English Programs : Words That Carry Weight With Visitors

On one couch, two students conversed in rapid Italian. Next to them, a couple of Japanese tried to find housing brochures in a nearby wall rack. The office receptionist responded in fluent French to questions from a newly arrived group from Paris.

But, with any luck, the babel emanating from the cramped office at San Diego State University last week--and in the crowded courtyard of UC San Diego Extension across town--will diminish by summer’s end, to be replaced by the lingua franca of English.

About 1,500 students from more than two dozen countries are now packed into language institutes at San Diego State and UCSD to learn English, making the area one of the nation’s most popular for English-as-a-second-language (ESL) study. Their ages, occupations and reasons for shelling out thousands of dollars for language training are as varied as their native tongues and the classes they end up taking.

“Sometimes it’s like running a military camp here,” said John Thaxton, director of the international studies department at UCSD Extension. “We’ve got 17 different programs at all ability levels, we publish catalogues in seven different languages, and it seems that, with 800 total bodies here, every single one is in the office asking to change a dormitory room, or how to buy a car, or can they call home.”

In an afternoon class last week at SDSU, 20 English-language teachers from Japan listened intently as teacher Nancy Cook played a Don McLean tape of the song “If We Try.” They were trying to pick up common idioms, an approach different from the standard grammar that is so often the basis of English instruction abroad.

Across campus, a United Nations mixture of college-age students learning advanced conversation from Marc Tannenhaus worked on polishing their English by telling “tall tales” to their peers, who then had to guess whether the stories were true or false.

At the time, some older students in Deb Sanborn’s advanced class at UCSD were practicing complex conversations by explaining their feelings to each other about summer life in San Diego. They focused on how to get around the sprawling city without a car and whether the coastal life style has lived up to the descriptions of San Diego touted in campus brochures distributed throughout Europe and Asia.

Meanwhile, veteran ESL instructor Mike Baum cajoled his beginning intensive class at UCSD, dominated by enthusiastic but bewildered young Japanese, as they struggled with forming “Do you . . . ?” sentences to gain a foothold on an often-bedeviling language.

“The students range from those who come to improve their English prior to entering a regular American university, to those whom I call the ‘fun-in-the-sun’ group here for maybe three weeks who rent or buy cars, and even squeeze in a four-day trip to Hawaii during a long weekend,” said Janet F. Funston, Thaxton’s friendly competitor at San Diego State.

But there is a common thread running through all the classes, whether conversational or intensive, for three weeks or 12.

That is the belief among foreign students that English is the one language that can provide a ticket to international commerce and socialization, and that familiarity with America still counts for much despite this country’s less-than-absolute world influence today.

“It’s very important to know how to speak English for a good job,” said Ophelie Berthier, a student from Paris studying at San Diego State for a six-week summer course. “And also I am here for pleasure because I like America and want to experience life at a university.”

Both SDSU and UCSD have worked hard in recent years for their high rankings today among American campuses offering extensive language programs for foreigners, and officials at each school pay high compliments to the other. San Diego State officials say their American Language Institute (ALI), part of the College of Extended Studies, ranks seventh nationally among public institutions in terms of size and variety of offerings.

Programs Self-Sustaining

The programs at both universities fall under their extension divisions and therefore rely solely on tuition from students, without subsidies from state tax monies. As a result, worldwide marketing efforts are critical to attracting enough students to pay for teachers and equipment.

“We don’t like to think of ourselves as a trade group but as academics,” UCSD’s Thaxton said. “But we are not like a regular university department, such as linguistics or economics, so we have to be as aware of marketing as we are of keeping high academic standards.”

Thaxton spends much of his time traveling through Europe and Asia. He talks up his programs at American embassies and consulates, where many foreigners visit for information about American college programs. He visits Expo Langues, a major language trade fair, each February in Paris, where 60,000 academics, tour operators and other interested parties learn about the numerous competitive offerings on U.S. campuses.

“In some countries, there are tour marketers who put together study packages for students,” Thaxton said. “And we have a tremendous name advantage because the University of California is known internationally.”

Several UC campuses, including San Diego, Riverside, Los Angeles and Berkeley, do joint marketing at certain trade fairs, such as those in Tokyo and Frankfurt.

The popularity of the San Diego area for English study has grown dramatically, Thaxton said. “Many students want California, and then you add a large city, a nice beach, good weather and we become well-known.”

UCSD has proven particularly popular with students from Japan and Switzerland. As many as 85% of the summer students are Japanese, and about half the total enrollment during the rest of the year are Japanese. At San Diego State, the annual mix runs about 40% from Asia and 30% from the Middle East, although many Europeans come during the summer.

Word of Mouth

“I read about UCSD and heard from friends who had studied here before,” said Alireza Razavi, an Iranian citizen living in Paris. Naoyuki Murota, a Japanese student preparing to enter San Diego State’s graduate linguistics program this fall, consulted a book that ranked American cities with major universities by weather conditions.

“And San Diego came in No. 3,” Murota said with a smile. “I hate cold weather so I ruled out all universities on the East Coast.”

UCSD charges from $405 for a three-week program to $1,350 for a 10-week intensive session. San Diego State’s fees run from $500 for special three-week seminars to $1,800 for a full 12-week summer course. Students are told that an additional $700 a month is probably needed for living expenses.

“These programs are not cheap,” Thaxton said. “Our students come from families that can well afford them.” There are no scholarships, although San Diego State has programs with many international corporations that sponsor their employees’ studies.

“Many of our students are from wealthy, well-established families,” Thaxton said, recalling one student who pulled out some $70,000 in traveler’s checks in the financial office.

San Diego State does all its marketing on its own, since no other campus in the California State University system has as extensive a program.

“We’ve visited all the foreign embassies in Washington and we’ve talked with student counselors at many of our embassies abroad,” Funston said. Paula Kelly, dean of the College of Extended Studies, ordered a new multicolored brochure several years ago with a cover photo of San Diego’s waterfront skyline to replace a less-attractive plain brown pamphlet. The language institute also has prepared a video on its programs and San Diego’s sun-drenched environment for showing abroad, and it also depends on favorable word-of-mouth recommendations from students when they return to Europe or Asia.

Casting a Wide Net

Kelly said the institute has tried to cast its net as wide as possible so that it does not overemphasize a particular program or become dependent on students from a particular country. San Diego State runs a larger year-round program than UCSD and also has more specialized curriculums, such as those for employees of multinational companies needing more English.

“Diversification is the name of the game,” Funston said. “So when all of a sudden there were no more Iranian students coming, we weren’t devastated.”

One of the special summer programs at SDSU is a three-week intensive course for Japanese teachers of English to improve their oral skills, since many have never studied in an English-speaking country and since Japan’s English-language instruction has traditionally emphasized only grammar and composition.

“We do not know enough about the life style of American people, so I want to be able to go back and tell my students about the culture at the same time I am explaining the language,” said Kazuo Yamaguchi, an English teacher from the Nagano prefecture in Japan.

“I’ve never been in a foreign country before,” teacher Tomaki Harada, of Hyogo prefecture, said. “This is a very good chance to come and study many things . . . and I have been very surprised at how many (Americans) are from so many different countries.”

One of the teachers, Sidney Hamolsky--a retired consular officer for the U.S. State Department--said only so much can be accomplished in a short period.

“But even three weeks exposes these people to numerous American voices and gives them a tremendous amount of practice,” Hamolsky said.

The various programs encourage the students to participate in the “home-stay program,” in which they are placed with an American host family and end up hearing only English. If they live in a campus dormitory or rent apartments with friends from their own country, the students are too easily tempted to lapse into their native tongue outside of class. Still, many students enjoy the greater personal freedom that comes from living with their peers and being able to play tennis at 4 a.m., should the mood hit them.

Whatever the students’ living arrangements, their instructors see progress in almost all of them.

“In a strictly conversation class, we are not after the serious student, so to speak, meaning those who have a defined purpose to end up in an American university,” Tannenhaus of SDSU said. “But those students who come to class and who are motivated to participate, and to speak outside of class, they are just as serious in a different way.

“Sure, some are here for a good time, but I remember that, when I went to Spain, I was there for completely nonacademic purposes, but I found that the more Spanish I learned the more fun it was to get around the country. So I think that coming here to have fun and to learn English can go hand in hand.”

UCSD’s Baum is in his 14th year teaching ESL.

“I personally love teaching and every student has a chance if they come with motivation,” said Baum, who lived in Japan for several years. “I tell my Japanese students, who ask how long it will take, that they won’t become fluent in just 10 weeks. But I also tell them that they can pick up a lot if they turn off the Japanese TV, stop conversing in Japanese to their friends, and don’t go to (Los Angeles’) Little Tokyo.

“I give them on the first day of class a sheet of paper with 50 different ways to improve their English outside the classroom,” Baum said.

This summer, many beginning students have been assigned a bus trip to nearby University Towne Centre, with a list of questions to ask shoppers and clerks as a quick way to overcome a reluctance to practice and to teach them practical hints about shopping.

Also, Baum has discovered that the People’s Court is popular among students because Judge Wapner talks “slowly and clearly.”

Thaxton pointed out that most of the foreigners could have a good time visiting America without having to enroll in any English classes, although some sign up to obtain longer visa stays.

“The bottom line is that they get out of the class what they are willing to put in,” Thaxton said. “And almost everyone will get something.”