Teaching International Students: Recommendations for Success, Challenge, and Delight

By Barry Pomeroy

I envision this book fulfilling two complementary roles. I hope it will be useful for instructors of undergraduate students of the humanities, as well as relevant for anyone interested in the amount of forethought that goes into pedagogy in the international student classroom. After more than two decades of experience with international students, I have had the chance to try numerous experiments with that demographic. Simultaneously, I have developed a way of thinking about teaching international students which has led me to understand the importance of cultural elements in instruction, the significance of discussions around academic misconduct, and how to construct a course as well as assignments. In my evolving way of thinking about my pedagogical practice, I strive to test my students’ abilities instead of how well they fit into the western education system.
I begin with the challenges of teaching international students as well as a discussion about the materials I have developed for the classroom. Because I have long been interested in how cultural difference affects instruction, I examine how the students’ cultural mores impact their learning. I also survey, at length, how to overcome the challenges of academic misconduct as well as approaches for paper writing workshops and how to explain academic research. I include examples that I have used in class, as well as marking rubrics and codes.
International students are a growing demographic in the west, and they can be a delight in the classroom, but the instructor must approach their pedagogy with a self-reflexive understanding of what they hope to accomplish and what the students need to learn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pomeroy
• Release date: Mar 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990314100

Barry Pomeroy

Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

Book preview

Teaching International Students

Recommendations for Success, Challenge, and Delight

by

Barry Pomeroy, PhD

I envision this book fulfilling two complementary roles. I hope it will be useful for instructors of undergraduate students of the humanities, as well as relevant for anyone interested in the amount of forethought that goes into pedagogy in the international student classroom. After more than two decades of experience with international students, I have had the chance to try numerous experiments with that demographic. Simultaneously, I have developed a way of thinking about teaching international students which has led me to understand the importance of cultural elements in instruction, the significance of discussions around academic misconduct, and how to construct a course as well as assignments. In my evolving way of thinking about my pedagogical practice, I strive to test my students’ abilities instead of how well they fit into the western education system.

I begin with the challenges of teaching international students as well as a discussion about the materials I have developed for the classroom. Because I have long been interested in how cultural difference affects instruction, I examine how the students’ cultural mores impact their learning. I also survey, at length, how to overcome the challenges of academic misconduct as well as approaches for paper writing workshops and how to explain academic research. I include examples that I have used in class, as well as marking rubrics and codes.

International students are a growing demographic in the west, and they can be a delight in the classroom, but the instructor must approach their pedagogy with a self-reflexive understanding of what they hope to accomplish and what the students need to learn.

© 2022 by Barry Pomeroy

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, although people generally do what they please.

For more information about my books, go to barrypomeroy.com

ISBN 13: 978-1990314100

ISBN 10: 1990314104

Table of Contents

Introduction

Learning How to Teach in the Cook Islands

The International Student Demographic

Good Pedagogy Empowers the Student

     Observing Class Behaviour

     Evaluating Language Use

     Diction Level in the Classroom

     Use of Euphemism

     Grammar

Structuring a Course Around the International Learner

     The Importance of Grades

     Cultural Background

     Geographical Realities and Misinterpretation

     Culturally Bound Texts: Shakespeare

     Tom Waits' Small Change

     Why English Study is Useful

     Amount of Reading and Choice of Genre

     Cultural Knowledge Needs for the Host country

     Why Thomas King

     Genres to Avoid

Introducing the Course

     Studying is Cumulative in English Literature

     What Grades Are Possible

Taking Notes in Class

     The Lawyer Story Exercise

     Three Notetaking Methods

Constructing Assignments

     Overseas English Institutes

     Cram Schools and How to Game the ESL System

Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct

     Cultural Differences

     Why Students Plagiarize

     Why Enforcement is Essential

     Case Studies

     Academic Misconduct: Bribery

     Buying Papers from Cheating Sites

     Cheating on Exams

     Designing Questions

     How They Find Information Online

     Use of Plagiarism Tools

     The Thesaurus Function

     Online Plagiarism Tools

     Responding to Being Caught

     Excuses

Essay Writing Workshops

     Use of In-Class Essays

     The Basic Structure of an Academic Paper

     Fake Transitions

     Parsing the Question Exercise

     The Academic Journal

     The Copying of Examples Used in Class

Providing Paper Feedback

     Marking Codes and Writing Checklist Exercise

     Spam Example

     Essay Example: Time Devoted to Argument

Comparison Essay Format

     Essay as a Group of Sentences

     Thomas King Comparison Essay Example

     Incorporating Quotes

Writing a Research Paper

     Acquiring Research Skills

     Using Academic Citations: an Argentinian Argument

     Chart of Sources

     Mining the Bibliography

     Editing the Research Paper

Testing and Assessments

     The Significance of the Quote

     General Argumentative Essay

     Exam Preparation Tips

     Studying for the Exam

Conclusion

Appendix 1 - Sample Course Outline

Appendix 2 - Midterm Sample

Appendix 3 - Final Exam

Appendix 4 - Twenty Steps to a Brilliant Essay

Appendix 5 - Sample Works Cited Page

Appendix 6 - Defending My Student's Grade

Works Cited

Notes

Introduction

When teaching any group of learners the choice of an effective pedagogical method can be fraught with second-guessing and misunderstandings. Many instructors merely forge ahead with the tried and true methodology like what they were taught, and presume that the students’ difficulty with the material is not their pedagogical problem. Others, in an attempt to be as clear as possible, and without necessarily considering the students’ performance, lower the standard of the classroom or heighten it depending on their perception of the classroom or the demographic.

Still others are gatekeepers, who think only of preserving the sanctity of the university system for those they deem worthy. They sometimes, perhaps inadvertently, set impossible tasks for the international student which ensures their failure. Some declare that all international students cheat, and therefore scrutinize them more closely, or believe that international students are using the university system as a backdoor into the target country and they become preternaturally alert for visa fraud:

The ‘deficit’ view of international students is not effective pedagogically because it assumes not only that some cultures are in ‘deficit,’ but the cultural baggage is carried only by students, not teachers. In reality, being the more powerful partner in the teacher-students relationship, the cultural baggage carried by the teachers has a much more dominant effect than that carried by the students. Cultural baggage does not stay stationary, and the teachers must be aware of the interactions with students will necessarily impact on both sets of cultures. Unless they are prepared to understand the changes within their own cultures, they are themselves misinformed. (Carroll and Ryan 23)

Although this list of bad pedagogues and their intentions and techniques is not exhaustive, it highlights the impact of an instructor’s preconceptions on their students before they have even met.

As that list of possibilities suggests, I am more interested in an instructor who thinks the university experience should be open to anyone who wishes to attempt it—whose most devout wish is that all students succeed. Such an instructor matches their curriculum to the learner, is cognizant of the cultural implications of their instruction and the learner’s origin, and is flexible when dealing with academic misconduct and testing. That is not to say that such an instructor would coddle a weak cohort of students. Far the opposite. The instructor who recognizes the unique strengths as well as the weaknesses of the international student learner is one who can extract the best work from them and encourage their academic and professional success.

There are pitfalls for even a sympathetic instructor, however. Some are so enraptured by the course topic or material that they fail to consider the cultural backgrounds of their students. The students may not be comfortable with material that would be considered pornographic, for instance, in their own country even though it might be perfectly acceptable in the western university setting. Likewise, prose which is too ornate, or which demands an in-depth cultural understanding may unfairly discriminate against the international student. An instructor of international students cannot consider everything, however, and they are also confined by the hours they are paid to teach.¹ Teaching international students does not tend to be well supported by the western university system. The instructor is therefore necessarily cutting corners even while they are trying to do the best job they can. If they balance the two impulses well, the student manages to learn both how to negotiate the western education system as well as absorb the class material.

As instructors, it behooves us to ask ourselves how we can deliver as much relevant and useful information as possible given the time allotted, as well as work around the needs and abilities of any of our students. In the western education system we must also balance the discrete information we need to deliver with the necessity of teaching critical thinking. When the class consists of international students, the circumstance is similar, although extra consideration should be paid to the needs and abilities of the students—for those vary somewhat from students of a more homogenous group—as well as the equally important question of cultural understanding when it comes to setting up the course, teaching the material, and testing student retention and comprehension.

This is not an inconsiderable task, for the ability of a student is largely the result of their educational system and the skill set of international students varies depending on how unalike their language and cultural background is by comparison with the west. Cultural understanding is much more difficult to quantify, given that international students span a wide range of learners from many different ethnic backgrounds. Certain cultural mores affect the learner’s ability to engage with classroom discussion and with the texts chosen by their instructor, although a more positive corollary to that is that their background may also be an asset for understanding the course material or the instructor’s intentions.

The range of raw ability, in terms of their proficiency in writing English sentences and constructing coherent arguments, also varies greatly amongst international students. I have taught students who were better writers than many western Masters students working on a thesis, and I have marked others—through no fault of their own—who could barely string two sentences together without several logical, spelling, and grammatical errors. The blame for that may well be laid at the foot of schools that have not prepared them for the overseas classroom, but blame boots little while the question of teaching the student remains. The international student classroom is a mix that often includes those who can be found on either end of this wide spectrum.

It is an infirmity of human reasoning that we suspect someone who speaks slowly or with difficulty is intellectually weak. As Carroll and Ryan suggest, a perceived lack of proficiency should not be confused with inability in general, or more tragically, diminished intelligence.² It’s worthwhile considering that not only is English their second, third, and in some cases fifth language, but also that our students are very young, living overseas with few tangible supports, and learning in a language they have yet to master. An instructor in such a classroom would be wise to consider their own youth, and strive to recall if they would have been as resourceful, brave, and resilient if they had chosen to study overseas at eighteen or nineteen years old. The international student is also dealing with a new culture, over and above the novel university experience. Even many domestic students find the transition to university difficult, and universities are increasingly putting remedial programs into place to smooth that intellectual shift. That international students can do this at all speaks highly to their motivation, innate intelligence, and fortitude.

The instructor must begin with an evaluation of the level of the class. They must decide best how to assign a question which does not only test the students’ English language proficiency, but also examines their ability to manipulate ideas and answer the question. Shortly the students’ intelligence will stand out, and the others who are merely writing pretty sentences will become more obvious. I have some of those assignments itemized below, but to begin with it is worth considering that teaching a class with such scattered skills demands extra attention be devoted to structuring the course material. Clarity of assignments is crucial if the students are going to succeed, and in the case of final exams, some care should be spent instructing them so that students who are less prone to asking questions will not encounter confusion. To that end, possibly ambiguous questions should be rewritten until they provide an almost redundant clarity.

Of course, there are departmental or discipline requirements that must be met in any course, so regardless of the student’s ability, they still must pass muster in order to meet the goals set by the institution guidelines. But other than those relatively firm strictures, even the constrained instructor has some latitude in terms of deciding how to construct the most effective course for the group of learners they expect to have.

Similarly, in terms of university regulations, detecting and capturing academic misconduct is increasingly a problem in the university classroom, and we may thank the internet for that increase. In the case of international students, however, there are often problems with plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct because of past practice or a lack of attention to the issue in their educational background. The instructor must navigate the shoals and reefs between what behaviour the student may have learned in their school system and a potentially alien system which would judge them without considering their context.

In the case of working with international students, context is everything; each educational pitfall is a potential lesson and each success is a moment to be celebrated.

Learning How to Teach in the Cook Islands

Many people who become teachers of international students have little experience or training in the field. Some of them may have taken a teaching ESL (English Second Language) course or specialized in adult education, but most people working with international students learn on the job.

I am no exception. Half my lifetime ago, when I was twenty-five years old, I found myself teaching middle-to-high school on the island of Manihiki in the northern Cook Islands. I had an undergraduate degree at the time, and therefore a little more training than the other volunteers I shared the organization with, but I had no background in education and knew little about how to perform in the classroom. Like the other volunteers, I muddled through, conforming the instruction to my strengths—working in the physical sciences and social studies—and trying to overcome the students’ weaknesses and my inexperience. My students ranged from twelve to seventeen years of age, and because the class operated like a traditional frontier one-room classroom, I taught a lesson for the younger grades, set them to doing some work, and then did the lesson for the older group.

I likely learned far more than my students, since they were accustomed to schoolwork while I was immersed in another culture and language. In that way I was both an international instructor and a student, and I observed my students and their responses carefully, trying to cover my inexperience with care and my mistakes with a better understanding of pedagogy.

One of the first lessons I learned was that even within this relatively small group my students were not homogenous. Peretira, who was seventeen and a bit jaded for an island girl, had been sent from her home in New Zealand where she was either getting in trouble or someone thought she might. She was sassy, clever, and witty, and fairly good about doing her work. Her friend Akamura was more demure, although she liked to avoid studying when she could. Mamahotu was a bit younger, although I still taught her in the older group. She was less mature, but still a good student as long as I kept her from talking to her friend Ngatamahine. I usually taught Ngatamahine as I would the younger students. She was a weaker student and more easily distracted by what was happening out of the louver pane windows than most of the others. To be fair, in such a social culture where everyone knows everyone, if an islander passed the window a few minutes of intense discussion would ensue as my students tried to discover where the person could be going. I learned to ignore those outbursts, and instead wait until the moment had passed.

Mokopu and Nooapii shared the front row with Ngametua. Mokopu was memorable because he was quite disruptive, in a quite normal way, and I often needed to call upon him to pay attention. For instance, after I had been teaching a few months, Mokopu had turned in his seat in the front until he was facing toward the other students. He was making faces or commentary through expression, and some of the students were becoming distracted. I decided that the frequent calls I made to settle him down hadn’t been effective, so I tried something new. Although I would not recommend pedagogy by humiliation, I knew that boys his age are typically embarrassed by being attracted to girls, if even they are old enough for such feelings. Therefore, I said to him, Mokopu, quit staring at Peretira.

Peretira had a quick wit, and she responded immediately by thickening her New Zealand brogue. Ahh, he’s got a crush on me.

A few students laughed, but her statement bowled me over. I found that I couldn’t stop giggling, and with the rest of the class staring at me, and Mokopu glowering in the front row, I said, I’m sorry, Mokopu. That was just too funny, even as I was gasping for breath. I eventually got myself under control, but the damage had been done. The students knew I was as ridiculous as them, and Mokopu felt hard done by.

Maharata’s parents ran one of the shops on the island. She was an avid reader, and a teacher’s pet. That didn’t endear her to the rest of the students, but she cared little about what they thought. I remember asking one time what whales eat, and although I expected an answer like smaller fish—I think I was teaching some chain of biological life lesson—Maharata said plankton. I had to confess she was correct, at least for baleen whales. She knew far more than I would have expected given her age and the level of the other students. I thought she would go to university, although when I searched for her name while I was writing a book about my experiences in the islands I came up with an article about a Maharata Williams catching 14kg of wahoo and skipjack tuna during a fishing competition in Manihiki in 2011. If she did attend university she went back home to her island after her degrees.

Meleilani was only fourteen or so and she had arrived with me on the boat. Her father was Arthur Neale, son of the locally famous Tom Neale who had spent years on Suwarrow ostensibly alone. Academically, Meleilani was ahead of the other students, except for Maharata, and I think we were all under the impression that Arthur would not be staying on the island long. He lived on one of the tiny islets in the middle of the lagoon, and brought his two children—Meleilani had a brother in a more junior class called Luke—to school by motorboat every day.

The three youngest children were Teteru, Teremoana, and Tokorua. Teremoana—whose name means the foam of the sea—was a delightful student, and very young. She was friends with Teteru, although she was also friendly with everyone. Teteru was a relative of people I knew, although I never worked out the exact shade of their connection. That meant that when her father was drinking, and problematic to be around, Teteru stayed with us. She wasn’t a warm child, and quite immature, but at only twelve that can be excused, especially because her father was given to rages when drinking and her mother was abusive. One such afternoon I spent over an hour helping her with math homework and I think she was touched.

Tokorua’s father was also very abusive and had actually killed her mother after years of beatings. I’m not sure who was there to look out for her, but the effects of the abuse were evident. She may have received the scar on her cheek in play, but her ragged uniform—about which the students never teased her—and her lack of sandals, contributed to an image of a child who was neglected. She came to school barefoot, and her unhemmed skirt was sewn in the large stitches of someone who does not know how to sew.

She was quieter than the other kids, and while they played she was not always included. She was always kind with the others, however, and never threatened or hurt any of her fellow students, although she likely had not been taught kindness at home. When I set an assignment for my students I would circulate through the classroom to make sure everyone was doing their work. I would always give Tokorua extra time, for she would sit quietly and when I approached she would hide what she had written under her hand. I would squat beside her while she hid her work and ask how she was doing. She would smile sadly while she removed her hand to show that all she’d done was write down the question. I would praise her that she had started, and ask her the question verbally. She blossomed under that extra nudging, and soon she would tell me the answer and I would bid her to write it down.

An aspect to teaching in the Cooks that I found odd was the cheating. The children would nearly always cheat when working on a test. They weren’t ashamed of it and made no attempt to hide what they were doing. The problem was ubiquitous enough that I asked the principal about it. She had received her teacher training in New Zealand as well as Papua New Guinea, so she knew how the western system worked, understood why I was puzzled, and knew how to explain the cultural difference to me.

Ana told me that the competitive culture of the west was a strong contrast to the traditional Cook Islands system. People here work together, she said. They would never think of working out how to do something on their own if their neighbour knew how to do it. We would just ask our neighbour. She confirmed that my instincts were correct, that it was a cultural phenomenon rather than merely bad study habits. The research supports this notion. Beecher et al note what they call conflicts in several different areas over western [system] compared with indigenous educational and practice models: The students noted that the western perspective emphasized individual worth and self-determination, which often clashed with the indigenous belief that the community is more important than the individual (Beecher et al 206).

I asked Ana what she did when her students cheated, or shared information and she said if it were not too overt, she would ignore the behaviour. She explained that the students needed to live with their peers more than they needed to compete in the western system. I began to read the cheating differently, and saw it as representing a more socially cohesive system of interacting that did not need to be overwritten by western notions of individuality and solitude.

I often indulged in theater in an effort to keep the students’ attention, and besides cutting up the strap to show how I felt about corporal punishment, I was also merely goofy. Once when I was teaching, a gecko—which on the Islands they call moko, and in the northern dialect mokau—jumped from the ceiling onto my head. I felt something but kept on teaching and the children started to giggle. Mr. Pomeroy, one of them finally said, "you have a mokau on your head."

I reached up with one hand and the mokau jumped onto my hand. I looked at it, and said, You’re right. Then I lifted my hand and the mokau jumped back onto my head and I kept teaching. I thought of theater like that as performing a triple pedagogical service. It kept the students interested, showed that I wasn’t troubled by animals, and confirmed that I would not mistreat them. That was one the first times that I became aware that teaching covers more than just the intended lesson. In teaching we are modeling behaviour, delivering information, and exhibiting societal norms.

Because I was a white foreign teacher I was presumed to be much more knowledgeable than I was. Therefore, when I had been teaching for about a month a colleague asked me what I thought of their student’s scholastic ability. Luke was Meliliani’s brother so I’d met him before. I asked the teacher what she meant, and because we were alone in the room she pointed out that his workbooks showed letters and numbers reversed. Although I knew nothing about dyslexia other than a movie based folk representation about reversed letters, I asked her to have him come in.

When he arrived I asked him to