Should the English Exit Exam Be Required for Law Majors?

張貼日期：Jun 26, 2016 3:50:42 PM

Jane Tsao

Is the exit exam important? Many colleges nowadays set an English graduation requirement for students. They consider the policy can improve students’ English abilities and promote school reputation. Although most people believe that English is a necessary ability nowadays, I do not agree English requirement should be a bar for law department students to graduate from college because of the three reasons: the undergraduate curriculum does not include many English classes, the main market for law majors is in Taiwan, and Taiwan is a civil law country.

To begin with, students in the law department do not have many English classes in their undergraduate curriculum, unless they take the electives in English. There are two English electives in the law department of Chinese Culture University. One is Anglo-American Law of Contract and the other is Legal English. If students take one of the courses, they will have a chance to read English judgments from the Supreme Court and learn some legal terminology. However, it is difficult to sign up for these two courses in our school because of the course capacity. The Anglo-American Law of Contract class only allows 38 students to attend and Legal English class allows 41 students. Furthermore, there are 5 classes in each grade in our department. The total number of students in each grade is about 300. Thus, the number of students that can enroll for the English courses is quite limited. As the result, the students in the law department do not have much opportunity to learn English.

Another reason why I oppose the English graduation requirement is most clients in Taiwan are local people, not foreigners. The cases which most Taiwanese lawyers have are civil and criminal cases. In addition, the bar exam only tests basic legal English. It is a multiple choice exam, and accounts for only 30 points of the total score. Under the circumstances, Taiwanese lawyers do not need to have high level of English proficiency as they do not have to write English documents. They just need to write Chinese documents and speak Chinese to their clients and judges.

Last but not least, Taiwan is a civil law county, not a common law country. Our civil law and criminal law inherited from European countries, for example, Switzerland and Germany. If law majors really want to specialize in the field, the language which they should learn is German unless they study Securities and Exchange Law which is based on Anglo-American Law. Hence, English is not the only foreign language for the law department students to learn.

All in all, because of the insufficient undergraduate English courses, the market demand, and the legal system of Taiwan, law majors should not be required to take an English exit exam to graduate. Besides, English is a language. Learning a language should not be the prime concern or even a burden for law students. Many of my law department friends have spent a lot of money on taking the TOEIC test. What’s worse, if they still cannot pass the English exit exam, they might lose the motivation for learning English. Even if they pass the exam, once they do not use English, they will soon forget much of it. In a word, it is not necessary for the school to require the law students to pass the exam in order to graduate.