Ko bad, as Gloria observed.However, my point is that applicants should know that they are not likely to benefit from man know man abroad especially if they are looking for funding. If they can pay their way, there will be many institutions begging for the tuition, references or not.Having participated in a commiittee that interviewed and shortlisted candidates for highly conpetitive scholarships that even the most powerful references would not sway, I suggest that our candidates should adopt the attitude that their admission chances are within their control rather than believe in the Naija mythology that oga lecturer go help them.Correct me if I am wrong but these are crucial elements in the application letter that students should start building long before graduation:Team sports experience shows that you can be a team playerLeadership experience in extra curriculat activities shows that you have leadership potentialsVolunteer experiences show that you are a compassionate prifessional and not a selfish hustlerExperience of assisting lecturers or communities in research or internship shows that you can meet deadlinesA writing sample shows that you can think criticallyA plan to go beyond Master's and pursue the PhD shows that you are serious about becoming a scholar.A review of their website to link your research interest to researchers in the program shows that you have done your homework.An identification of an unanswered question that you propose to address indicates that you are capable of originality.Letters urging the department to admit the bearer would not wash.Biko
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:39 PM, Toyin Falola<toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote: Biko:
We also use "okay" a lot, which is treated by others as understating.
"Interesting," which we deploy, can be treated as mediocre!
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/
group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@
googlegroups.com >
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 4:36 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture
A good example of what David Dabadeen calls other Englishes is the use of 'quite good' to mean very good or even excellent in Naija expressions. Chinua Achebe was fond of this expression and he also said that would be quite happy if his novels teach readers about the history of Africa. Apparently, Achebe adopted this expression from one of the English teachers at Government College Umuahia who graded all assignments on a scale from Quite Good to Quite Useless.
What do you know? As a graduate student in Scotland, I went to see a play and later commended the lead actress by saying that she was quite good. 'Only quite?' She screamed at me.
I stopped using the expression after my supervisor presented an excellent paper and I commended him by saying that it was quite good. Only quite? He screamed as if I had abused him.
This may be an indication that quite good had become less valuable through overuse. I now use superlatives like excellent and outstanding when that is what I want to say.
On a lighter note, Americans amuse me everytime they are interviewed on radio or tv and they thank the interviewers for having them on which means pulling a leg or teasing in England.
Applicants to graduate schools should aim to make at least a GPA of 3.0 on a 4 point scale, ace the GRE and write compelling letters of application to get in because no letter of reference will make quite a difference if the bases are not covered.
Biko
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 4:34 PM, Toyin Falola
<toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu
> wrote: Gloria:
The American references, like the American book reviews, have actually become un-useful [as I don't want to say useless as if you write a bad book review, you are accused of sending your colleague to depression and medication!]. What folks now do it to obtain references via the phone.
There are regulations in a no. of states that you cannot say what is bad about someone, especially in writing or why someone is fired. Second, in ethical cases, unless the court proves it, you cannot say what you know. When I sat as Chair of awards committees, allegations of plagiarism were routinely reported to us, but we cannot act on them as regulations say that they are allegations, even when I see the data.
I have had cases of folks who engage in all sorts of malpractices, but written references don't allow them to say so, other than smuggling into the letter a signal such as "As to his personal character, I have not been privileged enough to observe those!"
You may not remember, we are making this part of TOFAC, and you were tasked to chair the first panel on it in Durban.
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7222 (fax)
http://groups.google.com/
group/USAAfricaDialogue
From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@
googlegroups.com > on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 3:21 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com >
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture
Well if you look at it the other way, some would consider American recommendations (of students) to be effusively couched in hyperbole.
American speech is known for what some would call an exaggerated use of superlatives.
" How was the food?" "Fantastic", says the American.. Someone else from another culture may say the food was "good."
" How are you today?"
"Excellent" shouts the American. Someone from another culture may say " Not bad".
I don't think there is an intentional plan to sabotage applicants.
True, there are cases where the recommenders are unfamiliar with American expectations or the recommender
may be downright lackadaisical but we have a translation problem here, generally. It really is largely a cross- cultural translation
challenge, for want of a better concept.
Olayinka will have a better terminology for this.
A similar situation applies to grading, somewhat. As you know a grade of 60 in some non- American institutions may be the equivalent
of 80 or 90 in the US - and that also affects the overall recommendation. A student once complained to me that
her GPA was brought down by the low grade she got from a summer abroad class she took in a Nigerian
institution. She was convinced that she would have gotten an A if marked in the US.
Making up a list of guidelines is a good idea and will be instructive - although you have to see the phenomenon in cultural relativist terms
and not pathologize it in absolutist terms.
GE
From: usaafricadialogue@
googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2018 2:21 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture
Victor,
The cheapest, easiest pushback against change and against the effort to highlight a problem is to engage in this non sequitur of throwing out the cop out of generalization. For goodness sake, why is this always our go-to canard? Shouldn't it be clear that not every Nigeria-based lecturer writes scanty, non-specific, and weak letters and that some American professors also lazily write similar letters? Oya help me insert the needed qualifiers and caveats so that our colleagues back home can feel better and be reassured that we're not smearing all of them as bad reference writers.
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 24, 2018, at 12:58 PM, Victor Okafor <vokafor@emich.edu> wrote:Does this commentary represent, perhaps unintentionally, a sweeping generalization? Does this pattern of conduct apply across-the-board to all or a majority of the federal, state and private universities that are based in Nigeria? Amongst Nigeria-based academics, is this a common practice or is it a pattern of conduct limited to some frustrated academic practitioners within Nigeria's academic world? What I know, for sure from experience, is that graduates of Nigerian universities tend to experience difficulty with procurement of their transcripts. I feel it necessary to say as well that in my own decades of teaching and performing academic administrative functions here in the USA, I have received and read both ebullient and lukewarm letters of recommendation from both foreign-based and US-based academic practitioners for both students seeking admission and job-seeking academics. In any case, I humbly submit that we ought to exercise some caution and restrain the language that we deploy in our portrayals to the outside world of Nigeria's academic institutions and academic practitioners. In short, let's avoid sweeping generations.
On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 9:37 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
This, below, is a Facebook post I made yesterday. It has gone viral and sparked discussion and a healthy debate on a pervasive problem.
Let's discuss how Nigerians unintentionally--or as a compatriot told me recently, intentionally--sabotage other Nigerians' chances of upward socioeconomic and educational mobility.
A talented Nigerian student/graduate is applying to a graduate program in Euro-America and asks her current or former lecturers to write her the required recommendation letters. Some of the lecturers don't even bother to write the letter. The applicant has to chase them down and plead. Sometimes they have to travel from one part of the country to the other to plead in person as phone calls, texts, and emails don't work with the lecturers.
It's as though the lecturers don't want to support the applicant's foreign educational aspirations. It's part of their job, but lecturers act as if they're doing their current and former students a favor by writing these letters. Many applicants have missed critical application deadlines because of this attitude.
The ones who agree to write the letter take the most cavalier attitude to it. They write unusably perfunctory nonsense such as "Ms so and so was a student in our department; she was a well behaved student; she worked hard and performed well in her classes; she has a good character and is very respectful; she is humble and God fearing; her academic record is okay."
Far from helping the applicant's chances, this type of letter actually damages and puts her at a disadvantage in relation to her fellow applicants. I should know, since I've served on both graduate admissions and fellowship and grant committees many times.
Where to begin? First of all such a letter says nothing, absolutely nothing, about the applicant's intellectual abilities, unique academic skills, or the specificities of their academic record. It is too general to be useful. It does not offer any insight into the lecturer's academic/intellectual relationship with the applicant, so why should we take the letter writer seriously as someone who can vouch for the applicant?
There is no mention of classes the applicant took with the lecturer, how they did in such classes, how they stood out, what they did to impress the lecturer, why the lecturer believes the applicant would thrive and blossom in the graduate program, etc.
There is no praise, no enthusiasm--only bland, lukewarm, generic comments. It's better not to write a recommendation than to write one that does not endorse the applicant or highlight her intellectual promise and quality.
Then there is the issue of brevity. Some of these letters that I've seen are one paragraph or at most two--too sketchy to offer any substantive glimpse into the applicant's abilities or give one a sense of the applicant's unique talents and intellectual drive. You can't say anything compelling about an applicant in two or or three sentences.
Finally, there is the annoyingly meaningless deployment of Nigerian idiosyncrasies and cliches. When a Nigerian lecturer writes "hardworking," the North American evaluators of the applicant's materials read it as "mediocre." When the evaluators see a word such as "solid," they don't think it indicates excellence, as it might in Nigeria. In popular and even professional Nigerian usage, "okay" means good. Not so in the North American educational parlance. It does not mean good. Rather, it denotes bad or mediocre. Saying someone is "okay" indicates reservation, that the letter writer is holding back outright praise because the applicant does not deserve it.
And nobody wants to know or cares about the applicant's personal character, so commenting on how well behaved or respectful she is is an unhelpful digression at best and at worst a damaging indication that you have nothing substantive or glowing to say about her academic abilities and intellectual talent. What has the applicant being "kind" got to do with her ability to undertake graduate work, cope with its rigors, and do well?
The phrase"God fearing" and the word "humble" are staples of Nigerian academic recommendation letters. They are red flags like no others because they simply don't belong in an academic reference letter. Our tendency to religionize every aspect of our lives and explain everything in religious idioms is now infecting our academic enterprise. Religious references presuppose that everyone shares that frame of reference, which is quite presumptuous and thus off-putting. As for being "humble," humility is not, in and of itself, a treasured academic quality or an indicator of academic talent. Unless humility is being advanced to balance out superlatives used to describe an applicant's exceptional intellectual talents, it is a meaningless quality to underline in an academic reference letter.
I don't know whether it is laziness on the part of the lecturers or a lack of awareness about Western higher educational conventions. I suppose it's a mix of the two.
Whatever it is, these lecturers are destroying the chances and prospects of talented Nigerian applicants, who lose out of opportunities because their former or current teachers write non-recommendation recommendation letters on their behalf.
I've lived and worked in America long enough to know that, in making admission and other decisions, no evaluator will ignore a sketchy, general, and lukewarm endorsement from a person who purportedly knows and has taught and mentored the applicant--the recommender. If the recommending lecturer doesn't sound so enthusiastic about the applicant, why should I? That's the general attitude.
Ignorance of what is expected in the letter is no excuse. I've even seen such a letter which was written by a Nigeria-based lecturer who studied in the US and is thus aware of how critical recommendation letters are and how they should be written. This lends credence to the theory that some of this could be intentional sabotage on the part of some recommending lecturers.
It is sometimes so sad and frustrating for folks like me to read recommendation letters from North American professors saying that such and such applicant is a reincarnation of Albert Einstein and Jacques Derrida in one flesh and then to read a meaningless three-sentence recommendation letter from a Nigerian lecturer about a Nigerian applicant you know is much more talented than the North American applicant whose abilities and talents are being advanced in highfalutin, exaggerated terms.
The interesting thing is that I read recommendation letters written by academics in other countries for other international applicants and they conform for the most part to the North American convention of high praise and substantive commentary on the applicant, her accomplishments, and her ongoing work.
We're shortchanging ourselves and putting ourselves at a disadvantage in a globalized, hyper-competitive world.
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