With a little help from the Writing and Communication Center, members of ETSU’s International community are bridging the communication barrier while crossing the great cultural divide.
Increasing numbers of international and English as a Second Language (ESL) students are taking advantage of an array of services offered through the WCC.
“While they make up only a small percentage of the student population at ETSU, they make up a pretty large percentage of the students who use our services,” said Rob Russell, the center’s director.
One of these services, the English Table, meets every Tuesday afternoon from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the WCC in Room 409, Warf-Pickel Hall. In an effort to improve their English communication skills, group participants come together each week to learn from one another.
Though not new, the program has really taken off recently. “We started doing that group back in 1998 as a response to foreign students, particularly graduate students, that were having trouble passing their oral proficiency test,” Russell said. “The oral proficiency test helps place them with what kind of assistantships they can have, whether they can teach, whether they can tutor, be lab teachers or teach their own classes.”
Many international students already possess strong grammar skills, so their textbook understanding of English will typically suffice in their studies. However, listening to and, or speaking the language, can sometimes be a whole different matter.
Two months removed from his native Benha, Egypt, Mohamed Zobaa, a research specialist at the Gray Fossil Site, soon realized that there is a significant difference between written and oral communication. “I did not practice speaking the language until I came here,” Zobaa said. “I can read and write very good, but when I’m speaking, sometimes I’m not so good.”
Some of the communication breakdown stems from the stark contrast between more formal styles of English like the Oxford variant that Zobaa grew up with, and the less conventional, American Standard English used in the United States.
“When they get over here they may have an understanding of grammar that’s almost akin to their understanding of mathematics,” Russell said. “They understand how the pieces fit together, but when it comes to being able to take it all in and understand it, and also being able to put it all back out there, there’s where the disconnect happens.”
That’s where the English Table comes in, serving as a conduit between the two worlds.
According the the WCC web site, “The purpose of the English Table is three-fold, one being to help international students become better speakers and listeners of American English, secondly, to help international students become more informed about the American culture and way of life and thirdly to help all students become more aware and respectful of the diversity of cultures represented here at ETSU.”
English Table participants are encouraged to ask or comment about anything of concern to them.
“It’s just a great time to work on their English and ask questions,” said WCC graduate assistant Jessica Brown, who conducts the English Table meetings. “It can be anything. We talk about recipes, we talk about pop culture, we talk about slang, idioms, prejudice, anything.”
In the fall, 385 international graduate and undergraduate students from 75 countries were enrolled at ETSU, Russell said.
“I have really enjoyed being a part of the English Table the last six months,” said Xiaolu Zhang, or Lucy, her chosen English name. “We have a lot of fun here,” said Zhang, a professor of English language and culture at Chengdu University in China. “I have learned a lot, and made so many International friends,” Zhang said.
There are no set rules for the group, activities vary from week to week. “We make cookies at Christmas time, paint eggs at Easter, we’ve even taken them to the Carter Family Fold (in southwest Virginia, to here live performances of bluegrass and country music) before,” Brown said. “It’s a great cultural experience.”
Serious matters are addressed, too. For instance, “We talk about prejudice, not only from a racial standpoint, but also from a communication standpoint,” said Brown, a speech pathology major.
“Communication is one thing that people are still very, very prejudiced about,” Brown said. “They will judge you immediately by that. We try to help people become more confident in who they are, even if people have difficulty understanding them.”
While the English Table does provide the international community with a regular place to gather and get to know one another, its allure doesn’t stop there.
Preparation for further academic endeavors is a big draw for many.
Preparing himself for the GRE and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), are Zobaa’s main reasons for coming. Meeting friends and making connections would be great too, “but actually I want to pass the GRE and TOEFL,” said Zobaa, who specializes in paleontology.
As if the language barrier weren’t daunting enough, there’s sometimes an accent hurdle, as well. “You have here in the U.S., a special accent that I did not learn in Egypt,” Zobaa said. “Sometimes when other guys are speaking, I can not understand them.”
Some WCC special sessions focus just on slang. “A lot of that gets into dialects, ‘Appalachianisms’ and these sorts of things,” Russell said. “The differences in the way we speak can be very confusing to them, just a simple thing like the southern Appalachian way of pronouncing ‘pen’ (the writing instrument) can be confusing.

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