Communication Breakdown

By: Stewart Hall

The problem of communication between international students and professors and between foreign professors and their students has been investigated by university administrators and communications researchers. However, there is another aspect to communication between professors and students that is of equal or greater importance. These include the professor's volume and projection of what he says and how effective what he/she writes on the board is. In his paper, Cory Young states "[S]tudents are adapting to their new educational environment in which language barriers, relationships with professors and peers, the process of learning, and a different time schedule are additional problems cast onto their cultural adjustment." There have also been investigations on communication barriers between foreign professors and their students. In reference to Bette Grande, a university employee and State Representative, John Gravois writes “When she asked how their classes were going, she was dismayed to discover how many said they were having trouble wading through a professor’s accent.”

What these university administrators and communication researchers seem to overlook in their investigations, possibly because of the prominence of the language barrier, are the other levels of communication that professors use. I have had some lectures where the professors did not speak loud or clear enough to understand. I have also had a lecture with a professor that wrote in very small print and spent more time writing than speaking, severely marring the lecture. These issues may be as important or more important than the language barrier because they affect all students and do not have to do with the nationality of the professor. If some form of extra training is required for professors that reinforces the importance of these levels of communication, students in universities may have higher levels of achievement and spend less time frustrated.