I have this Prof who doesn't speak English. Well it's supposed to be English, but it's so disjointed and garbled that it's really hard to hear anything at all he says. Even when his slides are there on the screen and he seems to be saying the same thing that's written there, it's still hard to get more than about a quarter of it. People ask him in a nice way to repeat stuff, he does it a bit slower, and then it's possible to kind of get the gist. But then before too long it's back to the old speed again, and his old way of talking.
Then someone told him (in a nice way which I thought at the time he didn't deserve) that she was having trouble hearing what he was saying, and asked what to do. He told her to look at the slides because everything was there. Well, the slides are online, so if everything's on them, why go to the class? And actually, maybe everything is on them, but you can't understand what it's all about just by looking at them, no matter how hard you look at them and try to make sense of them. Once, a group of us from the class got together with them and tried to figure them out, but we didn't get far. It all really has to be explained. Even when we ask the TA's, they haven't learned it from the same Prof, and it takes them a bit of time to be able to figure out the slides and explain to us what's going on. About a quarter of one lecture gets done, and we have three lectures each week.
It's extremely frustrating, especially because it's a course I need. And from the few parts that I can understand, it's obvious that he's very knowledgeable about it, and really cares: it's stuff that matters and we need to know it. In that way, he's good. But in the other way, it makes it all even worse. I want this material, I need it, but I can't find a way to get it. We did ask one of the TA's what we could do, but he said that if we complained to the administration, there wouldn't be anything they could do either. Not hire him next year, maybe, but that doesn't do any good for us this year. Besides, he's actually very nice, and if we could only understand what he says he'd be a really good teacher.
Most people in the course don't seem to be any better off than I am, which I suppose makes it better. At least, if I was the only one, it would be worse. But it's very hard to see what to do.
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In September I wrote a piece about one of my Profs, and how hard it was to understand his English. Well, now it's November and the situation has improved a lot. It's still a struggle, but most of us can get most of the stuff most of the time.
I think he's slowed down quite a lot, and he certainly puts a lot more on his slides. Maybe his English is better too, or perhaps we've got used to it somewhat. Could be, too, that the TA's and other Profs have spoken to him and he realized that he had to do things differently. Whatever the reason, it's a lot better than it was. As I'd suspected, he's a really good Prof, and I'm enjoying his classes a lot. I didn't admit it to you at the time, but I had toyed with the idea of dropping the course and getting the credit at another time, or maybe in another way. I'm glad I didn't do that.
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