Instead of acknowledging at least some of these excellent achievements — even if only the skilled use of many grammatical elements, such as nominalised participles (e.g., Studierende), or linguistic elements like fixed word combinations — he indulged in nitpicking. The candidate supposedly had “problems with pronunciation”: the R, yes, the R, he proclaimed: “For that, you need 10–12 years to get a German R right... And I’m talking about just a normal R, not the rolled R… or the umlauts, for example... that’s torture for an Asian... and you think after 2 years as a native Vietnamese you’ll get that?” To put it in a nutshell: Vietnamese pronunciation is objectively far more complex than German’s. Vietnamese is a tonal language — a single syllable can have six different meanings depending on pitch and contour. Misplace the tone, and you are suddenly saying something entirely different. German, by contrast, is actually pretty straightforward: no tones, no pitch-determined meaning. Once you've got the ch, the umlauts, the R, they stay put. So while a Vietnamese learner might struggle with the R, a German speaker trying to master Vietnamese tones is in for a far rougher ride. The fact that — contrary to the examiner’s claim — the candidate had no problem with the R whatsoever makes me wonder whether his perception was less about reality and more about bias-driven projection. Had the colleague acted in good faith, i.e., in a way that aligns with the examiner’s role of embodying tacit professional norms and being sensitive to the pressure on the candidate, he might have helped create a fair, safe, supportive, yet evaluative environment. Such an approach and mindset would not only have a positive and motivating effect on the student but, surprise, surprise, on the examiner himself as well.