Supratim Giri’s nerves were on edge for his first general chemistry class, but it wasn’t the equations that had him ill at ease.

It was the sea of mostly white freshmen faces waiting for him to begin.

Will they respect me? He wondered. How much importance will they give to what I say? They wouldn’t boo, would they?

They didn’t boo, and Giri, fifth-year graduate student and teacher’s assistant in chemistry from India, eventually overcame his insecurities and found that he enjoyed teaching. He even earned an award for it.

Before he got to a place where he felt good about his performance as a teacher’s assistant, Giri had to take tests and a course for students whose native language isn’t English.

He also had to learn about American culture so that he could communicate with his students.

International teachers’ assistants, or TAs, such as Giri make up approximately 50 percent of the university’s TAs, and they often teach introductory courses.

A significant number of the undergraduates taking those courses are freshmen, new to the higher education setting and perhaps anxious about their academic success. In other words, there are nerves on both sides.

“I think part of education is getting different perspectives,” said Felicity Douglas, director of the SPEAK/TEACH program at Iowa State, which evaluates the English abilities of international graduate students in a classroom setting.

Douglas said a lot of people arrive in the United States excited about coming to a new country, but she and others involved in SPEAK/TEACH always raise the issue that undergraduates aren’t always as excited to have to wade through a TA’s thick accent.

The program tries to prepare international TAs for the communication challenges that can come in the classroom by two primary methods: placement testing and small-sized English classes.

The tests include a speaking test and a teaching test. The latter section is still primarily focused on judging English skills rather than teaching skills, since the main objective of most students is not to teach.

At the end of the testing, the students will fall into one of four categories, level one being the highest in ability and level of involvement of teaching duties and salary, and level four being not certified.

Students who wish to retake the test may after a semester or two, and in the meantime they enroll in English 180, where they work on things such as pronunciation and the academic terms vital to their discipline.

Douglas has the final say in the process, giving students the go-ahead or the “no, not quite” to indicate their next step.

The most difficult element of her job, she said, is being fair.

Although the tests are “more holistic” than merely counting every grammar error, she said, Douglas still finds it challenging to balance the necessity of some sort of evaluative system with the variety of personalities, academic majors, ages and countries represented by the international TAs.

On top of this balancing act is another, that of evaluating the needs and desires of the international TAs with those of the undergraduates, who need to be able to understand what their teacher is saying.

“It’s important to those students, and it’s important to my conscience, and it’s important to undergrads to be fair,” she said.

Some students come to America with an edge, because English is more prevalent in their home country.

In India, for example, English is a main language, but it’s a much different English, and it competes with Hindi and regional languages.

Giri learned English in school, he said, but it wasn’t the main “medium” of communication there, which is the case for a good number of other Indian schools.

Because of the variation among schools, the level of English ability varies among Indians, he said. His own ability, which he still isn’t sure he can call fluency, was one source of concern for him in the beginning.

“The students here do not come from a very diverse background,” he said. “They’re not used to hearing different accents. It’s a funny thing that in Midwest they don’t think they have accents.”

Although Giri’s first semester was challenging, he said things went well after that. He said he asked himself after the first semester how he could change himself to make the experience better for his students.

“There was a communication gap between me and the students,” he said.

To counter this, Giri said he learned about American culture of young adults between the ages of 18 and 22, and the educational system at the high school and undergraduate levels.

He tried to think about what examples he could use in the classes that would fit into the students’ understanding of the world and he began to notice that they appreciated his effort.

Giri and his students weren’t the only ones who noticed that his teaching improved after that – he was awarded Iowa State’s Teaching Excellence Award.

“It was an achievement after I overcame my challenges,” he said.

Giri said he can understand the frustration of not being able to understand an international TA, but he said he would advise students to be considerate and try to concentrate on the subject of a course, not the TA’s English.

To other international TAs who struggle with English, Giri advised using the board to write to help explain the material. Speaking, he said, is always the most effective tool.

“In teaching, yes, you should reach your students by your voice,” he said.

Timothy Barlow, freshman in engineering, would perhaps agree.

Barlow currently has at least two international TAs, and while one he said can be understood perfectly, that isn’t the case for all of them.

“It’s pretty hard to understand what they’re saying,” he said.

In one of his classes he feels like he’s falling behind because of it.

“I’m sure they’re effective as a teacher; it’s just that I can’t understand them because of their accent. It’s really thick,” he said.

In one class, Barlow said, other students feel the same way.

“We all sit on the computer and play spider solitaire because we can’t understand,” he said.

Barlow said that one benefit of having international TAs is that they can be really smart people but he said you’re not going to get anything from them culturally just by sitting in the class.

Sonia Morrone, freshman in biology, had a different outlook.

“I think it might be hard for other people, but since my parents aren’t from around here, I’m used to different accents,” Morrone said, whose parents grew up in Argentina.

Although Morrone did remember finding it difficult that her international TA used different symbols than those taught in lecture, on the whole she saw the TA’s contribution to the classroom as positive.

“One of the benefits, I guess, is they bring in some sort of diversity to the classroom,” she said. “I don’t know what could be negative about that.”

Greta Levis, part-time instructor for English 180, said she thinks both perspectives are valuable.

Levis said it’s “a two-way street,” and that a university education includes getting used to different ways of speaking.

On the other hand, she can understand how an international TA’s heavy accent can be “an added burden” when the subject is already difficult to understand.

“That’s the main thing we try to address in our classes,” Levis said.

“But they shouldn’t apologize for their English either – or for who they are,” she said, “because they’re wonderful people and if they can get their students to know that, that can be a wonderful thing.”

Shengyu Wang, first-year graduate student and TA in English, is still learning the ropes of teaching.

Wang arrived in the United States from China on Aug. 10, exhausted from a long, delay-ridden flight during a period of tightened security.

Wang said he attended preparatory workshops beginning at 8 a.m. Aug. 14, then took the English placement test at 6 p.m. – during which he fell asleep, he said, because he was so exhausted.

After passing the teaching segment of the SPEAK/TEACH program, Wang was qualified to teach English 104.

As per teaching a course in his second language to students who know it as a native tongue, Wang said it has not been problematic.

“Before I taught the first class, I was a little panicked about that,” he said.

So far, he said it’s been OK since it is not a language class but a communication class.

The course incorporates audio and visual communication, as well.

So much is different here for Wang – whose Chinese accent has driftings of British influence in it from listening to the BBC – from the structure of the classroom to the way papers are graded to, of course, the language.

In China, for example, students’ opinions aren’t really valued in papers; it’s a much more “formalistic approach.”

“Usually we do not have discussion in class,” he said. “It’s just lecture.”

In all the adjusting, however, he managed to get a few laughs. His eyes lit up as he told of the story of his mentor giving him an “urgent” message about his teaching methods after observing a class.

He addressed his class saying “boys and girls” – something most college students wouldn’t appreciate here, his mentor told him.

In China, it’s an acceptable way of speaking to students until they graduate from college.

Through this experience and some others that Wang laughs about, he said his students have been very nice, and he is also thankful for the opportunity to attend Iowa State in the first place.

“Honestly speaking, I am so grateful to Iowa State,” he said. “I want to do something in exchange. I want to give what Iowa State gave to me to my students.”