THIS IS AMERICA - Want to Be a Foreign Exchange Student? First Do Some Homework

''You should not leave your country thinking 'Oh, wow, cool, a year of holiday,' because it's also hard. But at the same time it's so cool,'' says an Italian teen studying in the U.S. Transcript of radio broadcast:

VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week on our program, we talk about foreign exchange students in the United States.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

More than twenty-nine thousand foreign exchange students attended American high schools last year. The State Department says the teenagers came from one hundred nine countries.

Foreign exchange students get the chance to learn more about a culture and its people. They make new friends and experience new places. But they can also experience problems being far from home, among people they do not know and may not understand.

The way many describe it, the experience is exciting and frightening at the same time.

VOICE TWO:

In the past, exchange students usually had limited contact with their host families before meeting them. But times have changed. Today, exchange students may know a lot about their host family before they ever leave home. E-mails go back and forth; pictures of families, homes and pets are shared.

E-mail and cell phones also make it easier for the students to keep in contact with their own families back home.

VOICE ONE:
　
Exchange groups are supposed to provide a contact person, or liaison, to help students in case they have any problems.

This is what happened with a boy from Argentina we'll call Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos liked sports; his American host family did not. He liked to go out with friends; his host parents did not approve. And they did not think he was doing well enough in school: he was getting average grades. The host parents discussed these issues with his liaison.

And the solution? A new family was found for Juan Carlos. The new family included two boys who played soccer on local teams. Juan Carlos joined those teams and was much happier with his new family. Not only that, his grades improved.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Exchange students have to speak English well enough to attend an American high school. But some students find it takes weeks or months for them to understand everything they read or hear.

One girl from Switzerland told her exchange group that some students at her American high school made fun of her accent. An exchange volunteer asked how many languages she spoke. The girl said her native language was Swiss-German and she also spoke Italian, French, English and Spanish.

The volunteer had this advice: Tell those students that you have an accent in four of the five languages you speak. And then ask them how many languages they speak. The majority of Americans speak only English.

VOICE ONE:

Seventeen-year-old Nadia Gerstgrasser is from Italy. Nadia says being a foreign exchange student is not always easy.
　
Nadia Gerstgrasser of Italy

NADIA GERSTGRASSER: "Like the language, you think it's going to be hard, but you don't know how it is in real life when people don't understand you and how hard it can be even to order a hamburger. When a waiter asked me the first time how I wanted it done, I said 'cooked' and he was like 'yeah, I know, but how,' and I said 'on my plate,' and everybody started laughing. Stuff like that. It can embarrass you, but that's just the way you learn English. Now I laugh about it, but back then I was really embarrassed."

VOICE TWO:

Nadia is living with a family in Alexandria, Virginia, through the end of June. She is attending a Fairfax County high school with more than one thousand seven hundred students. Nineteen percent of them are limited English speakers. She says that surprised her -- finding so many different ethnic groups.

NADIA GERSTGRASSER: " You know, I was expecting all Americans ... like, I knew there was black people, white people, but I didn't know there was a lot of Hispanics, Asian kids at my school. And, yeah, it was surprising but positive."

VOICE ONE:

American high schools come in small, medium, large and extra large. They can have three, four, even five thousand students. It is easy to feel lost at first in a huge building and moving from class to class.

Changing classrooms might also be a new experience for exchange students. Some students come from countries where the teachers move from room to room, not the students.

[1] [2] 下一页