So what exactly would you say yo do here?

In writing todays post, there are a number of things I ought to fill you in on in order to better make sense of my work in the writing center.

- UIC is a radical idea here in China. It is a division of Hong Kong Baptist University, and considered by many to be the first liberal arts college in mainland China. With that said, it still has some constraints -- not all ideas are topics for discussion.
- Nearly all of the Classes are taught in Enlgish (and require class work to be completed in Enlgish). Which creates problems as 95% of the students are Chinese and their english skills are not all equal.
- The greatest problem for UIC is plagiarism.


During the last few days I have had many people ask me to tell more about my job. Up until yesterday my schedule was shifting around so much I really didn't feel like I could full answer that question. I will spend the next few blogs explaining some of the things I spend my time on.

I spend at least 5 hours a week in a writing center helping students with their papers. 95% of the work is grammar related 5% is intellectual. Initially this was somewhat of a let down but I ought to have known that most of these students would need help with their grammar, not with their ideas.
As I noted above, the largest problem is plagiarism. Professors stress the importance of citing sources but sometimes, as I have seen, a students paper is taken directly from Wiki. The second biggest problem is internet translators. Students type their paper in Chinese, go to a translator like altavista.com, and translate it into Enlgish. Some of the papers I have been working on with students end up looking ridiculous because the amount of red ink required to fix the errors created in a simple translation.


The professor in charge of the writing center used the following metaphor:
If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day,
if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a month.


We can't just fix their papers for them, because the student's won't learn to avoid/correct their grammar problems. On the other hand, some of the time - the students don't understand our explanations. In such a case I have taken to using a highlighter instead of a pen so I can highlight the area of a problem and instructed them to speak with their professor or a classmate. Because the students are at different levels in their english skills, it is helpful to work through papers in a small group. Generally one student understands what I am talking about and they can pass it on to the other student in Chinese. Sometime next week we will have a sheet of chinese translations for common errors.


Vocab:
tai gui le - Too expensive.
I used this last night to buy something for 2/3 the marked price. I probably still was ripped off but it's pretty good reinforcement.