Problems Faced to Accomplish Effective Speech and Writing Skills - Essay Example

This remains a reality that many people have to go for education purposes to strange lands where speech and writing rules may differ hugely from the ones socially practiced in their native lands. This is where myriad ambiguities enter the scene and plague the minds of many confused students who might have travelled much to get education in a certain college. Foreign students, unlike native ones, are mostly seen as individuals exposed to strange norms and complex behaviors, some of which may be quite hostile as well.

Both writing and speech activities are heavily influenced by good communication skills and foreign students should know how to use those skills in unfamiliar academic territories for their own academic benefits. The reality of the immense difficulty faced by foreign students in practicing new speech and writing skills in unfamiliar academic territories is further strengthened as research study done by (McCarthy) identifies that foreign students perceive themselves as strangers in strange lands.

Once enrolled in a certain foreign institution, students belonging to different cultural backgrounds and more familiar to their native languages, have to make great efforts to adapt themselves to new speech situations as a result of which developing close understanding with appropriate styles of communicating and writing which can be applied in new academic territories with great facility becomes inevitably important. A student “has to invent the university by assembling and mimicking its language while finding some compromise between a personal history and the requirements of convention” (Norgaard).

Those students who make painstaking efforts to maintain close interaction with their professors even after the lecture hours finish are seen as individuals taking good grades and rapidly achieving a secure job once their educational periods end. In contrast to such highly interactive students, many foreign students feel shy to communicate with their professors due to myriad underlying reasons which may be of cultural, lingual, intellectual, or psychological nature. Teachers can play a major role in making such students familiar with the rules of writing and speech in a language they consider alien.

The research study done by (Delpit) identifies that teachers should understand that such students deliberately choose not to learn sometimes, rather “choosing to maintain their sense of identity in the face of what they perceive as a painful choice between allegiance to them or us” (Delpit). Foreign students may also face hesitation in interacting with the learned scholars at colleges because of the great fear that they may be looked down upon or mocked by fellow students if they happen to make any grammatical or pronunciation mistakes while trying to interact in foreign language with their teachers.

Students should be transformed by their teachers in such a way that they would stop considering English as an alien language which somehow plays a role in furthering their oppression. Teachers should make those students, who are not already accustomed to the features of mainstream learners, learn how to carry on an effective discourse in the foreign language. “Teachers must acknowledge and validate students’ home language without using it to limit students’ potential” (Delpit). Now, developing good communication skills in English language is not an easy task, especially when it comes to foreign learners who find