How Colleges Help Foreign Grad Students With Their Teaching
During her first semester as a graduate teaching assistant at Ohio University, Noora Mahboubeh was terrified. The Iranian doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering often struggled to understand her students’ questions, and they weren’t always sympathetic to her difficulties with English. She started to gain confidence after enrolling in an English-language-improvement program, one of many services the university provides to international graduate students who want to communicate better as instructors. "I learned to not pretend that I can understand something," Ms. Mahboubeh says. "I’m not as afraid of making mistakes anymore. When I can’t understand something, I just ask."