[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-597907-105":59,"doc-detail-597907-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","closing-the-communication-gap-between-undergraduates-and-international-faculty","Closing the Communication Gap Between Undergraduates and International Faculty","","Mixed-method study reframes the “foreign TA problem” as a communication gap shaped by multiple parties, including bias originating from undergraduates. Experimental sessions test undergraduates’ comprehension of two brief lessons taught by an international professor, followed by bias-stimulation, control, or linguistic-training modules addressing accent misunderstanding and accent bias. Training does not change comprehension, but improves sociolinguistic attitudes, while follow-up discussions reveal impacts on academic plans, negative cognitive effects, and socialization into accent bias, with recommendations for TESOL professionals.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/closing-the-communication-gap-between-undergraduates-and-international-faculty/597907/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/closing-the-communication-gap-between-undergraduates-and-international-faculty/597907.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"SANS","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-04","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":44},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the study redefine the “foreign TA problem”?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It reconceptualizes the issue as a broader communication gap created by multiple parties, including bias originating from undergraduates.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What effect did linguistic training have on comprehension and attitudes?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The training did not affect comprehension, but questionnaire responses showed a positive effect on sociolinguistic attitudes.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What themes emerged from follow-up discussion sessions?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Themes include effects on academic plans, negative cognitive effects, and a model of how undergraduates socialize into accent bias.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},597907,1792192395,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":44,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},962090760505,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","DAN VILLARREAL  \nUniversity of California, Davis  \nClosing the Communication Gap Between Undergraduates and International Faculty  \nThis mixed-method study addressed the “foreign TA problem,”reconceptualizing it as the communication gap, an issue created by multiple parties—including bias originating from undergraduates. Experimental sessions measured undergraduates’ comprehension of 2 brief lessons taught by an international professor. Between lessons, participants completed 1 of 3 short modules: a bias-stimulation module, a control module, or a linguistic-training module (which confronted both accent misunderstanding and accent bias). While training did not affect comprehension, questionnaire responses revealed a positive effect of training on sociolinguistic attitudes. Follow-up discussion sessions explored undergraduates’experiences with international faculty and responses to the communication gap. Several important themes emerged from these discussions, including effects on academic plans, negative cognitive effects, and a model of undergraduates’ socialization into accent bias. The article concludes with recommendations specifically geared toward TESOL professionals’ ongoing efforts to close the communication gap, including a greater recognition of undergraduates’ role in perpetuating the gap.  \nMost of the lectures, I have no idea what’s going on.  \nThese people are geniuses, but I don’t understand them. It’s a lose-lose situation.  \nEverywhere you go, everyone’s always talking about how, in the Math depart  \nment, there’s so many foreign teachers, it’s so hard to understand them.[In calculus,] a lot of people disappeared after the first class.  \nComplaints such as these are common among US undergraduates who  \nencounter international instructors in their classes. These remarks  \ntypify an issue, first identified by Bailey (1984, p. 3ff) as the “foreign TA problem,” that has attracted the ire of students, media, and policymakers (Gravois, 2005) for years. The problem extends beyond the classroom, however, as the preponderance of international teaching assistants (ITAs) in mathematics, engineering, and scientific fields causes some undergraduates to drop these majors altogether (Finder, 2005); given the US’s dire need to produce greater  \n8 • The CATESOL Journal 24.1 • 2012/2013  \nnumbers of scientists in order to secure its future economic vitality (National Academy of Sciences, 2010), this is a worrisome trend. Ample research has confronted the “foreign TA problem” in the last 30 years, but if you speak to many US undergraduates, you will find that the problem has hardly diminished.  \nThis paper represents a multifaceted approach to the “foreign TA problem,” piloting an undergraduate-training program to investigate practical solutions and conducting discussion sessions with undergraduates to investigate the social/linguistic underpinnings of the problem. I argue that previous attempts to solve this problem have fallen short thanks to a faulty conceptualization in which ITAs alone create the problem. Linguistic factors (a foreign accent) and cultural and/or pragmatic factors (failing to grasp American educational norms such as students’ right to ask questions in class; Zhou, 2009) create barriers to students’ understanding their ITA; under this analysis, then, the problem stems from accent misunderstanding.1 Previous research does indicate that accent misunderstanding is a legitimate concern. ITAs may have limited proficiency, for example, in the prosodic patterns (Pickering, 2001) and discourse structures (Tyler, 1992) necessary for academic communication, and foreign-accented speech in general takes longer to process (Munro & Derwing, 1995) . Of course, undergraduates’ receptive linguistic inabilities are also at fault, in that the problem would not exist if students could perfectly understand nonstandard English accents. But the number of US undergraduates dwarfs that of ITAs—for example, in 2010-2011, there were 24,","cbCaieGn0UTe9pqJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaieGn0UTe9pqJ","pdf",734313,21,"English","# Introduction\n# Methods and Experimental Design\n## Training Modules\n# Results\n# Discussion and Emerging Themes\n# Conclusions and TESOL Recommendations","[{\"question\":\"How does the study redefine the “foreign TA problem”?\",\"answer\":\"It reconceptualizes the issue as a broader communication gap created by multiple parties, including bias originating from undergraduates.\"},{\"question\":\"What effect did linguistic training have on comprehension and attitudes?\",\"answer\":\"The training did not affect comprehension, but questionnaire responses showed a positive effect on sociolinguistic attitudes.\"},{\"question\":\"What themes emerged from follow-up discussion sessions?\",\"answer\":\"Themes include effects on academic plans, negative cognitive effects, and a model of how undergraduates socialize into accent bias.\"}]","Closing the Communication Gap Between Undergraduates and International Faculty | PDF",1792085930,53]