Post by Yang Yue, CLS GIC Peer Mentor 2021
As international students, speaking English is essential but also could be challenging. In the class and our everyday life in the US, we need to speak English to communicate with professors, collaborate with teammates, or even order food. However, not every international student’s mother language is English, we might face the problem that our English is not fluent enough, and here are some useful resources and tips I would like to share with you to improve our English speaking.
First, UCI provides an Academic English course for graduate students, AE 23A course focuses on English pronunciation, while AE 23B course focuses on English conversation. These courses, opening to students with all language backgrounds, are graduate-level courses that are specially designed to help the graduate student to improve oral communication skills. The size of the class is small, usually less than 20 students in every class. You could get enough time and a chance to practice and receive feedback from the instructor. The lectures are very pragmatic, not only focusing on academic aspects, but also covering lots of daily use, and the instructor would also introduce some American culture to explain the collocations that are commonly used, which could learn a lot about English speaking and American culture. Moreover, these courses also offer one-one tutoring sessions, you will have 50 minutes with a tutor every week. The topics could vary based on your own needs, i.e., more practice with the lectures, specific help on some problems with speaking skills, or just simply having some conversation with your tutor. Besides these oral courses, UCI also offers other courses to improve English skills, not only speaking skills. For example, AE 29 are courses focused on English writing, including graduate research writing and publication writing.
I highly recommend enrolling in these Academic English courses to improve English speaking skills. Based on my experience, first I learned a lot about English speaking skills, as well as some American cultures, these are both interesting and useful. Then I got lots of opportunities to practice my spoken English during the class, and I also got lots of detailed feedback from the instructor and classmates about the pronunciation and rhythm. I also got more help from my tutor, he answered all my questions about spoken English, corrected my pronunciation word by word, helped me practice some speaking skills that I need to improve according to the instructor’s comments, and had lots of interesting conversations during the tutoring sessions. This course not only improves my English-speaking skills but also builds my confidence to communicate in English.
Another way to improve English speaking skills would be attending the seminars and lectures in the department. As graduate students, we need to present our academic work or research projects, and the usage of terminology is critical to correctly explain our work. The seminars and lectures offered by the department are excellent opportunities to learn the terminology since they are academic works in the same or similar research fields. We could learn what terminology is used and how to use them to present the academic work. Moreover, the seminars and lectures also include discussion or Q&A sessions, which are also opportunities to practice our speaking skills in academic settings. By attending the seminars and lectures, we could not only gain insights about the research in our major but also could improve our English-speaking skills, especially presenting the academic work.
Besides speaking English in class and doing research work, we also speak English in our daily life while living in California. I would suggest participating in the events and activities in UCI or local communities, you could get lots of chances to chat with others and improve English speaking skills. For example, our international center organizes various events, such as the English conversation program, exploring southern California trips. English conversation program offers the opportunity for international students to practice and improve spoken English with the help of speaking facilitators and other international students. The international students who participated could learn some communication skills, different cultures around the world, and recognize the diversity of our campus community. Explore Southern California trips organizes field trips to the famous local attractions around southern California, i.e., Griffith Observatory, Getty Museum, Balboa Park. We could learn the fun facts and local culture while experiencing and enjoying the beautiful views of southern California. Meanwhile, we could chat with our fellow international students during the trips, which improves our speaking skills, and also could make some good friends there.
As international students in graduate school, it is challenging to study in a new environment and speak the non-mother language. But don’t worry and don’t panic, we have lots of resources and opportunities in UCI to help you improve your spoken English, i.e., attending communication English courses, attending academic seminars, joining the conversation program. You could try these opportunities according to your preference and time availability, and you will learn more than just speaking skills, have fun and enjoy studying and living in California!