Esl Lor

[gaki]

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Hello,

I have just started taking premed classes and I realize that all my chem and bio teachers are esl chinese people. I got no problem with esl and chinese (im asian myself), but i was just wondering if this is going to be a problem for me if i need to ask them for lors later on (with the weird spelling and grammar and such). are med schools going to be understanding that sometimes a dept is just full of 1st gen immigrants?

thanks in advance

 

[drguy22]

Hello,

I have just started taking premed classes and I realize that all my chem and bio teachers are esl chinese people. I got no problem with esl and chinese (im asian myself), but i was just wondering if this is going to be a problem for me if i need to ask them for lors later on (with the weird spelling and grammar and such). are med schools going to be understanding that sometimes a dept is just full of 1st gen immigrants?

thanks in advance

hmmm...i think it mite be a problem...cant you wait until you get into upper level bio and chem courses....i suggest u wait till biochem, orgo, and genetics if you profs are bad at writing. But by all means get the letters from them..i know that my pre health commitee sends the best ones out..not sure if they do tat at ur skool...

 

[FutureDocDO]

From my experience, asian/foreign professors can be hard to understand at times, but they can write pretty well. The reason being they learn english at a later age so accent-wise they can't help it. Maybe you can ask them to write an LOR as a way to test their writing ability. You can politely ask them not to send it if you feel they are not up to par with other LORs from native speakers.

 

[derf]

From my experience, asian/foreign professors can be hard to understand at times, but they can write pretty well. The reason being they learn english at a later age so accent-wise they can't help it. Maybe you can ask them to write an LOR as a way to test their writing ability. You can politely ask them not to send it if you feel they are not up to par with other LORs from native speakers.

agree here. i couldn't undertand my esl (from germany) prof worth a darn, but he writes like an english teacher. Also, he was one of the nicest people i've ever met, very very decent individual. I'd rather have a letter from him than from a more fluent speaker who isn't so considerate. 😉

Bottom line, if they managed to get a job at a university, they can manage to write a simple letter. go for it.

 

[joy77]

So true, Gerf. It's funny that you can sometimes guess when someone isn't a native speaker when their English "too perfect". Friends of mine who learned textbook English while living in other countries seem to put extreme care into their word choice when writing in English.

Gaki, you should definitely ask for the letter if you think the prof will say nice things about you! Besides, if that person has doubts about the spelling/grammar in the letter, I am sure he or she would ask someone to proof it because they would realize the importance of the letter, given their own background in academics.