But it’s waaaay better than the English I heard last Monday. It was an exam concerning Biochemistry (enzymes)…
Despite the fact that this woman (she’s from Asia) works as a sort of professor (which, according to my logic, means she’s rather intelligent and well educated), her English was really bad… I had some serious trouble understanding her questions-not to mention that she sometimes wasn’t able to understand my answers correctly even though I used a rather simple (yet correct) English. During the first ten minutes or so I tried to speak the best and most beautiful English I could, but after I realized how wasted my effort was, I didn’t bother anymore.
I understand how hard German is as a language, but it shouldn’t be impossible to learn for someone who seems smart, should it? After all it’s a matter of fairness: I was capable of improvising because I always liked and spoke English, but some of my fellow testees haven’t used another language than German since their graduation (which, in some cases, was years ago). Of course, she claimed that we could „all answer in Deutsch“ but it seems as a risk to me since for all I know she only understands some „key words“-which means you have to use certain terms and expressions and if you don’t you might end up failing the exam, even though you knew everything and gave correct answers…
I passed, so there’s no need for me to whine, but I still think the officials of the university are a bit bold to put us into such a situation-after all explaining Biochemistry is complicated enough (even in German) and we’re not studying English ffs…