Lisa Meng, ASA 2, Sec: A01, Week 6

For week 6’s reading, I will be focusing on “An international Asian Woman Scholar’s Fight” by Japanese professor Akiko Takeyama. One interesting point she mentioned in the article was “International faculty are an invisible underclass among U.S. academics: often paid less, prevented from taking some funding or positions that are reserved for U.S. citizens, harder to hire because of additional governmental paperwork, struggling with language and acculturation issues, often facing racial and accent discrimination, and living under the threat of loss of residency if they fail to make tenure or otherwise lose their academic position.” As a non-native English speaker, she spends more time and effort on developing her courses. She had to struggle with her grammars, and also, she had to find more resources about the United States in order to make her courses be relatable to American students. Because of her struggles with her writing in English, it affected her publication record too. Not only she had struggles with her English, as a woman professor, she is not only responsible as intellectual guides but also emotional caretakers. She had to spend more time on finding proper offices and facilities on campus to assist her students.

After reading about professor Akiko Takeyama’s experiences, I understand Asian American professors better. I learned that they are as struggled as we are, and they will be struggle with their English too. Because of English is not their native language, they will face a lot of challenges on their academic pathway. They had tons of pressures on their shoulders, because as a professor, they are expected to be perfect with their course materials all the time. As a student, I always expect them to be prefect with their English speaking or writing skill, but I didn’t know that it could be a struggle for the professors too, and they have a lot of worries about it.

Q:

what will happen if professors have english grammar problems in their course materials or publications? will they get in trouble?

References:

Takeyama, Akiko. “An International Asian Woman Scholar's Fight.” Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars' Resistance and Renewal in the Academy, by Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis, Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Simon, Scott. “Behind The 'Model Minority,' An American Struggle.” NPR, NPR, 23 June 2012, www.npr.org/2012/06/23/155622598/behind-a-wave-of-asian-immigration-stories-of-struggle.