Recent hire doesn't actually know the material

[Dismal]

I understand this is not OP's fault, so please don't take it personally, but departments get what they pay for. It shouldn't be surprising that an adjunct who just graduated from a master's program is not ready to teach at the college level or willing to put in extra time/work to do a good job.

This. You can't hire people cheaply to teach college classes and then insist that they submit their quiz drafts to you for possible revision. I don't think this happens in K-12 either.

[Harlow2]

To me, there is no reason why a language class needs to be built from scratch, just provide the new hire with the course materials from when the class was previously taught.

This. I've taught adjunct classes at 2 places, each in another state, as an inexperienced hire.  I was provided a syllabus and told I could adapt it the following year if all went well. I was grateful rather than resistant.

As a course facilitator at another place we had an adjunct who not only wanted to teach my course at the 8th grade level (a level that he taught for his main job) but also wanted to edge me out of having any authority. Eventually it didn't end well for him, though since he was a friend of the chair, it took a while.

[larryc]

Sometimes, you just have to admit you made a bad hire & let people go.

This.

[Hegemony]

If they really have poor skills at the language, you may be able to clean some of the assessment problems up by looking at quizzes and exams — though that sounds really labor intensive, and presumably you would have to look at the grading too, because they could be marking people wrong despite the answer actually being right.

But you can't control what goes on in the classroom, which may also be damaging. If the instructor is teaching them "Je vais à France" and the like, correcting the quizzes only gets at half the problem. You should start looking into how to let this instructor go. I'm not normally one who favors the customer-service model of education, but these students are paying good money to be taught a language. If the instructor doesn't have the language skills, this is malpractice.

[mamselle]

"Je vais à France"

Eeek!!

<<*shudders*>>

M.

[AJ_Katz]

The OP should convince the chair to fire the adjunct and then offer to teach the course. 

[kaysixteen]

One more thing crossed my mind-- I trust that before the adjunct would be fired the chair would have actually observed him in order to ensure that he really is subcompetent in the target language?

[mahagonny]

These are normal possible outcomes of adjunct-land, but considering the quality of the jobs offered, this kind of thing should even happen more often than it does.

[spork]

Sometimes, you just have to admit you made a bad hire & let people go.

This.

The adjunct was hired to teach a language he doesn't know. Fire him and get a replacement.

[Langue_doc]

Sometimes, you just have to admit you made a bad hire & let people go.

This.

The adjunct was hired to teach a language he doesn't know. Fire him and get a replacement.

+1

This is analogous to hiring a non-native-speaker-of-English adjunct who doesn't know, among other things, irregular verbs and nouns, common prepositions, the different meanings of common phrasal verbs such as turn out, pronunciations of the vowels in boot, book, rough, though, the use of going to instead of will and shall for the future tense, to teach ESL to international students.

Most people and institutions would consider subjecting students to this type of instruction to be fraudulent.

[mahagonny]

Sometimes, you just have to admit you made a bad hire & let people go.

This.

The adjunct was hired to teach a language he doesn't know. Fire him and get a replacement.

For the same pittance, you would expect to get someone to come in now and mop up? They are then taking a pay cut on top of the crap that is offered, as they have only eleven weeks left to get fourteen weeks' work done, no prep time and no departmental support. How is this fair to them?
ETA:
Let one of the regular faculty take over. They are always telling us how they, not the adjuncts, have long term commitment to the health of the department and the success of the students. Here's a chance to show it. Preferably the person who hired the unqualified part-timer.

[kaysixteen]

All good points.   I would however reiterate the reality that the adjunct must be observed by the chair, in order to demonstrate that the accusations of linguistic incompetence the chair has heard are actually true.

[Ruralguy]

I agree with K16. Try to get some confirmation of the claims (from a reliable faculty member who knows that language).

[mamselle]

Meanwhile, the term ticks on.

Sounds like nothing will be done.

M.

[Langue_doc]

According to the OP, the instructor lacks proficiency in the language hu is teaching.

They do not. They know some, yes, but they fumble their way through the rest. Our good students in the upper-level courses could easily correct the materials this instructor uses to teach.

We have spoken to the person. They are intransigent and insist that they've never been told that they had a problem before, that we are micromanaging. They refuse to submit materials like quizzes to us ahead of time so we can correct them. Instead, they are using materials riddled with errors. Embarrassingly bad errors.