Passage Two
Questions 66- 70 are based on the following passage.
"My advisor wants me to call him by his first name," many foreign graduate students in the U.S. have said, "But I just can't do it. It doesn't seem right. I have to show my respect."
On the other hand, professors have said of foreign students, "They keep bowing and saying ' Yes, sir, yes, sir. ' I can hardly stand it. I wish they'd stop being so polite and just say what they have on their minds."
Differing ideas about formality and respect frequently complicate relationships between American professors and students from abroad, especially Asian students (especially female Asian students). The professors generally prefer informal relationships (sometimes, but not always, including the use of first names rather than titles and family names) and little acknowledgment of status differences. Many foreign students are used to more formal relationships and sometimes have difficulty bringing themselves to speak to their teachers at all, let alone addressing them by their given names.
The characteristics of student-teacher relationships on American campuses vary somewhat, depending on whether the students involved are undergraduate or graduate students, and depending on the size and nature of the college. Graduate students typically have more intense relationships with their professors than undergraduates do; at smaller colleges student-teacher relationships are typically even less formal than they are at larger institutions.
To say that student-teacher relationships are informal is not to say that there are no recognized status differences between the two groups. There are. But native American students may show their respect mainly in tile vocabulary and tone of voice they use when speaking to teachers. Much of their behavior around teachers may seem to foreign students to be disrespectful. For example, American students will eat in class, read newspapers, and assume quite informal postures. Approve of such behavior, but they tolerate it. Students, after all, are individuals who have the right to decide for themselves how they are going to behave.
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