University life can be stressful. Sitting in a classroom where half the characters on the board look like Greek, and those in the textbook look like caveman markings, is a major contributing factor to this nightmare and is exactly why universities employ well-educated professors to demystify the text and mold the minds of future scholars.
These professors are given the task of communicating information in such a way that it is easier to grasp. However, if you spend half the time trying to grasp what the professor is saying because their sentences are the equivalent to reading alphabet soup, it can be assumed that you learn very little.
It is a requirement at English speaking schools for prospective students whose first language is not English to take an English proficiency exam (TOEFL or IELTS), have documentation from an official that this person is fluent in the English language, or have previously attended an English speaking institution. This is a logical position as teaching biology in English to a person who speaks only French, might as well be teaching a brick how to fly.
However, this is not the requirement for professors in the same situation. Of course it is assumed these professors have some grasp of the language, but in my opinion, this is the equivalent of sending a neuroscientist with low level German speaking skills to Germany and expecting him to excel in his efforts to teach.
Regardless of your position, if you cannot verbalize a sentence with proper subject-verb agreement, use of rhetoric, and order food in any language, you cannot speak that language. If universities make an effort to ensure that their students can speak English, shouldn’t they also make an effort to ensure that their educators can do the same?
Instead of proficiency exams, professors are taken through an interview process and hired or not based on the merits of their resume and that interview. There is no extensive evaluation of this person’s ability to communicate the basics of a subject and that can cause problems for students who now have to expend more effort than necessary to understand the topic.
It can be argued that it is subjecting the professor to some level of embarrassment by requiring them to take a language proficiency exam to work at the university. However, I find it unfair that a foreign student who sounds more American than myself is still asked to take an eight week class at the language institute because he is from a country where English is not the first language. Is it not embarrassing to ask that of him? Still students take it with no fight. If they can do it, why can’t our professors?
