The University of Denver has created resources to address teaching international students that include both guiding principles, as well as ideas about pedagogy.

Strategies for Teaching International Students

Chinese students are more diverse today than a decade ago, but still tend to bring with them a worldview that includes respect for authority and avoidance of conflict. This worldview often clashes with U.S. classrooms that expect participation in discussions and active learning activities.

Tips for Teaching Chinese Students

Get to know the country. I have mounted a large (3 x 4′) map of China on the wall in my office. Whenever a Chinese students visit me in my office, I ask them where they are from in China, and if I need help with the location, I ask them to point it out on the map.

Cold call discussion questions but make preparation clear. My masters students are often assigned academic readings that we later discuss in class. I give students a list of discussion questions in advance for each article. Then, in class, I randomly call on students and ask them to address specific discussion questions. Having the questions in advance allows non-native speakers of English to prepare answers and get into the conversation somewhat.

Working with International Student Writers

I suggest that all of us need to think systematically about how we’ll work with multilingual writers. That is, rather than considering these students as occasional blips on our course screens, we should acknowledge that will routinely be in our classes, and we should adopt some basic principles and strategies– for both their good and our own.

Guidelines for Responding to the Writing of International Students

Moreover, because both rhetorical conventions and assumptions about originality differ across cultures, international students can enter DU classes with a different set of cultural expectations than native speakers of English. Thus, while grammatical errors can cause significant difficulties, these are by no means the only important issues to address in responding to NNS writing.