Day 38 - Post-graduate Students in Iasi

A I Cuza University, Iasi, Romania, Image by blankdots,
 via Flickr

I was the American lecturer in Iasi during my year there. I was the American lecturer because there was never more than one American lecturer in a school year. My colleague, Chris, was the British lecturer for the same reason. The two of us were the native speakers of the language, supplements to the Romanian teachers of English, all of whom had learned English from other non-native speakers of the language. The result was a quaint version of English that included a lot of direct translations from the way things would be said in Romanian. For example, the Romanian language does not have the equivalent of modal verbs. For the non-language lovers among you, modal verbs were probably called "helping" verbs by your teachers because they are not used alone, they "help" other verbs. They are can, could, may, might, shall, should, will and would. They don't indicate the time of something happening although could, might, should, and would are often used as the past tense version of can, may, shall, and should, respectively.

Image by GrammarGirl, via Flickr

Without modal verbs, Romanians have to use other ways to express the meaning of, for example, can which has the meaning of both ability and possibility. "I can do it" becomes when translated from the Romanian version of that same concept, "I have the ability to do it." It's more fun in the past tense: "I can't go to the movie tonight" becomes "I haven't the possibility of going to the movie tonight."

In colleges and universities in the United States, any student with absolutely no knowledge of a foreign language can sign up for French or German or Spanish 101 in his or her freshman year and come out four years later with a degree and a major in that language. In Romania things were not so simple. In order to be accepted into the English program at the University in Iasi, the students had to pass a test to prove their competence in the language. And when I learned what some of the questions were, I wasn't sure I could have passed the test.  You try one: name 5 English verbs that are the same in both present and past tense for all but third person singular.

So when I was told that, in addition to several classes of conversational English with university undergraduates, I would have an evening class of post-graduate students, I was a little apprehensive about just what they would expect from me. I had prepared a multiple-choice test to help me assess their level in English: 50 questions that ranged from something as simple as determining which verb form completes a simple sentence in the present tense up through the same task in a sentence that retains a vestige of the conditional mood in English. Those questions are often answered correctly by a student who knows almost nothing about English and by someone who is fluent while causing difficulty for someone who has studied the language for many years. Try it: what form of the verb go completes this sentence: I suggested that he ______ immediately. Is it go or goes?

I handed out my 50-question proficiency test to the post-graduate students that first evening, thinking that it would probably take them most of the hour to complete it, and then I would have the rest of the week to look at their results to see what level they were at as a group and then come up with a plan. Within five minutes, however, one of the women began reading the first question aloud, looking up at me as she went along. She was smiling, but looked just a little timid as she announced her guess for the correct answer to that question. As I looked around the room, I saw that all the other students -- all adults and in this case most of them much older than I -- were looking not at their papers but at the woman who was reading. After announcing her guess, she asked if it was right. It was, but I began to realize my first hour wasn't going to go as planned.

The reading aloud of the questions and announcing of the guesses continued for about five more minutes until the student was stumped by an item that required her to select "he" or "she" based on the name of the person in the sentence. She was stumped because Romanian names are nothing like the Dick, Jane, and Sally names we grew up with when learning to read. She couldn't answer "he" or "she" not because she didn't know the former was for males and the latter for females but because she didn't know whether Tom was a boy's or girl's name.

Image by Argonne National Laboratory, via Flickr

I don't think any of them tried to answer even five of the questions. They were all post-graduate students, but their degrees were not in English but other subjects. Most of them were engineers, a profession that didn't require mastery of English, but where knowledge of English was beneficial.

With that adjustment in my understanding, I learned that what they wanted most was the opportunity to converse in English, the same opportunity we foreign lecturers provided for the undergraduate students. So I was able to use many of the same lesson plans for both groups.

One of the women in the post-graduate class wasn't able to complete the class because she gave birth to a boy before the course ended. The man who announced the arrival of her son also told us his name. The baby was going to be Tom Bob Dick John James Harry Vlad, proving that he, at least, had sorted out which names were boy's name and which weren't.

For those of you who tried to name 5 English verbs that are the same in both present and past tense for all but third person singular, how did you do? Here are those I can think of now: cut, put, shut, cost, fit, hit, quit, slit, split. But I must admit that I couldn't think of more than 3 when I first heard the question.