The politics of petrodollars stands high on the list of academic concerns as universities wrestle with the ethics of accepting profitable Middle Eastern research and teaching contracts. Implications of the issues involved--political repression, discrimination, student selection, curriculum control--are addressed. (LBH)

Describes techniques for providing individualized library instruction for international students as exemplified by the program at Western Carolina University (North Carolina). Discusses four steps: identifying new students; meeting them and giving written invitations for instruction; interviewing; and giving library tours and instruction tailored…

Discusses reference service to international students, potential miscommunications, and problems with the three kinds of questions in the reference interview. Notes the attributes of the neutral question and describes how librarians can maximize its effectiveness by making a "statement of intent" that provides a comfortable framework for…

Describes how a group of Asian high-school students in an English-as-a-Second-Language humanities class begin the school year reproducing information and looking for definitions, and end the school year having found their own voices. (SR)

Suggests abandoning the inequitable practice of requiring language-minority and international students to demonstrate English proficiency before pursuing a U.S. college degree. Proposes a model that incorporates multilingual student recruitment, use of sheltered techniques and supported academic instruction, English for academic purposes (rather…

Describes the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Advanced Placement in International English Language (APIEL) and evaluates both tests on three basic types of validity criteria: content, construct, and criterion-related. Concludes that the TOEFL has serious limitations, and that the APIEL may be more useful. (EV)

Compared the adjustment of 182 international students to a comparison sample of U.S. students to determine if they have greater difficulty adjusting to college life. Found that international students are more likely to feel lonely, homesick, and as if they had left part of themselves at home. Also confirmed the importance of social networks in…

Foreign students say that because university representatives rarely reach out to them, they rely on each other for advice on everything from academic schedules to American culture. But administrators say foreign students do not always take advantage of the resources, and stick together rather than mix with Americans. (MLW)

Describes a four-phase bibliographic instruction program for English as a second language students: (1) a pretest to assess readiness; (2) an in-class session including pretest review and practice with bibliographic description; (3) a library search using either the card or online catalog and a periodical index; and (4) a posttest to measure…

The roles of the academic department and of teaching assistants (TAs) in improving the quality of TA instruction are reviewed. Strategies include making available teaching guides designed for beginning teachers, holding instructional seminars, conducting activities to acculturate foreign and U.S. students to each other's approaches, and specifying…

This article outlines the problems in the student pipeline and the faculty pipeline related to engineering. Difficulties of women engineering faculty members are discussed. (YP)

A review of existing training programs for international teaching assistants indicates that trainers generally use one of four approaches: orientation, precession, concurrent-term, or preterm programs. The key to success to any of these approaches is the staff members who conduct the programs. (MLW)

This article describes the University of Pennsylvania's School of Dental Medicine's Program for Advanced Standing Students (PASS) which provides graduates of foreign dental schools with an intensive summer program to prepare them for integration with four-year students for the last two years of didactic and clinical curriculum. A survey of 72 PASS…

Explains how students, all of whom may speak Chinese as their native tongue, still have different learning styles depending on their ethnic origins. Outlines four main areas of difference among Chinese-speaking foreign students. Shows how these differences inform the business writing teacher. (HB)

The speech of a sample of Chinese and Korean nonnative speakers of English (n=30) was evaluated by raters of the Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK) for a degree of fluency and by a computerized silent-pause-detection program. (35 references) (JL)