Int’l students learn American culture through program
The Intensive English Language Institute (IELI) is an academic second-language program for international graduate and undergraduate students who are attending Utah State University.
“We teach English as a second language to international students, study abroad students, and sometimes immigrants,” said Ann Roemer, associate professor and director of IELI.
IELI is a program within the colleges of Humanities and Social Sciences and is accredited by the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation.
“It is a bit boring in Logan because there is not much to do, but I like being near the mountains. But I am nervous for winter because I have never been around snow,” said Adel Saleh, a first year student from Qatar.
Before coming to USU, Saleh was a flight dispatcher in Qatar, and came to study business.
“The people here are really nice. On the first day I was here everyone said hi to me,” Saleh said.
Besides the English language, students also learn American academic culture. Students learn how to behave in the classroom, how to ask questions and how to communicate with a professor for help.
“We have a lot of students who come from Asian cultures where they have deep respect for professors but they don’t have a real friendly relationship with them so they can’t go and ask questions. They are just expected to learn. That is their job,” Roemer said.
There are 117 students this semester from 20 countries. The biggest group of students come from China and the smallest, with just one student, from Iraq.
Sasha Voronkov, a first-year exchange student from Russia, is working on a master’s degree in arts and graphic design.
“We discuss about cultural things. We are now talking about weddings. We talk about how it happens and how it is different in other cultures. I like it because I learn a lot of interesting things that I didn’t know before,” Voronkov said.
Voronkov chose to come to USU because his previous university, St. Petersburg State, has an agreement with USU where most of their foreign exchange students attend USU.
“I came to the USA because I wanted to see how people live here,” Voronkov said.
Though Voronkov didn’t learn much English in Russia, he said the thing that has helped him learn the language the most was to practice every day.
Each student takes a placement test where they are placed in one of four levels. Roemer said each student is expected to have a foundation of English. The courses include reading, writing, speaking, listening and topics, which is a cultural class. Once the students have finished all four levels, they can start their major classes if they have been accepted into a program.
IELI just added a cross-cultural explorations course, IELI 2475, which has been recently accepted as a breadth social studies course. Roemer said it is a four-credit course where the international students will meet for four hours and the American students will meet for three hours. In the class, students will learn about each other’s cultures and hold discussions.
“We didn’t have any American students enroll for the class this semester because it wasn’t designated a general education course. So we hope in January we will have more students enroll,” Roemer said.
IELI also teaches about basic American culture in the lower levels of the program. There is a course called cross-culture talk where American undergraduates are used as a cultural resource and help the professor teach the international students about American culture. Discussions range from holidays to American values.
“I think international students are generally more sophisticated than American students because they generally travel more so they are more familiar with other cultures,” Roemer said.
The IELI program is never sure how many students they will have because it depends on how students do on the placement exam, but most intensive English programs are run that way, Roemer said.
Fattah Alubrayh is a first-year student from Saudi Arabia who plans to graduate from USU with a business degree.
“The speaking class is my favorite because I want my English to be much better for my major,” Alubrayh said.
One of IELI’s goals is to teach language and cultural skills needed for foreign students to succeed in university studies.
– chelsee.niebergall@aggiemail.usu.edu