International language poorly heard in university

I am an undergraduate student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), which promotes itself as the pre-eminent international university in Asia. However, my experience suggests it may not be as good as its name suggests.

Because of its status, every year around 1,000 exchange students, whose native language is English, come to study at HKU. Locally, it accepts about 80 per cent of the Form Seven students who have distinctions at A-level. There is no doubt about the high standard of its students.

Recently, some people have complained about our English standards. But what about the standards of our lecturers and tutors? According to our experience, there are a number of teaching faculty whose English is not up to the level of an English-language university.

A lecturer should speak as clearly as a native speaker. But in fact many students have better English than their lecturers. The quality of English teachers in primary and secondary schools is now being scrutinised. This should also be the case for university teachers, especially those at HKU.

In one series of lectures I attended, a lecturer tried to teach us psychology using both Cantonese and English. He was not aware that some of his students did not speak Cantonese. Another lecturer taught literature in such a flat tone that any student would fall asleep. English is not a dead language. We are not studying in a dead world. These lecturers should be told to improve their English skills.

Another PhD holder claimed she had lived in the US for a long time, but no one could tell this from her English. In my tutorials, Cantonese has been used without the agreement of students. One tutor irritated us by teaching one group in Cantonese and another in English. Another tutor spoke almost no English in class.