Dl. Rubin et al., Are Greek letter social organizations a factor in undergraduates' perceptions of international instructors?, INT J INTER, 23(1), 1999, pp. 1-12
The presence of international instructors on U.S. college campuses is an in
tegral part of the growing multicultural milieu of higher education in this
nation. International instructors are often met with resistance, often bas
ed on assertions about their linguistic or communicative competence. Howeve
r a series of recent studies indicates that mainstream students' own negati
ve stereotypes may be responsible for some of their dissatisfaction. Previo
us research provides warrant to suspect that members of Greek letter sodial
organizations may be particularly prone to such xenophobic stereotypes. In
the present study participants-40% of whom were Greek-affiliated-listened
to the identical taped lucture. Half were led to believe they were listenin
g to a Chinese instructor, the others to a Euro-North American instructor.
In rating specific lectures and lecturers, Greek-affiliated students did no
t differ from their non-affiliated peers. Both sets of students were simila
rly subject to powerful negative stereotypes associated with the Chinese gu
ise instructor. Perceived language standardness and American-like qualities
of the instructor was the best predictor of students' evaluations. Degree
of Greek-affiliation appeared to be weakly associated with negative attitud
es to international instructors in general. However these generalized attit
udes did not predict situated evaluations. These findings warrant the concl
usions that some international instructors are unfairly subject to negative
evaluations irrespective of their actual speech style, and that this is a
campus-wide problem and not linited to a particular segment of the universi
ty community. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.