I have been ploughing my way through my students' essays over the last couple of days. There are thirteen essays each of approximately 700 words. Really, they should only take about 20 minutes each to correct and mark but...
I feel sorry for my students. Without in any way criticising the place I work for, my students should not be here. Their level of English in not high enough for them to be able to take full advantage of what's on offer here. On top of that, they have no idea how to study. They've told me that, in China, they have many more hours of lectures, they learn what the lecturers have told them and then regurgitate it in the form of essays.
Here they only have a few hours with each of us, in which they are given a skeleton upon which they have to build. In fact, rather than giving them the essay titles to which they must write, we demand that they decide what they are going to write about, construct a title and then write the essay. This has left almost all of them totally perplexed. They have gone from being almost continually spoon-fed to being thrown in the deep end. In addition, most of them have never written more than a 250 word essay in English.
So, almost without warning, last week they had to write a 700 word essay. We did negotiate their titles but that didn't mean they fully understood what was required of them. And now I have been trying to mark them. I can only deal with one essay before my brain starts screaming for pain relief (preferably in the form of chocolate) and my eyes start bleeding.
And the worst thing is that next week they are going to give me their 1200 word essays. Is there enough chocolate in the world?
Friday, September 05, 2008
Words, words, words...
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2 comments:
as I already wrote, here in China the school did everything but teach how to learn by yourself (or how to be critic,indipendent in judgement and you may add wathewer you want....) then they send the good ones abroad for full immersion - maybe the secret wish is this youngsters became more able in understanding westerners (so to say, to try to cheat on price-terms-conditions...).
A long way to Tipperary for them,specially with me-you know Italians,spaghetti mafia mandolino...but since the intensive tax/business course given by our governement, hard nosed we are forced to be...
Between us, you know I have a poor opinion of my english but maybe i'll send to you a 1,2 millions words on "about the italian tax and reasons why we are performing (except some area but not related with economics) worst than Morocco".
By the way, yesterday at 6.00 am left home,now is 3.pm the day after,already sent of a 40'HQ -means I've managed to drive in the outskirts of shanghai, do the qc, drive back catch the train to chzh ...now I need some rest since tomorrow another day,another meeting should plan the next weeks activities.
Mr Jam (I've done few the last day in village,grapes and peach)
just forgot to mention my little collection of Chinglish...such as "transformers (the movie) the person of the automobile changes a body"
or "slip carefully" as usually displayed in public toilets or wet places -swimming pools etc.
Now I'm about to visit a school specialized in teaching chinese to foreigners , let you know about.
Mr.Jam
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