Exploring collaborative strategies to improve communication between undergraduate students and their non-native English-speaking instructors

Various universities have received complaints from students reporting an inability to understand non-native English-speaking instructors with noticeable non-native accents, despite such instructors actually being very proficient speakers of the language. Research suggests that these issues could be addressed by students’ use of collaborative communication strategies rather than pushing for speech alteration only on the non-native instructor. Based on this research, Applied Linguistics faculty developed an online training to help undergraduate students become more open to instructors with non-native accents in English as well as improve communication skills with non-native speakers of the language, in general. During the training, students were asked to watch a video explaining effective strategies for communicating and respond to open-ended questions discussing what they could do to resolve communication issues in and outside of the classroom. The presented analysis is based on students’ responses to these questions. The data obtained from 749 student responses to the training questions were compiled into a spreadsheet, which was then used to organize all of the data into different categories based on the strategies mentioned in each response. Next, we observed for patterns among the data by comparing the strategies that appeared most frequently in the responses to those mentioned in the video provided and the literature from which the training was founded. Students varied in how nuanced their understandings of the strategies were, but certain strategies were more commonly mentioned than others. The strategy that appeared most in responses was asking the non-native instructor clarifying questions about what they said. Another frequently mentioned strategy was making it known to the instructor that the student did not understand, and both of these strategies were discussed in the training video and supporting research. The results show which strategies students are drawn to, which strategies students have the best understanding of, and where such strategies differ from those recommended in the video and literature. This information can be used to identify which strategies should be emphasized more in future training for students to be able to understand them fully.