DOCUMENT RESUME FL 025 887 ED 431 334 Inoue, Yukiko AUTHOR ESL Undergraduate Students' Perceived Difficulties in TITLE American Classrooms. DATE 1999-00-00 PUB NOTE 12p. Research (143) TYPE Reports PUB MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. PRICE EDRS College Instruction; Educational Technology; *English DESCRIPTORS (Second Language); *Ethnic Groups; *Foreign Students; Higher Education; *Learning Problems; Second Language Instruction; *Undergraduate Students *Asians IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT A study investigated the extent to which Asian undergraduate students of English as a second language (ESL) in American institutions had more learning difficulty than non-Asian students, and the relationship of length of time in the United States to the degree of this difficulty. Subjects were 20 randomly-selected ESL undergraduate students at one university, 10 Asian and 10 non-Asian. Data were drawn from a survey eliciting students' demographic data and perceptions of their classroom learning difficulty. Results indicate that the Asian students did feel more difficulty than non-Asian students felt, but found no association between length of stay and degree of perceived difficulty. Suggestions for further research are offered. The student questionnaire and a chart of results are appended. Contains 11 references. (MSE) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** ESL Undergraduate Students' Perceived Difficulties in American Classrooms Yukiko Inoue, Ph.D. College of Education The University of Guam UOG Station, Mangilao Guam 96923 Phone: 671-735-2447 Fax: 671-734-3651 E-mail: [email protected] ts-- PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS Office of Educational Research and Improvement °ISO BEEN GRANTED BY 00 EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION Inooe, CENTER (ERIC) \/) rThis docum ent has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. -.4. o Minor changes have been made to L..\ improve reproduction quality. TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. BEST COPY AVAll ESL Undergraduate Students' 1 ESL Undergraduate Students' Perceived Difficulties in American Classrooms Yukiko Inoue The University of Guam The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Oriental ESL undergraduate students were more likely than non-Oriental ESL undergraduate students to perceive difficulties in American classrooms. This was rather a mini-research but the results were interesting from the Implications were discussed particularly in terms of educational cross-cultural perspectives. technology for the ESL undergraduate students to supplement their mainstream courses. English as a second language (ESL) is a relatively recent academic field (Benesch, 1991), yet the importance of this field is rapidly increasing. The 457,984 foreign students who enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities in 1996-1997 represented a record, up 0.9% from the previous year's record ("Foreign Enrollment Rises," 1997). American universities have a reputation for delivering quality education, and English is recognized as a global language anyway (Naisbitt & Aburdene, 1990). In general, American higher education is characterized by speed and competition in With a different set of both language and literacy experiences, however, classwork. all the ESL students may not perceive the same degree of difficulties in taking Oriental and Arabic university college or university courses in the United States. students' reading abilities, for instance, are significantly lower than those of Hispanic college students (Spencer & Sadoski, 1988). The study reported here was designed, in particular, to investigate whether Oriental ESL undergraduate students were more likely than non-Oriental ESL undergraduate students to perceive difficulties in American classrooms. Based on the assumption that the longer ESL students would stay in the United States, the less they would perceive difficulties in taking courses, this study was further designed to investigate the relationship between the length of ESL students' stay in the United States and the degree of their perceived difficulties in the course work. 3 ESL Undergraduate Students 2 Review of the Literature Although published results of comparative studies on Oriental ESL versus non- Oriental ESL students were not found in a computerized search (using the ERIC database), several comparative studies on ESL versus EPL (English as a primary language) students indicated that there were significant differences between ESL and EPL students. According to Banks (1981), ESL students perceive great difficulties in mainstream curriculums compared to EPL students primarily due to ESL students' language and cultural backgrounds. Culture is indeed an important but often neglected variable in the second language learning. Cultural differences among ESL students may result in the different perceived degree of difficulties in taking American university courses. Holmes and Moulton's (1994) study on writing process in multicultural settings has revealed that there are significant differences in the manner in which students from different cultures process information. ESL university students tend to score higher on open-ended accounting questions, whereas ESL students tend to score higher on multiple-choice accounting questions (Jenkins & Holley, 1990). In Asia, a greater emphasis has been placed on memorization rather than discussion in the course work (Schieffelin & Gilmore, 1986). In Japan, for example, university students are not expected to think critically or to question ideas but are expected to memorize facts or figures (Kitamura, cited in Blanche's (1992) study on the cross-cultural education in twenty-one Bess, 1997). European countries has revealed that the significant differences in learning of university students that are attributed to culture and social structures. A comparative study (American versus Japanese students) by Kobayashi (1992) has found that primarily due to cultural differences, students learn differently and professors evaluate differently the quality of the classwork done by those students. Thus prior studies have established that the differences between EPL and ESL ESL Undergraduate Students 3 university students are significant in such variables as reading comprehension, writing assignment, note-taking, and test-taking. The differences are not only attributed to English as a second language of ESL students, but they are also attributed to ESL students' cultural and social differences. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to compare the two groups of ESL undergraduate students who had different ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as different language experiences. Method Survey Participants A survey questionnaire was used as a testing instrument. Participants were 20 ESL undergraduate students at the University of Memphis. Although all the 558 international students at the University were from 57 different countries, more than 80% of them were from Asia, mostly India, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand; and only approximately 25% were in undergraduate programs. The population of interest was confined to all the 140 ESL undergraduate students. The participants (10 Orientals and 10 non-Orientals) were randomly selected from an alphabetical listing of the ESL undergraduate students in the International Students Advisor's Office. Students from India were considered as non-Orientals in this study because they largely differ in their social and cultural backgrounds from students from east Asia who were considered as Orientals. Table 1 presents the sample students' origin countries and the number of the students from each country. Research Hypotheses Two hypotheses were established in this study. Hypothesis 1: Oriental ESL undergraduate students would perceive more difficulties in American classrooms than would non-Oriental ESL undergraduate students. Hypothesis 2: There would be an association between the length of ESL undergraduate students' stay in the United States and the degree of their perceived difficulties in American classrooms. 5 ESL Undergraduate Students 4 Table 1 Origin Countries of Sample Students Oriental Group Non-Oriental Group Number Number Country Country Argentina China 3 1 Hong Kong Brazil 1 1 Denmark Korea 1 1 Malaysia India 3 2 Taiwan Iran 1 1 Thailand Germany 1 1 Vietnam Russia 1 1 Venezuela 1 Total Total 10 10 Data Analysis The data collected from 20 undergraduate students, who answered the international students questionnaire (see Appendix A), were used in the following First, independent (one-tailed) t test was used to determine the statistical tests. mean differences of the random samples between Oriental and non-Oriental Then, correlation and regression analyses were used to students (Hypothesis 1). determine the relationship between the length of stay in America and the degree of Although it was difficult to tightly difficulty in the course work (Hypothesis 2). control the questionnaire in such a small scale research, consistency was maintained in collecting the data to assure the reliability of the instrument. Nevertheless, this sample may not be representative of the entire population. Thus the results reported here in this paper are unique for this sample of undergraduate students. Results The participants responded on a 4-point Likert-typed scale: 4 = extremely difficult, 3 = very difficult, 2 = somewhat difficult, and 1 = not difficult at all (for the detailed 6 ESL Undergraduate Students' 5 survey results, see Appendix B). At the significance level of .05, as summarized in Table 2, t test indicated that Oriental ESL undergraduate students (M = 2.300) significantly perceived more difficulties than non-Oriental ESL undergraduate students (M = 1.600). Accordingly, the hypothesis 1 was accepted. This result can be viewed as an indication for possible differences between Oriental and non-Oriental undergraduate students. Table 2 Perceived Difficulties Between Two Groups Oriental Group Non-Oriental Group Sample size (N) 10 10 Mean (M) 2.300* 1.600* Standard deviation (SD) .843 .675 Standard error (SE) .213 .267 'II < .05 (P = .0275 in one-tailed t test). Based on the low Multiple R (.1384), low R-square (.0191), small Slope (.0714), and large Sig T (.5605), there is a clear indication of an extremely weak association between the dependent and the independent variables at the significance level of .05 (see Table 3). In other words, the association between perceived difficulties (dependent variable) in American classrooms and the length of staying in the United States (independent variable) was not detected. This result strongly suggests that the length of stay in the United Sates is not a good variable to use as a predictor In addition, this result may of perceived difficulties in American classrooms. contradict a common sense approach; that is, scientific investigation can sometimes come up with results that contradict the common sense. 7 ESL Undergraduate Students 6 Table 3 The Association Between the Length of Stay and the Degree of Difficulty Multiple R .13843 R-square .01016 Slope .071425 Intercept 1.814684 .598 Sig T .5605 Regression line y = .0714x + 1.8147 Implications The first issue of this study was to conduct an exploratory investigation regarding perceived difficulties in American classrooms by two groups (Orientals and non- Orientals). The result indicates that Oriental ESL undergraduate students perceive more difficulties than do non-Oriental ESL undergraduate students. The strong confidence level (p = .0275) does suggest that it definitely deserves further investigation. Most American universities treat all the ESL students as one entity, assuming that all international students are the same. This study, even though done with a small sample size, points out the possibility that ESL students greatly differ with respect to their educational need and support in taking courses. If a remedial work is necessary, Oriental students need different than do other foreign students. In the remedial work, the following two concerns are important: (1) what are the characteristics of different ethnic groups? (This concern requires a large scale experimentation in multiple sites). And (2) what are possible educational implications for the findings of the experimentation? These concerns are indeed complex because of the need to develop testing instruments in order to diagnose the need of different ESL students for designing appropriate educational programs. One ESL Undergraduate Students' 7 of the interesting approaches could be the development of intelligent computer- assisted instructions (I-CAI) especially designed for ESL undergraduate students to supplement their mainstream courses. The use of instructional technology will be most appropriate, mainly because the number of ESL students of each distinct culture may be too small to economically justify more traditional remedial programs in many colleges and universities in the United States. The second investigation was the relationship between the length of stay in the United States and the degree of perceived difficulties in taking university courses. This is definitely needed to identify the magnitude and the seriousness of the difficulties as well as possible remedies. Statistical analyses of this study indicate the lack of the association between these two variables (the length of stay and the degree If studies with a larger sample size confirm the same result, then of difficulty). research questions should be raised as to what are the factors which determine the Are they Are they cultural, social, or language factors? perceived difficulties? In a sense, the results of this study are very personality, age, or gender differences? interesting when they are used as the preliminary findings of a large scale study. There is a fertile field for research to be done after all. 9 ESL Undergraduate Students' 8 REFERENCES Banks, J. A. (1981). Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Benesch, S. (Ed.). (1991). Ending Remediation: Linking ESL and Content in Higher Education. Washington D.C.: TESOL. Micro-culture versus academic cultural influences on Bess, J. L. (1997). Toward a theory of normative discontinuity in university faculty motivation: Japan. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Albuquerque, NM. Blanche, P. (1992). Bilingual cross cultural education in western Europe: Over view. RELC Journal, 23(2), 81-93. Foreign Enrollment Rises. (1997, December 12). The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A45. Holmes, V. L., & Moulton, M. R. (1994). The writing process in multicultural settings: Drawing on student perspectives. Journal of Reading, 37(8), 628-634. The interactive effect of language and Jenkins, E. K., & Holley, J. H. (1990). question format on accounting students' performance. Research in Higher Education, 31(1), 61-73. Kobayashi, T. (1992). Native and nonnative reactions to ESL composition. TESOL Quarterly, 26(1), 81-112. Naisbitt, J., & Aburdene, P. (1990). Megatrends 2000. New York: Morrow Pub. Schieffelin, B. B., & Gilmore, P. (Eds). (1986). The Accusation of Literacy: Ethnographic Perspective. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub. Differential effects among cultural groups of Spencer, D., & Sadoski, M. (1988). prereading activities in ESL. Reading Psychology: An International Ouarterly, 9, 227-232. 1 0