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How Other Sees Us Rebekah Nathan Analysis

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In her book, My Freshmen Year: What a Professor Learned About Becoming a Student, Rebekah Nathan accounts her experience as a teacher turned student and her finding on how American students and international students relate to one another. In the fourth chapter of the book, “How Other Sees Us”, Nathan evaluates US college students’ opinions on other cultures based on interviews with international students and their experience interacting with US-born college students. Nathan, through the interviews, portrays American students as oblivious to the world scene, lacking or misusing information about other countries and other cultures. Although her main focus is to expose the shocking way most international students perceive Americans, Nathan also …show more content…

It must not also be motivating for foreigner students when Americans can not relate, rarely showing interest in adventuring themselves in the road of language discovery. But not all Americas are like that. According to the US Census 2000 brief, 18% of the total US population 5 years old or over spoke a second language at home (Shin, 2003). These 18%, for instance, comprise a group of Americans that mostly come from families that just recently immigrated to the United States, and tend to be more sympathetic towards multiculturalism. College students who grew up in families like this are more likely to develop a broader world awareness, creating a diversion in the perception that all American students are oblivious to other cultures and …show more content…

According to her, although only 10% said no, 35% said they did not care about welcoming a larger international student population (Stahl 1). This information is aligned to my findings, although slightly more pessimistic. Less than half of the interviewed students admitted that they weren’t affected by international students or they never really gave it a thought. Anthony, another Temple freshman I interviewed, despite displaying a quite fascinated view of international student’s bravery for moving countries, said that he did not have any international friends and didn’t really care about making any. In Nathan’s book, she says admits that most international students thought American did not ask them questions regarding their culture or they they came from (Nathan 84). Without a doubt, this shows the motivation and interest American lack considering the world beyond their boarders. It important to point out that other half of my interviewees had a friendly reaction when asked if they wanted more international students around campus. Christine, a sophomore, said she didn’t have international friends but really wished she had. She blamed not knowing who is international in her classes, and the difficulties of approaching people between classes. Hence, she supports having more international students around campus, giving her more opportunity

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