Background
Worries about lecturers? poor English skills
The student parties LVS and BeP are worried about the standard of English spoken by lecturers and fear that poor language skills will have a detrimental effect on the quality of the education.
Wednesday 6 November 2013
© Bas van der Schot

The parties claim that, in an attempt to stimulate internationalization, more and more subjects are being given in English, despite the fact that the lecturers’ English language skills are often not of an academic standard. As a result, lectures and tutorials are given with a limited vocabulary.

"We held a small-scale survey on Facebook to see what students think of their lecturers’ English", explains Marc Hogenhuis from the LVS. "178 people responded, of whom 128 were on English-language programmes. Of those 128, 45 per cent thought there was a difference in standards between lectures in Dutch and lectures in English. That’s quite a large group and we feel that this problem deserves some attention."

But it is not only the lecturers: Leiden students’ English is often not good enough to understand the subtle distinctions in the subject matter either." You would think that grades would drop as a logical consequence of that, but performance rates reveal nothing of the sort. The parties suspect that standards for the grades are slipping to help more and more students graduate faster. "Moreover, many lectures given in English are not attended by foreign students."

The parties demanded to know whether the Executive Board was aware of the problems and if there were any solutions. Vice-Rector Magnificus Simone Buitendijk said she "would like to study the Facebook survey thoroughly. I think it is very hard to respond to these figures right now. According to the International Student Barometer, we’re actually doing very well as regards English – better than other Dutch universities. It would be better to take more time to see whether there really is a problem." The parties will be meeting Buitendijk shortly to discuss the matter. VB