[nabs-l] my test accomodation problem

[Ashley Bramlett]

Hi all,

This is the problem I alluded to before. Usually I have worked with less than adaquate readers issued by this community college.
But this is a different senario. What happened was this. I am taking a world religions final covering the monotheistic religions.

Although its an elective I want to do well. We studied Islam and the Baha’I faith among other religions.
The professor is nice and farely understanding. In fact, it was she who said it would be challenging to do auditorily and suggested I request a reader competent in Aerabic or who was Muslim. We are testing on some Arabic vocabulary to match with definitions.
We also have other parts of the test .


I requested a reader from my dss counselor and stated the desired time as well as explained that I need a reader who can pronounce Arabic words. I explained that we have foreign words because its about Islam and the Baha’I faith. Words for the five pillars and their holidays such as Salad, Sawm, Zakat, Ramadan, and Hajj. 

The DSS counselor responded rather rudely that they do not match  readers based on subject matter competency, that they only base on availability. She said I should know this since I’ve worked with her long enough. I of course do not know this as I’ve never requested this before.

I might  take a list of the words we have to match for the test. This would help me know what the words are as the reader spells them out who likely won’t know how to pronounce them. I’ll also ask my professor for suggestions. She’ll likely just advocate with me to dss.

I was planning on using the school readers, so at this late point I doubt I can get someone else. They need to provide competent readers. My dss counselor went as far as to say that if a student took a math class, they would not provide someone proficient in math.

It is discriminatory for them not to provide a reader who can read adaquately. I kid you not. She really used the math class example. She’d really set someone up to fail by providing a student reader not familiar with math to read a math exam.
Email me off list for the counselor’s exact words which I can send privately.
Its appalling. 

The best I can do i s explain the situation to the professor and see what we can work out knowing that I might have an incompetent reader. What I probably do is rely on them spelling the words to me as we match them with definitions.

Ashley