My professor can't speak English

Y

YouTeeAye

100+ Posts
The guy is apparently well-known in his area, has published award-winning papers on top conferences, but this is how his words flow to my ears in my Theory of Computation class:

"woshwosh NP-complete sssfffll ffslss pfllsfo redocable vaatex cava ashh hssh homa work doo Maanday sosh kosh bla bla"

And there's his headache-inducing laser pointer show on the projector screen. I wish frantically moving a laser pointer in circles could somehow make the subject easier!
 
Chinese I think, but I have had Chinese professors before who I didn't have problem with. This guy is completely incomprehensible. I almost wish he'd just go ahead and speak in Chinese so that I could take a speech translation device to class.
whiteflag.gif
 
I had that problem with a math professor once. I dropped the course the second week.
 
I had this problem in a math class as well. The guy was a well respected Prof. in Mathematics but nobody could understand him. Our class average was horrible. We finally had to go to the head of the department with recordings of the class lectures and demonstrations.

It turns out that when he was being audited he would slow down his speaking and announce things much more clearly. Quite the contrast from a normal lecture. I got a B in the course which is what I figured I would get but who knows had I understood the first few weeks of lecture when it was given.

I totally respect somebody getting to that level in their field and even learning another language or two in the process. But if your job is to actually speak that language to people trying to learn from you, you HAVE to be able to speak better. if not, you just are not cut out to be an instructor until you iron those wrinkles out.
 
It doesn't matter if you know the subject if you can't communicate your knowledge to the students.

Drop it.
 
Ditto-Russian calculus professor, I should have dropped it. I could have worked harder on my own, but just couldn't get into the subject, think I got a D. Heavy, heavy accent.
Plus a lot of math teachers in college just seem to be interested in their graduate students and research, not teaching lowly undergrads something completely obvious to them.
 
In my day, this class met at 1 PM - right after the Profs' lunch.

He'd slam his textbook (he authored the thing) on the podium, then go into a stupified rage for 15 minutes.

After I graduated, a relative told the story about how she new the man, and how his darling daughter had run off with a truck driver and eloped.
After asking the time frame involved, this family brew ha-ha happened while I attended his class.

He was drinking heavily at lunch, then taught the class.
 
Around 1998 I had a class called "Social Transformation and Oil Politics in the Middle East" or something to that affect. The professor was the former consulate to America from Kuwait. Fascinating class except for one very serious problem. During the lectures he would switch back and forth between I can only guess Arabic and English. Even when he was writing on the chalkboard he would do it. Sometimes the students would ask questions in Arabic or whatever language it was they used.

I finally had to raise my hand and ask him to please use only English and the other students looked at me like I was the *******. I got a C and celebrated like I had won a Rhodes Scholarship.
 
I had a Biology TA that would kept saying "Cell were". I finally asked him if he was saying "cell wall" Then I spent a few minutes try to teach him how to pronounce "wall". I got a few dirty looks from classmates.
 
When I was a TA Istudents from other sections would come by my office hours to ask me questions since their TAs didnt speaky engrish too well. It's a problem ewerywhere, since the first thing you do as a grad student (before you have time to learn the language of a foreign country) is TA.
 
Thermodynamics...........in some of my Prof's tests you had no clue then you would just write laws 1-3 of Thermodynamics to get some credit since you would use any or all of them for all answers.
 
Way back in the dark ages (1975) I had Alan Cowley for CHEM 301. (Some of you geezers might remember him.) He was British, and I could understand him pretty well, except that he was never in his office -- he was always invited out of state and out of the country to speak at prestigious seminars and so forth.

He had a slew of Chinese TAs, however, who could not speak English very well. After going for help a few times and getting none, I just gave up. I skipped a lot of class and made an F.
 
This thread reminds me of Professor Hiraizumi, an outstanding geneticist at UT. Although his accent was strong and his voice very soft, he understood this and provided excellent crib notes for his lectures.

The Link
 
On the other hand, I had a great guy for Spanish who was from Chile. His accent was very different from the Mexican Spanish accent most other instructors used. The guy spoke almost no English, and he often asked us the correct way to speak English, while instructing us in the right way to read and speak Spanish. It was a great class.
 
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