Maine Perspective Front Page
In the UMaine English Classroom Via AUBG
Like most graduate students in English, Zornitsa Keremidchieva teaches English 101 to first-year undergraduates.
What is unusual is that English is a second language for Keremidchieva.
Keremidchieva, 23, came to UMaine from Bulgaria in August 1997. She will graduate in May with a 3.95 GPA and a master's degree in English, with a concentration in composition, rhetoric and pedagogy.
The English Department rarely gives teaching opportunities to students whose first language isn't English, according to Linne Mooney, associate professor of English.
"She's unusual in that English is her second language," Mooney says. "Science and engineering graduate students from outside the U.S. are more likely to be offered TAs than English graduate students, since our TAs have to teach English composition."
Keremidchieva has proved to be a successful gamble. Mooney says the department has been impressed with Keremidchieva's command of the language and her coursework.
"She's not from Maine, not even in the United States," Mooney says, "and she's one of our best literature students."
Keremidchieva is particularly interested in comparative and contrastive rhetoric, or how people in different cultures construct arguments and make sense of reality through language. She says one of the biggest myths in education is that foreign students who are not fully proficient in English automatically cannot do well in an academic environment.
"Some international students may not have a perfect command of the language and the way they construct arguments may sound foreign," she says. "Yet, the value and quality of their thinking is there. It is only different."
Keremidchieva, who has also taught English as a second language, has found that foreign students' scores on the SATs and TOEFLs do not correlate with academic performance. She says other factors such as how foreign students perceive authority, objectives and institutional environment must also be examined.
Keremidchieva says the area of contrastive rhetoric has a variety of implications for politics, the media, academia and social discourse.
"The West can no longer afford to think that international education is about converting the natives. We need to be able talk to each other and reach mutual respect and understanding. Pluralism, sensitivity, awareness and tolerance are key terms for the future," she says.
Especially with the popularity of the Internet, which Keremidchieva claims is "like a huge writing project," writing remains a primary way of communicating, she says.
Keremidchieva's gravitation toward cross-cultural rhetoric now seems natural. As a Bulgarian native in the United States, she has first-hand experience with how differently language and argumentation work in different cultural environments, and she is the product of several vastly different education systems.
Keremidchieva began her college career at Sofia University, the national university of Bulgaria and its oldest, most established and traditional institution of higher education. However, Sofia did not meet Keremidchieva's needs and interests.
"The type of education there was obsolete, loaded with propaganda," she says. "I couldn't expect the same faculty who had been educated in the same institution formerly sponsored by the Communist government to change their mentality overnight and suddenly start to promote democratic values."
Keremidchieva left Sofia after one year and enrolled at the American University of Bulgaria, an autonomous university accredited through UMaine. AUBG is a very small institution, the only one of its kind in the Balkan region. When it began in 1992, it offered a liberal arts education that was otherwise unknown in the formerly Communist country.
Keremidchieva's transition to the more open-minded AUBG was made easier by her family's tradition in American education. Her older brother was one of the 100 students who made up AUBG's first graduating class and her grandfather was an alumnus of an American school. Keremidchieva also had the encouragement of a progressive family who thought she needed to seek out new values.
"The spirit of the institution was the best thing," she says. "The students were very bright, and it was very competitive."
Keremidchieva's original area of study was not language. At AUBG, where all the classes are taught in English, Keremidchieva studied business administration. She also worked for an international business while attending AUBG.
Keremidchieva was so occupied working for the business that she considered her double major in English literature a hobby. Then an English instructor at AUBG encouraged Keremidchieva to apply for a graduate position at UMaine.
"Making the decision to come to the U.S. was like going through a mid-life crisis. It involved a radical re-evaluation of everything that had given me a sense of identity so far: nationality, interests, professional aspirations, family, etc.," she says. "At the time, English was pleasure. I didn't think of it as a professional option. My mentor revealed the possibilities of the field for me. He changed my life.
"I don't regret anything I've done so far. With my interests in rhetoric and communication, I can see how all of the ideas I ran across in a variety of fields come together to enhance my understanding of social realities and values.
"My outlook has evolved tremendously since I came to UMaine. With my job, which I totally love and enjoy, my visions stretch far ahead. Now I can see that I need to constantly reposition myself within a profession which reflects a world that constantly implodes with new ideas and new hopes. Political and economic regimes change, values change, needs change. Change is something we need to look forward to, both in the social and political arena, and in our personal lives."