Question First Day speeches and not understanding a word

Had something pop into my head while butchering a quote from Quantico's season 2 premier episode to use in Specter's opening speech to the 2013 class of delinquents; What does Whateley do with students who speak not a lick of English before they arrive at the school? I realized I have the same issue on a larger scale with DeVille.

Cryptic wrote: Had something pop into my head while butchering a quote from Quantico's season 2 premier episode to use in Specter's opening speech to the 2013 class of delinquents; What does Whateley do with students who speak not a lick of English before they arrive at the school? I realized I have the same issue on a larger scale with DeVille.

Non-English speakings Freshthings are partnered up with Bilingual Upperclassmen, with a decided bias for them being from the same country, if not province and/or town if at all possible. At the Orientation speech, the freshthings are given an earpiece through which the upperclasskid does UN style simultaneous translation. It's not 100%, but it beats having the poor kid go 'HAH?' all day

Cryptic wrote: Had something pop into my head while butchering a quote from Quantico's season 2 premier episode to use in Specter's opening speech to the 2013 class of delinquents; What does Whateley do with students who speak not a lick of English before they arrive at the school? I realized I have the same issue on a larger scale with DeVille.

Well so far we have seen a Winter Term ESL class, and a fall term Improve your English class, I wonder why Chaka didn't take that one. If there is warning, the student probably arrives in the Summer and goes through an intensive class, otherwise the same sort of thing is likely done whenever the student arrives. Kind of pointless to go to a class if you don't understand the Teacher.

Bek D Corbin wrote:

Cryptic wrote: Had something pop into my head while butchering a quote from Quantico's season 2 premier episode to use in Specter's opening speech to the 2013 class of delinquents; What does Whateley do with students who speak not a lick of English before they arrive at the school? I realized I have the same issue on a larger scale with DeVille.

Non-English speakings Freshthings are partnered up with Bilingual Upperclassmen, with a decided bias for them being from the same country, if not province and/or town if at all possible. At the Orientation speech, the freshthings are given an earpiece through which the upperclasskid does UN style simultaneous translation. It's not 100%, but it beats having the poor kid go 'HAH?' all day

And between that translator, their counselors, House Parents, RAs and ESL teacher there will be enough people going over anything they don't understand either linguistically or culturally to make sure they at least get a chance at a good start.

Having been an exchange student myself, I would like to point out that, as long as you don't have the option of speaking your native language most of the time, you pick up the lingo _very_ fast. OK, it helps a lot if you have some previous knowledge of the basics of the language -- like a bit of vocabulary and the basic sentence structure -- to get a jumpstart.
But it goes roughly like this:
- First few days, maybe a week, you have a hard time communicating on a basic level. You are very tired at the end of the day, and you get headaches. You consider if you didn't make a big mistake.
- Then, it gradually gets better. Your accent improves, you start to understand people's speech at a more natural mode (instead of only when they enunciate clearly for your benefit), you don't have to work as hard at translating. Slang and colloquial phrases still baffle you -- a lot. But you start to feel that you can do it.
If you happen to be in an ESL class where there are people who are still speaking their native language at home (it happened to me, I was the only exchange student in a class with mostly children of immigrant families), you find that you are rapidly overtaking the rest of the class in both understanding and fluency.
- Sometime around the 1-2 month mark, you realize that you are starting to think in English. You are now at the top of that ESL class. You can now talk fairly normally with other people (although you still have an atrocious accent), you can understand most of your teachers with only the occasional need for clarification on some new word.

So... the first month is the key. I would expect that Whateley having dealt with a lot of foreign students, has some experience accommodating them during that crucial time. The hardest cases (no previous knowledge of English, no mental upgrade to speed up learning, no early arrival during Summer) might require some telepathic "boosting" from, say, Fubar, to bring them quickly over the hump before they ruin their entire first term.