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[decurso]

 My uni is number 10, and I can tell you even at this level there are problems. I'm doing final grades now and many students are starting to wake up to the fact they are going to fail. All my classes had perfect attendance this week-a first. When I asked them why they said "because we want to have your lesson." After explaining the meaning of "kissing ass" and "bullshit" I ask again, at which point they admit they are here for the final exam. I then tell a room filled with many faces I've never seen before that 75 per cent of the coursework has been completed, and several students are beyond hope of passing. Of course, what happens is after class I am flooded with desperate students and pathetic excuses. "Sorry, but I had business in Luoyang for 3 months," ect. One woman I actually spent a fair bit of the semester trying to track down gave me such an excuse, and I suggested to her that if she her professional obligations conflicted that badly with her education, then maybe now was not the right time to be in school. Her-"I don't want to fail." Me-"It's too late for that." Her-shocked look of disbelief that not attending any classes or doing any of the course work could possibly result in a failing grade. 

[Calach Pfeffer]

Decurso, you're a more hardy fellow than I.  Especially if there had been chances earlier in the course to have warned people, and knowing the floodgates of useless pleas would be opened, I wouldn't have told anyone they were about to fail, just flunked em and moved on, though I'd have felt bad seeing failure coming down the line. 

I'm with CP on this one - quality education starts with the teacher in front of the class, and basically finishes there.  The rest of it is bells and whistles.

Well, the "what's up with..." question was intended as a genuine.  Personally I do think there are at least two reasons for looking deeper into the system itself.  The first one is, to be harsh, reactionary, and has something to do with culture shock.  But another reason is a good deal more substantial, and I'm wonder if it's not El Patron's.  It has something to do with... to do with... ah, ... jeez, something.  I don't care about systems unless they're useful so I don't know how to express this...

If the system is found to be corrupt, then a measure of one's personal value is taken away if one has sought to be more deeply involved with that system.  Is that right?  Fixing grades is an insult to the teacher who cares; bosses syphoning off funds bleed a system of a vitality that might have produced so much more than it did; quick minded students suffer too by example and they learn what to become.  Personally I don't approach teaching that way, but I think I can see that others might.

Something like that?

Or, if I may paraphrase DaDan...

is it something like that?

[Acjade]

I'm no. three. And still all the problems.

[adamsmith]

while not a 'qualified' teacher for high school etc, I am a fully qualified lecturer at university for my subjects - luckily I don't teach english anymore. The problem I have is dealing with the students once they complete the english side of their courses and have to take my classes. I deal with the coordinator at my uni on a regular basis to try to prepare the students for my classes before they get there so they can be reaady to learn the subject material - but often this is to no avail as the uni itself or the students complain. I want them to learn how to write an academic essay - it is university after all - they had a teacher try to teach them for one semester - wow - complaints from the students - 'she is too hard - we dont want to write 500 word essays.. etc...' I tell them when they get to my class they will have to write 5000 words and I don't mean cut and paste essays either. The problem is they can't do it to meet any standard because the students themselves often have refused to be taught and the school admin backs the students opinions to the detriment of their education. This makes me have to fail such a high percentage of students because they can't complete the basic work.
if the teacher is a fun and games teacher they love to go the class, when the teacher actually tries to teach, the students complain because they are woken up from their dreams of conquest on the computer games.
It sure would be nice that the standards of what constitue passing on to the next level could be raised to a reasonable level with out having to pass any Tom, Dick, or Ha Ri who decides to show up for one class and say hello.
I don't think it matters all that much on the qualifications of the teachers for basic english (conversation) but it does matter on the qualifications  for more advanced areas. If you are required to teach business presentations or writing briefs etc you should have some background in this field IF you are teaching at a university. This is where you will make a difference.
If you are just teaching oral conversation to students so they can go travel on daddys credit card or to help those willing and wanting to improve through practice it does not matter.
But as Raoul said, the system needs work, and often we are banging our head against the proverbial   wall.
sometimes having the don't give a rat's ass attitude works well here as the students tend to open up to you because you are now friendly with them and this can encourage them to really improve.

[adamsmith]

just stumbled upon this article while looking for some information. You know there is a problem with the system when the government actually has to pass a law regarding exam cheating. How often do you ever see that mandatory fail being given out when you catch a student cheating.  they are not cheating,m just improving their marks.

from: http://www.tech.net.cn/en/ne/14714.shtml

China drafts law to curb exam cheating

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    China is drafting a law to combat rampant exam cheating, said the country's education ministry on Wednesday.
    The draft will be submitted to the Office of Legislative Affairs of the State Council for approval later this year, said the Education Ministry spokesman Wang Xuming.

    The examination law will "upgrade exam order and standards", Wang was quoted by China Daily as saying.

    Students have adopted innovative ways to cheat, and authorities want to discourage it with tough penalties, he said.

    More than 1.2 million students sat this year's postgraduate examination last weekend and numerous cheats were exposed.

    In Shanxi province, authorities cracked down on 10 groups involved in organized cheating, and in Guangdong province, some cheaters were caught using two-way radios to communicate during exams.

    In a recent survey by China Youth Daily, 83 percent of the 900 college students polled admitted to cheating in exams.

    Without a legal regulation, schools and universities have adopted various measures to punish cheats. On occasion, cases have gone to court.

    Current punishments, according to Ministry of Education regulations, include a mandatory fail.

    On Tuesday, the education ministry held a seminar on examination law involving dozens of legal experts.

    Professor Yang Lixin from the Renmin University of China, said the exam law was urgent because the country had no "unified regulations".

    "Currently, anyone can hold an exam and disputes can occur over procedures and results as there are no rules," he said.

(Source:Xinhua)

[Raoul F. Duke]

Thanks, Adam, for portraying the iceberg rather than the tip.

What Adam has written here is very much in line with what I've observed; I too have taught what were allegedly university business classes that were advertised as being the equivalent of the same class taught in a Western school.
Attempting to do just that (OK, actually a version that was still considerably watered down from a Western class, because my students (who of course eventually catch on that pretty much no one will fail out anyway, which robs most of any motivation to study they may have once had) consistently could not and WOULD not function in English or even attempt to learn the material) has not exactly endeared me to either the administrations or 95%+ of my students.

Some of us here have been lucky enough to live in a big Disneyland the whole time in China, or at least drank enough of the Wonderland boat-ride water to be able to hallucinate it as such. Most of us, unfortunately, seem to end up in the Film Noir exhibition at Universal Studios Theme Park.
Giving people the impression that they too are going to come here and be able to assume they'll be in an even remotely honest and straightforward and meaningful program is lie, and a recipe for disillusionment shortly down the road.

Calach say:

systemic failure's really only a classroom issue if the system being fucked means the kids in class are fucked too, dunnit?

and I agree. The point is, the students in class ARE being fucked. They're being sold, usually at quite a high price, a bill of goods that will mean little at home and less than nothing abroad. The good ones who work hard will have to see their inert peers get exactly the same rewards that they get. The lumpy ones will see their refusal to work or learn rewarded, and then they will fly off down the Great Highway of Life and right into the Fast-Moving Truck Windshield of Reality.
This, in my book, is a fuckin'.

Sure, sometimes you can negotiate some small points. Done so myself, many times. But you won't be able to negotiate much that will have much real meaning. You're not going to be able to negotiate in genuine adherence to standards, keeping the grading system aboveboard, or booting out all the flatliners. Not going to happen.

Please don't be so naive as to assume that the grades you submit, or even the ones you get back on an official-looking printout, will be the same as those sent to the students, parents, or governments. They all too often are not. I've seen the dual database/accounting systems Chinese unis use- one for the foreigners, one for those who matter- WITH MY OWN EYES.

Even the best teachers won't necessarily impart much to students who don't care and know they have no reason to do so.
No degree is worth more than the value of the school and system that issued it. And that just ain't much.

Lord, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

[Raoul F. Duke]

Oh, yeah...Adam's report on the new anti-cheating laws...

These are nice to hear, but I'm afraid I'll remain totally underwhelmed until I see that they actually have some teeth.
Schools here already have an impressive catalog of rules and laws governing their actions. These laws are of course uniformly ignored or bribed around. Why should I believe that these new ones will not be as well?

TIFC (This Is Fucking China). Everything is all about appearance; substance receives little beyond contempt.

[Calach Pfeffer]

Please don't be so naive as to assume that the grades you submit, or even the ones you get back on an official-looking printout, will be the same as those sent to the students, parents, or governments. They all too often are not. I've seen the dual database/accounting systems Chinese unis use- one for the foreigners, one for those who matter- WITH MY OWN EYES.

There's a rub, I think. I don't actually care too much what grade they get.

I care that I work out a coherent system of scoring in class. 

I get twinges sometimes and worry about my lack of concern either being discovered or causing some ill effect in a wider arena, but basically I can't get it up enough to worry too much.

Standards?  Yeah.  I got em.  Just thinking about it now I think I approve of individuals if they function well in class, or if they show that bright and curious spark that all people have to greater and lesser degrees and they interact in some way with the class material.  I disapprove of them otherwise, at least as far as scoring goes.  Then I arrange some score that more or less fits in and doesn't cause too much trouble.  I think I do end up handing out lower average scores than people really want.  I don't know what happens after that.

I think of all people as fundamentally independent.  They will take to learning or they will not.  I'm there to... well, I guess, sell a bill of goods.  I get behind the product or not according to my own whim, and I enjoy my ass off when other people join in. 

From day to day it's all hardly as lackadasical as that.  But if I do have to spell out principles by which I actually operate, the above is kinda what they look like.

This isn't at all free-spirited.  Look at it closely and it'll show itself as quite authoritarian.  For example, if I ended up believing in the principles of a given organisation, students would find me an appallingly hard master.

How would I react if I then discovered the boss doctoring the books?  I'd likely still go with the principles.  It'd be when the students wanted something other than a teacher-student relationship that things would go really out of whack.  Ultimately, fundamentally, I don't want to know them if they're in the classroom and not being students.  Because I can't teach something if I don't care about it, and if I care about it, then that's the relationship I'm in the classroom to have.

So that's how I manage to not care about the system.


Raoul, there're some principles at work in your thinking on this subject.  People failing other people by failing to... um, build deeper, universalisable codes of value?  Something like that?  Standards against which people can measure themselves and things?

[Eagle]

Marks?  I don't think there is such a thing as an objective mark given in almost any university in the world for a second language course (or perhaps for any subject at all).  We have to consider, the mean, the average and ...  Then again, what is being marked. 

How do you give 100% for translating?  I am aware that if one gives a document to 10 university experts, one will get ten different translated documents in return with all of them "correct".  Yet, likely each would "score" their colleagues less than 100% because of their personal frames of reference.  See, this is the problem, the person marking is not a god.

Seriously, figure out what you are teaching and what you want to test BEFORE you teach your first lesson and then LET THE STUDENTS KNOW what your personal game is.  This is about as honest as one can get.

Admin changing your marks?  LOL!  When "colleagues" give the class blanket marks in the high 80s, the uni has no question but to consider the marks to be bogus.  Students have profiles, classes have profiles.  If one fails to do as much learning about their students as the students fail to learn about the "material" presented, expect to have the marks disregarded.

I am at a weak university, somewhere around number 560, yet even here students get failed - admittedly not many.  My marks don't get changed.  My students don't protest too much about low marks which I do give out in reasonable numbers to "deserving" students.  High marks are not all that frequent as well. 

As I was taught many decades ago in courses about evaluation, know why you are evaluating, who you are evaluating and for whom the evaluations are to be presented.  With this fuller knowledge, realise that there will a range of marks. 

Does the system require no failures (I hope you realise that this is true of many continuing education courses and activites in EVERY city in the modern free world), evaluate accordingly.  The evaluator is an employee, not a god.

[Raoul F. Duke]

I probably shouldn't write in this thread when I'm already this depressed.

I DO care about marks.
They're SUPPOSED to be how I can reward the bright, hard-working ones, and send, just maybe, a wake-up call to the knuckleheads.
If nothing else, they're in theory one of the few levers we have to help us control and motivate our students. Getting at least a grade high enough to pass is supposed to be one of the main things that drive a student to try and learn something and do the work. Getting a superior grade is supposed to be a point of pride and achievement for those who can get one.

And the ability to affect a student's grade is supposedly one of the few real tools we have to influence their behavior...attendance, classroom behavior, and so forth.

When the students learn that we don't really control their grades, and that they will pretty much all pass no matter what they do, all but the very best- the few that will excel anyway- lose any reason to take the class and the material seriously. The class becomes a joke. The degree becomes a joke. The whole program becomes a joke. WE become a joke...a paper tiger that they can listen to or ignore as they see fit.

I've never given real college-type exam-based grades for an English class. I was teaching Marketing and Management for these. These were not "continuing ed" fluff courses, they were mainstream courses for Business majors that were supposed to be equivalent to classes in Australian schools. The grade consisted primarily of scores on 2-3 exams, and I could generally reduce the material I taught to a set of pretty durn objective multiple-choice questions...you either know the answer, or you don't. I didn't throw too many curveballs and I don't like trick questions- in class I taught the absolutely rock-bottom fundamental concepts of the subjects I was asked to present, and this is exactly what I put on my tests. (I knew better than to even try to delve into the 4-part harmony...I just tried to get the melody out..) I got pretty good at testing, I think, and wrote exams that would be laughably easy if you knew the stuff, and totally impenetrable if you didn't. My exams were examined and approved by teachers in (mostly) Australia, and some were tapped to become standard system-wide tests for the programs I was in.
So I think I can honestly say that flaws in my tests were not the reason these sandbags died like rats on my exams. They simply didn't know the core material of the subjects at hand. Pure and simple, no speculation or subjectivity involved.

And it wasn't just me. For example, I taught some Principles of Marketing 2 classes to students fresh out of Marketing 1 classes taught by other foreign teachers- people I knew to be good at what they did.
So, I'd open with a review of Marketing 1.

"OK...who can tell me what a Marketing Mix is?" Blank stares. No one knew. Even when I called on some of the brighter ones individually, they still didn't know.

"OK, no matter...who can tell me what the Product Life Cycle means?" Same result.

"Hmmm...OK, who can tell me the difference between advertising and publicity?" Only the chirping of distant crickets to break the desolate silence.

And this repeated for nearly all of these questions about the most fundamental, big-type highlighted ideas that anyone who's ever had a Marketing class should be able to tell you in their sleep.
And I was supposed to take them higher, into the more complex concepts that built upon these principles.
Please.

At this same program, we all entered our own marks into the computer system ourselves. We were REQUIRED to do this. We could go to any campus-network computer at any time and pull up the spreadsheets for all our current classes.
But then, one day I asked how I could see the grades for classes I'd taught in previous terms. The administrative grundettes all turned white as ghosts. Hurried whispered conferences were held. Phone calls were made. I was told that it would be extremely inconvenient to pull up the old records. I stuck to my guns and politely but firmly asked to see my old grades. Finally, one of the ministritas very reluctantly walked over to a computer terminal and typed a few strokes.
Turned out that the REAL grades were in an entirely different software/database system that none of the foreign teachers were allowed to access without supervision. All that stuff with us entering the grades was just for show.
And, of course, the marks on these spreadsheets bore no resemblance whatsoever to the grade records I'd kept in my laptop computer. These sheets even had good marks given to names I'd never seen and didn't have in my records.
I asked if I could see more of my old grades and was told it was not possible. I asked for printouts and was flatly turned down.

Please...someone...please tell me this isn't complete bullshit. If you can.

Look, I'm happy for those of you who can relate good experiences teaching in Chinese universities, I truly am. You are really lucky to have such wonderful students and such positive teaching experiences. I envy you.
But I have to tell you...I can count you guys on my fingers. And the foreign teachers I've talked to who quickly went from classroom firebrands to disgusted, disillusioned grumblers range into the dozens, maybe even the hundreds. Many of them quickly left China once and for all; more who stayed in China, like myself, washed their hands of Chinese formal education and headed for the training centers or non-teaching work.
In terms of the big picture, the broad overview, I am pretty sure which scenario I am compelled to tell inbound newcomers they should most likely expect.

In too many Chinese unis, holding your nose is a critical skill for foreign university teachers.

[joe.thinker]

Marks?  I don't think there is such a thing as an objective mark given in almost any university in the world for a second language course (or perhaps for any subject at all).  We have to consider, the mean, the average and ...  Then again, what is being marked. 

How do you give 100% for translating?

Yep. Bingo. Spot on ! You are saying exactly what I am - maybe unintentionally ?

How DO you grade or reward mere translation ? Pause - before I continue this thread - everybody, go to the debate things LE's been harping about (there, LE, no worries, you don't need to write that in to your rebuttal).

You go, even, to the Suzhou University foreigner's Chinese school, and within 8 months of studying 3-4 hours a week, you're required to formulate your thoughts in Chinese. However, and this is coming from my experience, with my schools, at my level, and it's oh so limited that it can't benefit anyone else, but ... Why is 8 months of study enough to require us to formulate thoughts, when 9 years (no joke, my first job, the students had been studying 9 years) is not enough to require them to do more than verb/noun agreement and translation ?

Are the Chinese inherently dumber ? HELL NO. They were at the forefront of scientific discovery for thousands of years.

I have a class that I've met with for three weeks. Next week they want me to start the oral exams (giving me, of course, no guidelines). I know that it's a spendy school; the kids probably wont "officiamally failmem." I also know that I've only met these kids - nay, their classes of 48+ students - three times. How the flying monkey piss ( wheeeeeeeee !) am I supposed to be able to formally judge their English level ?

My answer ?

0 becomes 70, and it all works up from there. Happy dancing sunshine rainbow 88 neversaydie.

I was out with my friend last night. He's probably the only real philosopher I've met here in China. We were bitching about teaching here. He said: "Look around you. This isn't real. This is not reality. This is a fine veneer of life that you and I experience, and the rest we will never touch. It is a game. Play your hand."

Please...someone...please tell me this isn't complete bullshit. If you can.

Look, I'm happy for those of you who can relate good experiences teaching in Chinese universities, I truly am. You are really lucky to have such wonderful students and such positive teaching experiences. I envy you.

But I have to tell you...I can count you guys on my fingers. And the foreign teachers I've talked to who quickly went from classroom firebrands to disgusted, disillusioned grumblers range into the dozens, maybe even the hundreds. Many of them quickly left China once and for all; more who stayed in China, like myself, washed their hands of Chinese formal education and headed for the training centers or non-teaching work.

It is bull.

I know I'm a "gloomy gus;" a "negative nancy." I don't mean to be so snippity at the people on here that do have good experiences. But I'm one of those people speeding back across the pond once and for all. I think it's sad (I too am depressed RD) that the training centre seems to be merely marginally better. At least I have fun with my Chinese colleagues there.

Like I stated earlier - to anybody reading this as a guest thinking of coming to China - my experience is my experience. But it doesn't seem to be uncommon. LE is right - choose your school carefully.

What sucks, though, is that when you talk to a good guy and a bad guy here, you see the EXACT SAME FACE and you can't really tell which is which. Choosing carefully becomes 1000x as arduous as elsewhere.

[Raoul F. Duke]

when you talk to a good guy and a bad guy here, you see the EXACT SAME FACE and you can't really tell which is which. Choosing carefully becomes 1000x as arduous as elsewhere.

On the nosey. None of these schools are going to tell you the truth going in, and they will go to considerable lengths to try and keep you from stumbling across it while you're there. Indeed, some of us never do get to see it. The school FAOs will all boast of their association with good foreign universities, their high standards, their expectation that you will deliver fully Western-standard classes, and so on...and then the next time you see them they'll be dressing you down, with big veins bulging in their foreheads, for expecting the students to actually do or learn anything, and why the hell are you discouraging them like this?

In this environment, choosing carefully is extremely difficult if it's possible at all. I think the prime determinant is going to be dumb luck...

[contemporarydog]

At my Wuhan school I used to mark the kids' oral exams pretty brutally. If they sucked, they got 30%, if they were good they got 100%.

One parent saw that I had given her little poppet 'only' 80%, and made me redo the oral.  I redid it and gave her 92, but that was still not enough.  I had to do it again until she got 100% (i.e. so I gave her every answer).

That sums up the system we're working with.

[dragonsaver]

I guess I got lucky.  The joint venture Uni the marks go on computer directly to the USA so they can't be changed.  I am fairly certain however, that the marks that go to the main campus are 'augmented'. The students will get 2 degrees, one from the USA and one from China. When a student's GPS is 1.0 or less he is put on academic suspension for 1 term or 2 terms depending on the GPS.  They aren't allowed to enrol for 1 year!!  I know of one student whose parents came to talk to the Dean (Chinese) they were told their son could not go to the USA as his GPA was too low nor could he transfer to the main campus as he wasn't smart enough to get a degree.

I also teach oral English part-time for the main campus.  Classes are ~45 students.  I would estimate 70-80% of the students want to learn.  I have them sitting at the front of the classroom and writing down everything I say.  They even spend time talking to me during breaks or wanting to walk me home just to get more chance to talk.  These students are non-English majors who are taking English on weekends in addition to their regular classes.  This is voluntary on their part not a compulsory course.  When I give group work they do it 'in English'.  I walk around and listen.  Like I said, I guess I got lucky.    Classes for this program end June 15th.  Oh yes, their overall English and motivation is better than the joint-venture Uni.

[Eagle]

Student-teacher relationships - this is what it is all about.  Forget the rest.  One-on-one within a one-on-fifty group.  Can you make a difference?  Whether you want to or not, you are making a difference - only, not always a positive difference.  It's called the Lorenz Effect - Chaos theory stuff for those interested.