TFs To Be Tested On English Skills

Do you have trouble understanding your Ec 10 TF?

Dean Theda Skocpol and the Graduate Policy Committee may have the solution.

All non-native English speaking graduate students—whether they anticipate teaching undergraduates or not—will now be screened for competency in reading and speaking English, according to a report released today by the committee.

Skocpol, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), said yesterday that measures are in place to ensure quality of speaking and writing skills but that they have not been uniform or consistent.

“It’s not that it doesn’t happen,” Skocpol said about instructing non-native speakers in English. “It doesn’t happen all that consistently. In some cases, graduate students think that they have quite a bit of time to do it because they don’t expect to teach. Suddenly, they find themselves, sooner than they thought, teaching.”

Skocpol cited the Economics Department and “some of the science fields” as having the greatest difficulty in regulating the quality of their non-native English speaking teaching fellows.

The committee report, ”Steps to Enhance Teaching Fellow Training,” continues the GSAS effort this year to further professionalize the experience of teaching fellows. In December, the Faculty passed legislation that would require all teaching fellows to be evaluated by their undergraduate students even in cases where professors refuse to be evaluated.

Now, the committee plans on implementing dossiers for graduate students so that they can demonstrate their teaching experience to people hiring inside and outside Harvard. A dossier would include documentation of experience as well as awards and honors.

Graduate students have asked for a more formalized system, Skocpol said.

Among its other recommendations, the report encourages greater faculty involvement in the instruction of teaching fellows.

Such recommendations, Skocpol said, are a “statement of ideals, not a legal contract.”

“These recommendations are pretty comprehensive. We need to carry these things through.”

—Staff writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.