notes. All these things can be quite challenging for students. But there are other difficulties as well that the students have. They are not really connected with the language, but they are more connected with living in a different setting. So they might feel quite homesick. They have to cope with the horrible British weather and to kind of acclimatize to that. It can be a very lonely experience leaving family behind and friends behind and trying to find people to get on with. And then for some students I think it can be quite difficult because they’ve come from being very-very successful in their own countries. And perhaps part of quite a small elite who’ve got to the point of being able to do a higher degree in a different country.

- So this is an MA course that you teach so will most of them have already done a BA then?

- Definitely, yes. And some of them will already have an MA as well in their host country or they might be a qualified teacher in their country who wants to do some further training.

- Right.

- But many are highly qualified people. And then one student for example recently was telling me how when she spoke with people when she first came to England people would speak to her very slowly and sometimes very loudly as if she couldn’t quite hear them properly because they just assumed that she didn’t understand what was going on. And she found that very difficult that people weren’t really treating her as an equal at all.

- Simply because she was foreign?

- Yeah, because she was foreign. And then another problem that many students have is, of course they have a huge range of fascinating life experiences and life histories. And some students feel that those are not valued at all. So that’s one thing that we try to do on our course is to spend quite a lot of time giving students opportunities to think and talk about how their own history and their own past experience links with what they are studying now. And for me it’s been one of the most exciting things about the teaching that I’ve been doing. I feel that in many ways I’ve learned more than the students have.

- You’ve learned a lot about their cultures and the things that are important to them?

- Absolutely.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 688