Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had an economics professor who was Indian. I could maybe understand 2-3 sentences out of every 12 sentences he said.
Which, wouldn't of been a huge problem if he ran his grading/tests better, by basing them off of the book!
Instead he based his tests off of what he taught in class, so even if you read every chapter and did the assignments at the end of each chapter, you were still out of luck because the test would look completely foreign.
It really pissed me off that he had a strict attendance policy, and if you missed like 3 days, he would dock you a full letter grade!
Class was absolutely pointless since you couldn't understand him.
Something needs to be done about this. It's no wonder so many people who attend college end up dropping out.
I'd say, based on my undergrad which ended in 1977, that it's past time to demand it. We had the same issues then. Funny you should mention Econ, we must have had the same instructor. Or a relative since mine died years ago.
Funny, when I got my MS, I had no foreign born teachers. Or if they were their spoken English was impeccable.
I would say the language issue isn't a big reason for why people don't finish college.
I also had same problems and one of my sons in late 90's. He was on an academic scholarship and failed Physics specifically because he couldn't understand the professor. They wanted to take away his scholarship even though he took the course over in the summer, which I had to pay for along with a place to live. Wrote a letter explaining and mentioning he would not be able to return because I couldn't afford the school without his partial scholarship and I'm sure he wasn't the only one who failed because of professors who couldn't be understood.
Not sure why this continues but then again it is unfair of the high cost of a college education that puts students in debt for years and then to not understand a professor. Would it change if more students complained? If I were paying for a "service" and that service wasn't satisfactory I would certainly complain.
Yes, and professors should tell you whether or not they'll use the book. I'm taking 5 classes this semester, but only using 2 books. It's a shame.
But I bet you had to buy a book for each class.
The aforementioned Econ Prof I had required 5 books for a class one semester (International Macro Theory), we used part of one of them. The rest were never even opened.
Students should not have to attend class if they don't want to!
That's just silly. Not all classes are lectures; for some classes, discussion is an integral part of the learning involved, and you can't discuss if you're not there.
To the OP: when I was in grad school at Michigan all their foreign TAs (they called them GSIs, Graduate Student Instructors) whose native language was not English had to pass proficiency tests and go through extra training in English if they were deficient. Students still complained about some of them.
Most of the time I am sympathetic to students on this issue, but I have also heard students complain about foreigners from particular places whose English is just about perfect with only the slightest accent (e.g., an Indian "lilt") that is easily understood, and NOT complaining about a different professor from Ireland whose accent is even stronger (but he's young and cute and students don't mind HIS accent).
But again to the OP, I can't figure out why you didn't talk to the department if you couldn't understand the professor? If it was really as large a problem as you say, then other students would have chimed in as well and maybe something COULD have been done.
True! I remember having a Japanese professor whose linguistics I had to take that it was very hard to understand. I felt that I got very little out of that class.
But I doubt anyone is going to stop these people from teaching and make them take accent reduction classes before allowing them to resume teaching.
Sent from my GT-S7562 using Tapatalk 2
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
