By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi 10. Instructor/Professor/Dr. In internal, official communication in American u...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
10.
Instructor/Professor/Dr. In internal, official communication in American
universities, every teacher, irrespective of rank, is generically referred to
as an “instructor.” Sentences like
“The instructor reserves the right to cancel classes,” “Instructors must submit
their grades before December 3,” “Students are requested to evaluate their
instructors,” etc. are common. But that’s about the only context where “instructor”
is used. Students rarely use the term.
The term students use frequently to refer to their teachers,
as I pointed out in the last two weeks, is “professor,” irrespective of rank.
But there is another use of “professor” among university teachers and
administrators that will puzzle many British and Nigerian English speakers: In
formal contexts and occasions, the title “Professor” is prefixed only to the
names of people who have no PhDs but teach in the university.
During formal occasions in American universities—and in
formal contexts (such as in academic conferences, books, biographies, etc.)— it
is traditional for university teachers to be addressed by their earned academic
titles rather than by their academic ranks, thus a PhD who has reached the
highest academic rank (which would be “professor” in British English and “full
professor” in American English) would be addressed as “Dr. John Smith,
professor of English,” not “Professor John Smith of the English Department.” If
someone is addressed as “Professor John Smith” in a formal context, you can
almost be sure that he has no PhD. So, in formal address in American
universities, “Dr.” is the title of preference to prefix to the name of a
university teacher who has a PhD. (Almost no one prefixes “Assistant Professor”
or “Associate Professor” to anybody’s name, as it’s usually done in
English-speaking Asian countries.)
This is quite the opposite in British and Nigerian
universities where people drop the “Dr.” academic title once they are promoted
to the rank of “professor”; they, in fact, take offense if “Dr.” is prefixed to
their names in any circumstance.
Another important point is that in America people cease to
be referred to as “professor” (both formally and informally) if they no longer
teach in a university. In British (and Nigerian) English, however, “Professor”
is a lifetime title. I once had reason to mention Professor Jerry Gana’s name
to a colleague of mine here in the United States during a chat, and he asked
where Professor Gana “teaches.” When I said Gana stopped teaching since the
1980s, he wondered why I still addressed him as “Professor Jerry Gana.” “It’s
because ‘Professor’ is a lifelong title in Nigeria,” I said.
11. Question
paper/Test. What Nigerian English speakers call “question paper” is better
known as “test” in American English.
When I first came here, I had occasion to instruct my students to not write on
their "question papers" because I wanted to use the same papers for
another class. The students all looked blankly at me. I initially thought they had problems with my
Nigerian accent. So I not only enunciated it clearly and slowly, I also wrote
it on the board.
But they still said, “What’s that?” And when I pointed to
their “question papers,” they exclaimed, “Oh, you mean we should not write on
the test?” Write on the test? Test is an abstract noun. How the hell do you
literally write on an idea? Anyway, I have since stopped calling question
papers by their name; they are “tests.”
12. Mark script/grade
paper. American professors don’t “mark scripts”; they “grade papers.” And
they don’t award or reduce students’ “marks”; they give or “take off points.” And there is this whole concept of “curve” or “curving” in the American
academe that I don’t think has an equivalent in the Nigerian British-derived
system.
Sometime in the early part of my stay here, about half of my
students got really low scores in my first test. On the day I handed out their
test grades, one female student stood up and asked if I would give a “curve.” I
wondered silently what in Heaven’s name she meant by a “curve.” But I knew that
the girl knew enough to know that only God could bring curves to her skinny,
almost masculine, physique at that stage of her life. So she couldn’t possibly
mean that she wanted me to do something about her lack of bodily endowments.
Besides, there were also men in the class who should have no business with
"curves" but who wanted a “curve” from me. So I asked, “What curve”?
Seeing my
confusion—and its obvious implication, because I must have been unconsciously
examining the lady’s body to observe the absence of curves on her!—somebody
volunteered to change the structure of the sentence to, “Will you curve the
grades?” It was then I got a hint that they were probably asking if I would add
extra “points” across the board to move the class average up. I couldn’t relate
to it because it was a strange concept for me. In Nigeria, my teachers never
gave me grades that I didn’t work for.
Second, I just couldn’t associate the word “curve” with the
arbitrary increase in the grades of students to raise the class average—perhaps
because of my weak quantitative reasoning abilities. I don’t draw graphs; I
only draw word pictures. A recent article I read from a retired, frustrated
British academic called this “scaling.”
So the Brits now have the American equivalent of "curving."
I am not sure this practice-- and the corresponding
terminology-- has percolated to Nigeria yet.
13. Certificate/Diploma.
"Certificate" is not a generic word for paper qualifications, as it
is in British and Nigerian English; when the word is used in an educational
context in America, it usually implies a document certifying the completion of
a short, crash course.
“Diploma” is the
generic word for all manner of certificates—secondary school certificate,
bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, etc.; it does not mean a sub-degree
qualification, as it does in British and Nigerian English. Here, when people
earn their BA, MA, or PhD, they get their diploma, that is, the paper showing
they have completed their degree.
14.
College/University. In American English “college” is the generic word for
university, although it technically means an institution that only awards
four-year bachelor’s degrees. With a few exceptions (such as Dartmouth College,
which is an Ivy League school), “colleges” don’t have graduate schools. When
somebody is described as “college-educated,” it often means he or she has at
least a bachelor’s degree. “College
professor” is also the generic term for what in British and Nigerian
English we would call “university lecturer.”
In British and Nigerian English, “college” can mean high
school. In Nigeria, “college” can also mean an institution that awards
sub-degree qualifications, such as a “College of Education,” “College of Legal
Studies,” etc.
15.
Dissertation/Thesis. There is a fascinating semantic and lexical inversion
of the names for the lengthy research papers students write at the end of their
degree programs. In British English, people write “dissertations” at the end of
their bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and “thesis” at the end of their
Ph.D. study. In America, on the other hand, select undergraduates write an
“honors thesis” (also called a “senior thesis”) at the end of their bachelor’s
degree programs, a “thesis” at the end of their master’s degree programs, and a
“dissertation” at the end of their Ph.D. programs.
16.
Graduation/Commencement/Convocation. When I was first invited to a
“commencement ceremony” (also called a “commencement exercise”) at the end of
my first semester at an American university, I wondered what the heck anybody
was “commencing” at the end of a
semester. I thought “commencement” was the American equivalent of the British “matriculation,” and couldn’t understand
why students were matriculating at the end of the semester. I later learned
that “commencement” is actually the American equivalent of the British “convocation” while “orientation” is the American equivalent
of the British “matriculation,” although American university orientations
aren’t always elaborate ceremonies with caps and gowns and formal address from
the university president. There are exceptions, though. For instance, Stanford
University’s orientation is pretty much like British and Nigerian
matriculations, except that Stanford University calls it an “opening convocation.”
My friends told me
that the logic behind the word “commencement” is that it is when people
graduate that they really "commence" the journey to the "real
world." I later found out, though, that some American universities (such
as the University of Chicago) use “convocation” in the same way that it is used
in British English. Other American universities, such as the university where I
currently teach, use “graduation
ceremony/exercise” instead of “commencement ceremony/exercise.”
17.
Vice-Chancellor/President. The Chief Executive Officer of a university is
called a vice-chancellor in British and other Commonwealth universities but a
“president” in American universities. Some American universities, such as the
University of Illinois, have the position of “Vice-Chancellor,” but it doesn’t
mean the same thing as the British/Commonwealth vice-chancellor.
Concluded
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