1st Journal Entries Lead to a Lesson on Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a massive problem in Chinese colleges, but who can blame them? Most Deans and Professors let them get by with it. I hadn't assigned too much written work my first semester so I didn't notice it as much, but when I started assigning "English Journals" in my Changzhou courses the problem became glaringly obvious.

The first topic had been simple and introductory: "Write something unique about where you are from and/or something interesting about your family." Other than peculiar coincidence that everyone's family was "harmonious" and nearly every dad "humourous" (accursed Queen's English), their family stories were mostly original and often touching. These tales ranged from childhood recollections of swimming in the river next to the farm to sad accounts of fathers who must work in the bigger cities--rarely coming home.

However, when many described their hometowns they channeled travel guides instead of their own creativity. Whole paragraphs were ripped from bad online translations of city homepages and other tourist sites. Complex words like "systematic" and "sub-mountain climate" raised red flags. And so do a lot of unnecessarily-specific, even trivial facts, like the exact location of a famous Daoist mountain in relation to downtown Changshu, the main thoroughfares encircling the metropolitan area of Suzhou, or a list of the recognitions Taizhou has received ("Best Hygenic City", "National Comprehensive Economic Strength City", etc.)

Needless to say some of them received poor marks on the assignment and every class this week got an earful about the rampant copying. Even if the perpetrators weren't guilty of outright intellectual theft, they had completely missed that the point of the journal was to express your own thoughts, not borrow those of whoever it is that writes for those Chinese city-websites. But it's hard to teach them what is and what isn't normally acceptable in personal reflective writing, and even harder to justify adherence these principles. Whose to say you can't write anything you want in these kinds of assignments?

Leb Wohl

Microwaves of the Future

Watching the National Day parade in Beijing on TV, I couldn't help but notice how the anchors kept mentioning the groundbreaking new advances in "information-technology" on each piece of military equipment. This seemed a bit odd at first, but then it hit me--it's to block the enemy's Twitter. Utterly devastating. I think the idea would be funnier if it wasn't so true. Have you noticed how many American politicians are tweeting these days? The military can't be far behind.

Teaching has been an adjustment this semester. Though I've managed to plan things better and achieve a respectable degree of standardization in my lessons, their are new problems here at JTUT. My Oral English classes are bigger here than in Jiaxing. I now have about 30 names to memorize. I've started using naming themes an mnemonics--for instance one class is made up entirely of Tolkien characters--but it only helps a little. Also, having over 30 students demands new techniques for keeping order and the use of Chinese to a minimum.

As usual there are 2 or 3 students that dominate each class discussion, mostly due to their higher confidence and language-ability (each of these traits greatly benefits the other). I try to use star-students like Sunny and Radagast the Brown to encourage the rest of the class without intimidating them. However, it's become clear that some student's are way behind the rest, which creates a conundrum which I am sure many teachers have faced: how do you create a learning environment for every type of student without shortchanging some?