Yuko

1
Yukos Story

• 1/ 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.

2
Yukos Story

• 2/ 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, and 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.

3
Yukos Story

• 3/ In the second year she developed better
  survival strategies faster reading for gist
  techniques, including skipping passages, but 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, but did criticise
  herself when her strategies avoided being
  critical which she identified as the American
  way of learning

4
Yukos Story

• 4/ 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, and 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 doesnt happen
  anymore.