For the sake of so-called globalization, many Japanese universities including mine hold more and more lectures in English instead of Japanese. Initially, I was satisfied with this movement and held a fairly high expectation of it. However, after experiencing English lectures worth 10 credits this semester, my mind was turned completely.
It’s about the English ability of the professors. Well, let me to be clear, they are really great people in the academic world. You see, all of them have their own pages on Wikipedia. Nevertheless, their English lectures are like torture to me. The first problem is their accent. I didn’t really want to talk about Japanese English accents, but for this topic the accent was really a problem. Although most of them spent several years studying in top class universities in the U.S. or Britain, I don’t see any evidence of this when I hear them speaking. Their accents are still awkward.
Besides my tow mother languages, I learnt 4 languages myself. Every time, the first thing I did was build a “system” just for the very language including basic writing like Kana or the alphabet and the basic pronunciation. However, for most Japanese, they seem to simply use the same pronunciation system all the time. They don’t pronounce English word using its phonetic symbols but with Furikata, which was hard to believe at first. I can see those professors were trying hard to avoid Furikata English, but unfortunately the performance were far from satisfactory.
I tried not to be so prejudiced and mean about the accent. I listened to their lectures carefully, then I noticed there English expressions are not natural and precise either. I could get what they wanted to express, but the expressions didn’t feel right. I haven’t been to any English-speaking countries yet, although I watched the same lectures held by English native professors on YouTube, which was an absolutely enjoyable experience.
To be honest, for the advanced level of my major there are not too many proper reference books out there. Having lectures in English is indeed a quicker path. Still, I would rather Japanese professors have lectures in Japanese and even using English reference books simultaneously.