A Tutorial and On-Going Orientation Program for Foreign Students

The author of this thesis first takes the time to examine the contemporary problems that the University of Nebraska had with its foreign students’ lack of university sponsored assistance in acclimating to the United States both in terms of language and culture, and how many of those students either flunked out or dropped out of their studies because of the lack of assistance they received.The author purposed that a “carefully-planned but very flexible tutorial system could be a happy compromise between a sink-or-swim approach in which foreign students have no English courses at all, and exclusive reliance on a very limited classroom situation to accomplish what it can on more or less a shotgun basis while striving to reach a perhaps non-existent common denominator. Furthermore, a program that would be proposed might be expected to heighten students’ integrative motivation and thus positively affect their language learning”. The author then goes on to describe other universities and major cities that developed English language programs for non English-Speaking persons and families.Theories and varying methods behind the construction of a successful language tutorial program were also discussed at length by the author who then outlines a proposed program that could be put into practice for the university to better assist non English speaking university students. Advisor: Hugh Luk