Aochen Li ASA002 A04 Week 6

Aochen Li ASA002 A04 Week 6

In the reading, "Opening the Box: An International Asian Woman Scholar's Fight", the author Akiko Takeyama mainly discusses the difficulties she met when she pursued tenure as an international scholar. Those difficulties include racism, language barriers, sexism, etc. For instance, when she dealt with the issue related to student misconduct, she found those ways of misconduct by students are not experienced by those male professors who have more than thirty and forty years of experience in teaching. Then she found her female colleagues share similar experiences with her. Moreover, she also talks about how the language barrier impedes her book publication. She received many rejections from the journals with the reason that her expression in the book is confusing. Since English is not her first language, she has to struggle for the language. Her experience with the language difficulties discussed in the book has some similarities with mine. When I took my first academic writing class at UC Davis, my instructor told me that my way of expression is not clear for an academic paper. After receiving a low score for my first academic paper, my instructor commented that I would sometimes incorrectly use the grammar, which caused confusion in my paper. For tackling this problem, I am still improving my writing skills and knowledge for my grammar. Therefore, when I read her experience of overcoming the difficulties in language, I could feel how difficult she pursue her tenure. Although the language is a huge difficulty for international scholars, it is a basic requirement in academia.

Question: Sometimes the discrimination we face is invisible(Like the author's experience of dealing with misconduct). How do we deal with invisible discrimination?

Reference:
Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. Rutgers University Press.

Muhammad Adil. (n.d.). Problems Faced By Students In Speaking English Language. PROBLEMS FACED BY STUDENTS IN SPEAKING ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Retrieved from https://adilblogger.com/problems-faced-students-speaking-english-language/