[Englecturers] Fwd: [NASK12-L] English from India

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>September 7, 2005
>A Tutor Half a World Away, but as Close as a Keyboard
>By SARITHA RAI
>New York Times
>
>COCHIN, India--A few minutes before 7 on a recent morning, Greeshma Salin 
>swiveled her chair to face the computer, slipped on her headset and said 
>in faintly accented English, "Hello, Daniela." Seconds later she heard the 
>response, "Hello, Greeshma."
>
>
>The two chatted excitedly before Ms. Salin said, "We'll work on pronouns 
>today." Then she typed in, "Daniela thinks that Daniela should give 
>Daniela's horse Scarlett to Daniela's sister."
>
>"Is this an awkward sentence?" she asked. "How can you make it better?"
>
>Nothing unusual about this exchange except that Ms. Salin, 22, was in 
>Cochin, a city in coastal southern India, and her student, Daniela 
>Marinaro, 13, was at her home in Malibu, California.
>
>Ms. Salin is part of a new wave of outsourcing to India: the tutoring of 
>American students. Twice a week for a month now, Ms. Salin, who grew up 
>speaking the Indian language Malayalam at home, has been tutoring Daniela 
>in English grammar, comprehension and writing.
>
>Using a simulated whiteboard on their computers, connected by the 
>Internet, and a copy of Daniela's textbook in front of her, she guides the 
>teenager through the intricacies of nouns, adjectives and verbs.
>
>Daniela, an eighth grader at Malibu Middle School, said, "I get C's in 
>English and I want to score A's," and added that she had given no thought 
>to her tutor being 20,000 miles away, other than the situation feeling "a 
>bit strange in the beginning."
>
>She and her sister, Serena, 10, a fourth grader at Malibu Elementary, are 
>just 2 of the 350 Americans enrolled in Growing Stars, an online tutoring 
>service that is based in Fremont, Calif., but whose 38 teachers are all in 
>Cochin. They offer tutoring in mathematics and science, and recently in 
>English, to students in grades 3 to 12.
>
>Five days each week, at 4:30 a.m. in Cochin, the teachers log on to their 
>computers just as students in the United States settle down to their books 
>and homework in the early evening.
>
>Growing Stars is one of at least a half-dozen companies across India that 
>are helping American children complete their homework and prepare for tests.
>
>As in other types of outsourcing, the driving factor in "homework 
>outsourcing," as the practice is known, is the cost. Companies like 
>Growing Stars and Career Launcher India in New Delhi charge American 
>students $20 an hour for personal tutoring, compared with $50 or more 
>charged by their American counterparts.
>
>Growing Stars pays its teachers a monthly salary of 10,000 rupees ($230), 
>twice what they would earn in entry-level jobs at local schools.
>
>Critics have raised concern about the quality of the instruction.
>
>"Online tutoring is not closely regulated or monitored; there are few 
>industry standards," said Rob Weil, deputy director at the educational 
>issues department at the American Federation of Teachers. Quality becomes 
>a trickier issue with overseas tutoring because monitoring is harder, said 
>Boria Sax, director of research, development and training for the online 
>offerings of Mercy College, based in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
>
>Growing Stars is rapidly expanding to accommodate students from the East 
>Coast, Canada, Great Britain and Australia.
>
>Its recruits, mostly with recent postgraduate and teaching degrees, 
>already have deep subject knowledge. They must go through two weeks of 
>technical, accent and cultural training that includes familiarization with 
>the differences between British English, widely used in India, and 
>American English.
>
>"They learn to use 'eraser' instead of its Indian equivalent, 'rubber,' 
>and understand that 'I need a pit stop' could mean 'I need to go to the 
>loo,'" said Saji Philip, a software entrepreneur of Indian origin and the 
>company's chairman and co-founder who works in New Jersey.
>
>Still, the cultural divide is real. In Cochin, Leela Bai Nair, 48, a 
>former teacher who has 23 years of experience and is an academic trainer 
>for Growing Stars, said she was "floored at first when 10-year old 
>American students addressed me as Leela. All my teaching life in India, my 
>students addressed me as Ma'am," she said.
>
>That same morning in Cochin, an English teacher, Anya Tharakan, 24, 
>directed her student away from the subject of video games to concentrate 
>on a passage from "Alice in Wonderland," enlivening the lessons with 
>puzzles and picture games.
>
>Ms. Tharakan, who tutors Serena Marinaro among others, said a bit of the 
>cultural gulf was being bridged when students asked her "How big is your 
>home?" or "Do you have friends at work?" or "Can you send me your photo?" 
>For her part, Ms. Tharakan is learning about soccer and rap music from her 
>students.
>
>Thomas Marinaro, a chiropractor in Los Angeles and the father of Daniela 
>and Serena, had been unhappy with the face-to-face tutoring he had 
>previously arranged for his daughters at home. After three months with 
>Growing Stars, however, Dr. Marinaro said the girls' math skills were 
>already much improved. As a bonus, it cost a third of what he paid the 
>home tutor.
>
>Dr. Marinaro said that he had misgivings when he first considered 
>enrolling his daughters for English tutoring. "I thought, how could 
>somebody from India teach them English?" But after a few weeks of 
>monitoring, he said he relaxed. "I want my girls to develop a good 
>vocabulary and write better, and I believe they are learning to do that."
>
>Biju Mathew, an Indian-born software engineer, set up Growing Stars after 
>moving to the Silicon Valley five years ago to work for a technology 
>start-up company. In India, he had been paying $10 a month for 
>twice-a-week tutoring sessions for his children.
>
>In the United States, he found, a similar service could cost $50 or more 
>per hour. The idea of homework outsourcing was born, and the company began 
>offering its services in January 2004.
>
>Growing Stars has been cautious, offering its students a choice of United 
>States--or India-based tutors for English. It charges a $10 premium above 
>its normal $20 rate for students who choose a tutor in the United States. 
>When parents have expressed concern over a tutor's accent, the firm has 
>offered a change of instructor.
>
>Other online tutoring firms in the United States adopt varied approaches. 
>Tutor.com, for instance, uses only tutors based in North America. 
>SmarThinking of Washington, D.C., has tutors in the United States but also 
>has instructors in South Africa, the Philippines, India and Chile. 
>However, only those in the United States provide English lessons.
>
>"We haven't found any cultural divide," said SmarThinking's chief 
>executive and co-founder, Burck Smith. Eliminating factors such as skin 
>color, appearance, gender and accent made the Internet "more egalitarian 
>than most classrooms," he said.
>
>The demand for online tutoring is reflected in the firm's 50 percent 
>growth rate in the last few years. Twenty new clients--including high 
>schools and colleges--have signed on for tutoring beginning this fall.
>
>Firms like Growing Stars are aggressively looking to expand their online 
>tutoring under federal programs. This summer, for instance, Growing Stars' 
>tutors ran a successful pilot for the Upward Bound program at Marist 
>College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
>
>The program, financed by the federal Department of Education, helps 
>children of high school age get into college. With the start of the 
>academic year this fall, Growing Stars expects to provide online tutoring 
>in math to 80 students from Marist's Upward Bound program.
>
>Also, the firm has just been approved as a licensed tutoring provider in 
>California under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Currently, Growing 
>Stars is trying to find a way for its teachers to be fingerprinted by the 
>Department of Justice to meet legal requirements of the program.
>
>Mr. Philip, the Growing Stars chairman, said his company's work would help 
>make Americans more competitive.
>
>"Offshore tutoring," he said, "is a step toward ensuring that we are not 
>always beaten in competition against Japanese carmakers, Indian software 
>firms and Chinese manufacturers."