With more Chinese students showing up on University of Iowa class rolls than ever before, the Henry B. Tippie College of Business last month invited its faculty and staff to a workshop on how to pronounce the students' names. Meanwhile, Chinese students are flocking to the tutoring center to become fluent in English.
The introductory lessons in Chinese, hosted in early February, drew about 50 participants to the Judith R. Frank Business Communications Center, the business school’s tutoring center. Some participants likened the experience to a fifth-grade classroom -- administrators and faculty members huddled in groups of four or five, trying and failing to pronounce sounds never used in English.
