221. The following appeared in the editorial section of a student newspaper.

[samarfadl]

221. The following appeared in the editorial section of a student newspaper.

"In a recent survey, most students who were studying beginning Russian gave higher course-evaluation ratings to classes taught by non-native Russian speakers than to classes taught by native Russian speakers. The reason that the non-native speakers were better teachers of Russian is easy to see: the non-native speakers learned Russian later in life themselves, and so they have a better understanding of how the language can be taught effectively. Therefore, in order to improve instruction for all languages and also save money, our university should hire non-native speakers as language instructors instead of trying to find and recruit native speakers."

The author of this article makes a number of unsubstantiated assumptions about the reason behind the high rating of students who have learnt Russian language by non-native speakers compared to low rating of the students who have learnt the same language by native speakers. Based on these assumptions, the author makes a bold proposal regarding hiring non-native instead of native speakers as language instructors. This proposal will fail to achieve its goal if it is applied without thoughtful scrutiny.

First of all the author claims that most students who were studying Russian gave higher ratings to classes taught by non-native Russian speakers than classes taught by native Russian speakers. This claim is unsupported since the article is not provided with any statistical data that is needed to ratify the author's claim. Perhaps the numbers of the students in both classes are different. Were this the case, his/her claim would be erroneous. For example, if there were 20 students in the native Russian speakers' classes and 19 of them have passed a given exam, this would make the percentage of the successful students 95%. While if there were 40 students in non-native speakers' classes and 25 of them have passed the exam, this would make the percentage of the successful students 62.5%. In this case, although the numbers of the students in the non-native speakers' classes who have passed the exam (25 students) are larger than the students who passed the exam in the native speakers' classes (19 students), the percentage of the success in the former case indicates that the native speakers are more effective than the non-native speakers. So, the author must provide reliable data to ensure that the numbers of the students are the same in both types of classes.
Furthermore, the author must prove that the students of both types of classes are given the same standardized exam. If the non-native speakers teachers are giving their students a much easier exam compared to the native speakers' exam given to their students. This might explain the reason behind the high rate of the students in the non-native speakers' classes. Thus, the author must state the type of the exam and must prove that all students are given the same standardized exam.

The author's second mistake is to assume that non-native speakers were best teachers is that they learnt Russian later in their lives. This conclusion is unacceptable because there is no evidence that they really learnt this language lately. Perhaps these teachers were born in Russia and they have been learning this language since they were little children. Were this the case, the author's conclusion would be unwarranted.

At the end of the article, the author makes a recommendation of hiring non-native speakers as language instructors for all languages in order to improve instruction and save money. This recommendation may have an adverse effect on the instruction process and may worsen the quality of learning languages in the university because the author fails to consider another important point in his/her article. The author is considering the results of the Russian language to be representative of all other language. He/she must be aware that the Russian language result is not a representative sample.

To sum up, the author makes unsupported points in this article. In order to strengthen his/her article, he/she needs to cite some statistical data regarding the number of the students in both types of classes. Moreover, different surveys of the results of studying all other languages in the university must be cited in this article, because recommendations can't be established on a single unrepresentative sample.

any comments or suggestions are welcome
thanx