Yuko’s Story

• Spack studied the integration of ‘Yuko’ over 3 years as she adapted to the needs of an American university

• Yuko had a TOEFL score of 640 (more than IELTS 7.0), which is higher than the entry requirements for virtually every UK university

• She had also spent one year at an American high school as an exchange student

• She was determined to succeed and was attracted by American educational methods

Yuko’s Story

• In her first year she did not complete some courses and had several difficulties, for example:

– she was not able to read quickly enough

– was unused to writing long assignments

– had little experience of independent learning

• In discussion groups she was intimidated by native-speakers, took a long time to formulate her contributions

• She partly attributed her difficulties to a lack of background knowledge in areas such as American history

Yuko’s Story

• In the second year she developed better survival strategies:

– faster ‘reading for gist’ techniques

– skipping passages

• She was still at times overwhelmed by both the amount and the complexity of readings – particularly when they were argumentative rather than factual

• She felt less guilty when deciding not to study every section of every course

• Criticised herself when her strategies avoided being critical – which she identified as the American way of learning

Yuko’s Story

• In the third year her confidence developed

• She collaborated better with other students

• Was selective in her reading

• Was more confident to be critical of readings

• Noticed that the other students sometimes did not understand

• ‘I used to open some reading and the printed words used to scare me and that doesn’t happen anymore’

Yuko’s Story

According to Spack Yuko let go of four myths:

•  Good students grasp meaning the first time they read

•  Good students understand every word of every reading assignment

•  Good students read everything assigned

•  Good students read everything on schedule