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Transcript For: Fulbright Alumni Roundtable Q&A Part 1 - Asia

Fulbright Alumni Roundtable Q&A Part 1 - Asia. Fulbright Alumni and Jonathan Akeley take questions from potential applicants to the Fulbright U.S. student program.

Questions and Answers Part 1,

Jonathan:          So, people in New York, if you have questions, please just line up behind the microphone and go ahead.  And if you’re addressing your question to a specific person just let us know who you’re addressing the question to.  And don’t be shy, because if you don’t ask your questions we don’t give you another chance.

Student 1:         A general question to the people who applied for research grants, and that is, do you have any tips in terms of the written portion of the application, not so much the recommendations or anything like that, but in terms of how you structure or organize your written application.

Justin:               Justin in New York.  One thing I found really useful for my application was running it by a bunch of different people, whether it’s co-workers, or old professors, or family, just to make sure I was communicating my message the way I wanted to.  Because initially, my subject, human trafficking, was, there was ways I could have pitched it that could have been more kind of sensitive or controversial than others, so I really wanted to make sure that the tone was right, and that I was also kind of hitting all the elements as far as not only what I wanted to do but, because it’s such limited space, how kind of my personal and academic and professional skill sets tied into that.  So, for me, you know, the first time I wrote it it was way over the limit, and it was just a process of myself working through it but then also getting feedback from a bunch of different people to kind of keep on refining it and refining it and make sure that, I mean, what I ended up with was obviously good, but it took a lot of like different kind of sources of feedback to get there for me, so I found that really helpful. 

Chris:               Can I add something here?

Staff:               Go ahead.

Chris:               This is Chris from San Francisco.  One of the things I think that helped me is other people reading it encouraged me to be as specific as possible, so, you know, it’s nice if I want to do research on biomaterials or on human trafficking, but also if you can show how you’re going to get the project done in your timeline, the people reading it need to be very confident that you’re going to be able to get there, get rolling, and do your project, within the timeline allowed.  A clear demonstration of that can really help strengthen that part.

Jeffrey:             This is Jeffrey from Washington.  One thing, I also did like the previous two alumni have said, that I did show it to a lot of my professors, also the Fulbright point person at my university.  But in terms of structuring it, how I wrote it up was I did present my project in a very clear way, but I also combined it with how I thought my proposal or how my project would help US-Japan relations and help basically deepen understanding between the two countries.  So I, you know, you present your proposal, because that’s really, you’re applying so that you can do your research, but at the same time you have to keep in mind that it is a cultural exchange, so you have to try and tie it in with the cultural exchange part

Student 2:         I have a question for the people that did research grants abroad.  I was wondering if you’re doing things like interviews, what it is that you’re kind of expected to kind of produce at the end if you’re not doing it as part of a master’s degree or a PhD.  I mean, did you write a paper at the end.  Basically, what were you sort of aiming towards at the end; what’s the accountability on it?

Justin:               Well, okay.  So, Justin in New York.  I’ll field that first.  Well, the requirements for the organization in the Philippines PAEF what they required was kind of a presentation at the end, and I wasn’t actually doing it for a master’s degree, so what I ended up doing was integrating a lot of my research into a blog in a website that I now run. 

Chris:               This is Chris from San Francisco.  Australia asked us to do a write-up at the end of the year on what we did, and I know not everybody who finished their year and were not degree seeking, not everybody published a paper, but you do have to show some sort of accomplishment, as in, you know, if you’re working in a lab you do have them.  I was fortunate to be able to publish while I was there, but that’s not a necessary requirement of your project. 

Jeffrey:             This is Jeffrey in Washington.  When I, in terms of what was required from the Fulbright standpoint, of course I did the final report, or did the reports that I submitted to the Fulbright Commission in Tokyo.  But in terms of the people I was interviewing I, it depends on the person.  Some of the people have asked for Japanese summaries of my dissertation when it’s completed.  And, so that I have not submitted to them yet because I haven’t finished the writing.  But others just wanted to know before I left, which I did do this, they wanted to know what my preliminary findings were from all of my research, and sort of I was sitting on all of this.  So, it depends on, I guess if your question is aiming for what the people want, it depends on the person.  But in terms of like the institution or project, my affiliation did not ask for anything, but I did write up just a report to the Fulbright Commission in Tokyo and gave them just what I found and how I went about it.

Student 3:         This question’s directed for Becky and Aaron, I guess the two ETA’s, mainly about the living situations and whether either of you were in home stays and how you adjusted to the challenges of living very remotely, and I guess how you’re accepted in the schools; if you’re encouraged, or how that was.

Becky:              Okay, this is Becky in Houston.  It’s so different, even just for the ten ETA’s in Thailand.  I lived in an apartment by myself, and my apartment had a small shower fixture, and a toilet, yay!  But I visited a friend in {Name of Place}, one who is one of the rice field folk, and she had a squat toilet with a bucket of water that she would pour some water from a hot pot into to make it kind of lukewarm, and that was her shower.  So that kind of gives you an example of the range of experiences.  My predecessor had a home stay, and if you were to ask her, she would not recommend a home stay.  The program was also only six months at the time that she participated and when I participated, and now I believe it’s twelve months, and I think that Sarah, my predecessor, her recommendation would be, you know, if it’s a couple months, maybe three months, a home stay might work out, but it can be quite difficult, especially in Thailand, where there really isn’t this sense of privacy, and like time to yourself, and there’s a lot of kind of expectation to be on display most of the time.  So, on the other hand, I knew another ETA who, she enjoyed her home stay experience, and didn’t really have bad things to say about it, but I think she said six months was about the limit that she would have wanted in her home stay.  It would have been difficult.  And also, there’s like this sense of burden where you feel like you’re asking so much of that person, and they’re constantly doing favors for you, and how could you ever repay them, and that’s also, I mean, Thai hospitality.  So, in terms of a home stay, I think generally, the impression I got from those who experienced it, was to discourage it a little bit, but it is lonely if you’re in an apartment, so I would recommend branching out into the community and making new friends.  So I’ll answer that portion of your question and I don’t know if Aaron has something to add. 

Aaron:              This is Aaron in Washington.  The housing in Malaysia, the way it worked out for me the year, because I was actually there for half a year, six months as well, the term in Malaysia, but the housing, the way it worked out, is that the students, half of the students were housed in student housing on the grounds of Malaysian Secondary School, and the other half, because there was actually ETA’s in Malaysia the year I was there, and I think it was the first year that they ran the ETA program in Malaysia, and the other half of the ETA’s actually lived together in Kuala Terengganu, which was actually  the capital city of the state of, the province of Terengganu, Malaysia.  So everyone had, about half of us had two different types of housing arrangements.  You have the, there was five, three students, five ETA’s, sorry, in the same home in the capital state, and then five students spread out through the state in the different districts.  So in my case, I was in the, they call it the belgique warden, so it was the warden’s room on the grounds of the secondary school, and it was actually a pretty nice flat where they had me set up Western standards.  Two bedrooms, a bath with a Western toilet and shower and sink and all the rest, and it was really nice housing for the time that I was with the ETA grant there in the {name of place} Malaysia.  But they also provided host families for all of the ETA’s as well during the year, so it was a host family, so they could take you around during the weekends, you can stay with them if you like during the weekends.  In my host family, they let me stay some weekends, you know, if I want to stay some weekends I can stay with them and meet their cousins and family, and they took me on trips also around the rest of the state in Malaysia that we worked in (Trigaut ?) Malaysia, and that was very good to have a host family connection as part of the program as well in Malaysia.  Challenges of adjusting I think was also part of your question.  Although I’m not sure of whether I’ve adjusted fully, the term that I was there in Malaysia so, so I guess it was kind of a challenge the whole time I was there.  But still the housing, and I think again Becky was talking about, you may get a little lonely if you’re housed on your own, but I think the hospitality portion that Becky was talking about also runs true in Malaysia because, to your question about being accepted, a lot of the students, I was very well, I think I was very well accepted on campus, and a lot of the students, they have a lot of respect for the ETA’s on campus.  And I think now there might be, if I look on the website I think there’s ten my year, and I think there might actually be fifteen or twenty ETA’s grants, awards, for Malaysia, for now, so I think might be two ETA’s per campus, or something like that.  But very well accepted on campus, and they would always call me by my first name, so Mr. Aaron, or Sir, so every turn, every corner I turned, they would, you know, say, “Sir, Sir!  I need help on my homework”, or something like that.  Since Malaysia, I mean, the way it is, again, I was in the warden’s room, in the boys’ hostel, because the boys’ hostels and the girls’ hostels are separated, so I was always around the boys and helping them do things, and I was never really alone most of the time.

Student 4:         As far as the housing goes, I wonder if this is paid by Fulbright Program.  And my second question is during the application process can I apply for both program or research and ETA?

Jonathan:          Okay, to answer your second question first, no, you can only apply for one Fulbright grant in a given application cycle.  And, as I mentioned at the beginning, the traditional Fulbright full grant covers round trip air transportation, plus a monthly living stipend to cover room, board, and incidentals.  If you are on a Fulbright full grant, you’ll be responsible for finding your own housing.  With most of the ETA programs your host institution and the Fulbright Commission will assist in finding housing. 

Student 5:         Hi, my name’s Regib, and I’m talking from New York, and I have a question, I guess my background’s a little similar to Chris’s actually.  I had actually applied, wow, this mic is going up and down, I had applied for a fellowship through the IIE branch, it’s called the Whitaker International Fellows, and it’s stressed a lot on leadership.  Does the Fulbright Fellowship also stress on leadership, and if so how did you tackle that from a science perspective?

Jonathan:          Chris, you want to take that?

Chris:               Sure.  I know when I went through the application, the Fulbright process, I worked on the project, and I worked it out myself, and I did a lot of work and thought of it on my own.  However, I didn’t really have a big leadership component in my application.  Although the ideas were my own initiative, it wasn’t like I was starting a new program or anything along those lines while I was going through that process. 

Jonathan:          And just to add to that, I mean, like I said, the Fulbright Program is really more focused on mutual understanding, cultural exchange, I mean leadership is a part of that, in the sense of developing future leaders who are going to have cultural literacy.  But I don’t think it’s kind of like the first and foremost thing that you’re going to be worried about when you’re writing your proposal because you’re really, in that, you’re focusing on the, kind of the, all of the specifics of the things you’re going to do on your Fulbright grant in the country that you’re proposing to go to. 

Staff:                Thanks a lot.  Thanks, Chris.  Let’s move down to Washington DC.  Questions?

Student 6:         I have a question.  Mine’s kind of specific to Aaron.  I’m looking to go to Indonesia, and I know Malaysia and Indonesia are somewhat similar, and I was wondering if the housing setups are similar, or if there’s the same level of education in English for both countries or how, you know, how well the students know English, or does it depend on the grade level which you teach?

Aaron:              Thank you for your question.  Because she’s sitting right here next to me.  I know the ETA grant in Malaysia and the ETA program in Indonesia are the two ETA programs and I know the level of English for most of my students at the secondary level, at the Malaysian secondary school, and the thing is, the schools that they have the ETA’s going in 2005-2006 were, they were called Premier Secondary Schools, so picked by the Ministry, the Malaysian Ministry of Education, so I think there were some of the top secondary schools in Malaysia where they had Fulbright ETA grants placed, so a lot of the students, most of the students had very good command of English, because I think the tract that they were on from primary school, they started English at that time.  I think it was sometime late in primary school where they started English as a requirement in the classroom.  So I think by the time they got to secondary school, and we’re talking about students age thirteen to eighteen, that I was interacting with, and also like Becky, I had three to five hundred students that I was, that I interacted with every, I mean, for the whole, for the term.  But they all, most had a pretty good grasp of the English language and it was more of a conversation.  It wasn’t any, we weren’t teaching them grammar, or anything like that.  But, I mean, it was more conversational, vocabulary, a lot of kind of idioms, and different things like that a lot of the time when doing the teaching assistantship with the teachers, things like that. 

Student 7:         I have a question.  I actually have two questions.  Both about the ETA.  One, you mentioned that you are often in really rural places, so I wanted to know a little bit more about how you kind of combated maybe loneliness, or, you know, not having anybody around whose maybe American, or a native English speaker.  My second question is about prior teaching experience.  I know Becky mentioned a month long orientation, but how does it kind of for people who really don’t have any experience in a classroom, or at least writing lesson plans?

Aaron:              So I guess I’ll go first.  Here, in Washington, Aaron.  So I think also, on the IIE side there, I think it says there’s no prior teaching experience needed, but also in Malaysia, and also as Becky mentioned in Thailand, there’s also a month long orientation in Malaysia as well where they go through, the whole month they go through some basics of teaching English as a foreign language, how to spend time in the classroom with the teacher, intercultural things, and then also, there’s also a Malaysian language component in the Malaysian orientation month as well.  I think it would probably be the same, it would also be the same in Indonesia.  And I think some of the, I think it’s kind of up to the applicant as well, because I know a couple of ETA’s, prior to coming to Malaysia we took either TOEFL or TEFL or Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate kind of courses kind of on our own, just to have some background, because it was kind of a question that I had also before of, you know, if we don’t have any experience, so I kind of took a class before, but it’s, as Jonathan says, it’s more of kind of teaching conversational English, just kind of going in with your native, you’re kind of like a native English resource in the classroom, so, and then kind of learn a lot of the things along the way and just helping out as, you know, a native English resource, as an American native English speaker, then you help out the teachers in the classrooms for all the different things, and you just come up with, if they need help editing or working on lesson plans then you kind of sit down with them and learn how to do that, so is that part of your question?

Student 7:         I guess so.  I don’t, maybe I don’t, are you an actual teacher then?  I mean, you’re an assistant.

Aaron: Right.  I wasn’t an actual teacher.

Student 7:         You don’t have your own classroom, or you’re responsible for making sure they know their ABC’s in English at the end of the day.

Aaron:              Right.  So I think the way it was set up, at least at my school, and it might be different at all the other secondary sights, but at least the way I set it up with my school and my teachers was that I would help them, you know, with anything that they’d need help with in terms of the native English speaking component and anything like that with their students.  And then also, I also did some things after school.  Two nights a week I would sit down with some of the teachers and then have the same type of, kind of, you know, just kind of talks and discussions and, with the teachers in English, just, you know, so they can have the native English resource on campus and they could utilize that.  And I think you said something about being lonely?  But I’ll go and stop there.  And Becky, if you have any comments in Houston?

Becky:              Sure.  I can add a little bit.  Even though I was closer to Bangkok than most, I felt very alone at times.  And like I was the only white person around, which was kind of, I don’t know, at first I was just kind of just like, well, this is weird, everyone points at me when I walk by, and they say, “Fah-dong”, which I know some people kind of actually even get offended at pointing out the obvious, that yes, I am a foreigner.  But I kind of, I mean, I ended up getting used to it, and for me, the level of English was quite low at the school.  Even though I was at teaching a school that was a ‘dream school’, and so I even had difficulty communicating with other teachers in the English department.  There was one English teacher who was too afraid to speak English, and so she would mime things to me or like write something down because she was so worried about her pronunciation.  And I think that there’s a huge level of confidence that needs to be obtained for students to become successful in speaking English, and that’s kind of one of the, I think, best roles that an ETA can play, is being that person, like the practice sounding board, or whatever, where they can hear you speak as a native speaker, and also so that they can practice speaking.  But that surprised me, the level of English.  As for the rural location, I will say that one of the things that I missed the most in Thailand was substantive conversation.  All of my substantive conversations I guess happened over the Internet or over the phone.  And I did have Internet access, although quite slow, but that was definitely my connection to the outside world.  And finally, about my own personal survival techniques, I read a lot of English books and found a lot of, every time I’d find one I’d buy it, or I’d change out my English books in touristy areas, and I liked to travel on the weekends, so that I wasn’t alone and depressed in my room if I didn’t have other obligations with the school.  And I befriended the daughter of a teacher who had spent two months in Norway and had a pretty good command of the English language that she had learned from music and movies, and she became a friend, a best friend really, and is still someone who I keep in touch, with whom I keep in touch and whom I miss quite a bit.  So even being out in the middle of nowhere, feeling alone, there are definitely connections to be made.  And then finally, as far as prior English experience, I really didn’t have any classroom experience; just some tutoring experience.  And one of the other ETA’s in Thailand when I went was a chef before he came.  So I really, I don’t think that it’s necessary, at least in Thailand, to have that sort of experience or background or certification or anything, although it would be helpful.  And some of the other ETA’s did, and there was a great pool of ideas that was shared.  We exchanged a lot of different ideas, websites, resources, teaching techniques.  The only thing I was really worried about was the classroom control and being, not really being able to have the same command of the classrooms as the Thai teachers.  And finally, my last comment is that in Thailand, I think about eight or nine of the ten ETA’s were the sole teachers in the classroom.  And there might be a teacher in the background, but it really wasn’t so much of an assistantship as it was English teaching.  So that’s just something I would offer that, I mean, I found out my schedule the day of, and they were like, “Okay, so in twenty minutes you’re going to be teaching this class.  Go.”  So that was challenging, exciting, stressful, but a big growing experience.  So hopefully those can answer part of your question.