A Day with an Accent story

J. Janorschke

Many students are familiar with Missouri Westerns international student

community. However, many students dont know what many of them go through
when they arrive in the United States.
While Western welcomes them with open arms, sometimes this is not the
case with the rest of the local populace. To address this, Westerns International
Student Services decided to hold a panel where students from around the world
shared their struggles in learning a new language and moving to a new place for
education. Titled A Day with an Accent, it was part of an upcoming series of
discussion panels.
Deir Montiel, an international studies major who helped set up the panel,
explained that the ISS tries to help international students get to Western and
provide assistance to them during their stay in America.
We put events up like this specifically to educate the community around us,
Montiel said. I think theres a new generation wanting to be able to understand
different cultures and new languages. So, in that sense, we put these programs on
to be able to communicate with domestic students.
The panel of international students talked about issues dealing with their
accents, answering prepared questions, but also including questions asked by the
audience.
Javier Paz, a bio-manufacturing and engineering student from Honduras,
whose native language is Spanish, helped illustrate one of the biggest challenges he
faced when learning English.
My biggest challenge was trying to pronounce certain vowels, Paz said.
Things like rubber and robber sound the same to me. The phonetics of the
language was the biggest trouble.
Paz stated that even though he has spoken English for many years now, he
has still not completely overcome that obstacle.
Im making progress mostly by adding context to my sentences, Paz
said. Instead of just saying rubber, Im saying a ball made of rubber. Thats a
way to do it.
Many of the other students shared similar stories, some of which included
being discriminated against back in their home countries for speaking in an
American accent. Others spoke of not having an adequate vocabulary when they
first arrived, which made some conversations difficult.
Overall, attendance was fairly good and students were generally pleased with
the panels discussion.
Ashley Tidwell, a junior who recently transferred to Western, explained what
she thought of the event.

I liked [the event] because I like to learn about different countries, and how
people see America, especially international students, Tidwell said. I didnt know
that most of the countries require them to learn English.
The event was successful in showing students what international students
face when coming to the U.S. Even though they come from all walks of life, the
struggles they face are universal.