Chinese Logic? Anyone? Anyone? (changing a student's grade)

[tsukinodeynatsu]

I’ve spent a good chunk of the last six months editing a thesis together with its author who is, to be honest, absolutely awesome. But he FREAKED OUT the first couple of times I changed things to make them clearer. Eventually we came to an understanding that ‘Chinese is written how (colloquial) English is spoken, and English is written how (colloquial) Chinese is spoken’ and it became a topic of interest.

One of these differences, as finjay pointed out, is perception. In English, if we don’t understand a piece of writing, we assume the writer is an idiot who can barely hold a pen. In Taiwan, they assume that they are stupid for being unable to understand it, and the writer must be very clever.

Also, on the face thing mentioned in Finjay’s post: there’s a story about two brothers named BoYi and ShuQi in the Great Histories (Shiji) by Sima Qian. Effectively, these two brothers were supposed to become kings, but decided that they didn’t want to and scarpered. In their travels they came across a man who’s father had just died and, during the funeral procession, he was recruiting for the revolution that his father started. BoYi and ShuQi (supposedly not caring that the people this guy wants to massacre are their family) became incensed and scolded him for talking about revolution over his father’s grave, saying that he had terrible morals and if he ever led the country they would refuse to eat a single grain of rice from his table. Eventually, this unfilial man’s revolution succeeds and he becomes king, leading BoYi and ShuQi to take to the mountains in disgust - away from his rule and anything he could provide. There, they starved to death, thus realising their wish of not eating anything provided by him or his regime.

Somebody asked Confucius if he thought these two men died bitter. Confucius replied: Why should they be bitter? They said they didn’t want to eat, and so they starved to death; what is there to be bitter about?

This line was parroted for around a thousand years, up until Sima Qian (in his telling of the tale) asked ‘Really? Why shouldn’t they have been bitter?’

If you read the Analects a LOT of what Confucius says either falls under common sense or sarcasm, but the sarasm is taken literally and parroted for centuries - because you could never be great enough to question the Great Teacher @.@; And people who starve to death are never bitter = =" Nuts.

[adikarmika]

@lostinasia

Oh, and has someone who has also spent a bit of time in North American academia, and far too much time with cultural studies: obfuscating banal or incoherent or non-existent ideas with impenetrable jargon is not unique to East Asia. The academic tradition of proving how brilliant you are by being incomprehensible is alive and well in many humanities departments around the world.

I think this is a bit of a myth. According to academics I’ve spoken to, those who actually examine PhD theses don’t like it when they can’t follow what you’re saying, and will mark you down for it.

BTW, I proofread a paper last week. The English was pretty good - it just needed a native speaker to give it a bit of polish - but as I read through it, I discovered that the author didn’t understand how to use the t statistic, and the whole paper was flawed.
Mind you, the study itself wasn’t flawed (well, not fatally anyway), and all the author had to do was analyse his data differently. This may have enabled him to actually support his claims, and it certainly would have have reduced the number of tables, thus making the whole thing easier to understand.
But no, it had already been accepted for publication, and “my reviewers will feel upset if I make changes on my paper they did not ask me to change.”

I heard somewhere that the average academic article gets read by, like, 1.4 persons. Perhaps it’s a good thing.

[Chris]

@finley

What makes that really funny is the implicit subtext: she knows more about English writing than you do (yet, she’s still asking you to fix it …).

That’s a staggeringly common assumption among Taiwanese people: that educated native speakers of English are not very competent in their own language, and the Taiwanese know better because they studied English in school for years.

[xtrain]

@Chris

[quote=“finley”]What makes that really funny is the implicit subtext: she knows more about English writing than you do (yet, she’s still asking you to fix it …).

That’s a staggeringly common assumption among Taiwanese people: that educated native speakers of English are not very competent in their own language, and the Taiwanese know better because they studied English in school for years.[/quote]

Was just relating a story about this over lunch … absolute gold!

The only answer I’ve ever received that was even remotely plausible is that Chinese teachers can teach the fine points of English grammar to Chinese students (most often in Chinese), while many [not all] English native speakers have difficulty explaining these points, relying on the answer “That’s just the way we say/write it.” Of course, this came from someone who claimed that she was a superior English teacher because she was a native Mandarin speaker who could explain fine points of grammar in Chinese–apparently, the fact that she butchered English grammar every time she opened her mouth was not nearly as important?!? :loco:

[housecat]

@finley

Wasn’t there a scene in Friends where Joey uses a thesaurus to rewrite his CV to make himself seem “more intelligent”?

Actually, it was a letter recommending Monica and Chandler as adoptive parents. He’d signed it “Baby Kangaroo” Tribbiani. (I watched way too much of that show. I know.)

Anyway, I know a LOT of native speakers who can’t tell you the first thing about grammar. And a many of them are English teachers I’ve met here. If you pulled aside 100 people from my home town and asked them why we “X” the way we “X”, at least 96 of them would say, "Because that’s just the way we “X.”

However, having said that, if I’m paying someone else to clean up my writing, I’m not going to argue with them about the changes they make. That drives me nutts. If I thought I knew how to write well, I wouldn’t pay someone else to check my work. If I knew I needed someone to review my work, I’d keep my mouth shut.

[maoman]

@tsukinodeynatsu

Eventually we came to an understanding that ‘Chinese is written how (colloquial) English is spoken, and English is written how (colloquial) Chinese is spoken’ and it became a topic of interest.

I’m curious. Could you give me an example of what you mean?

[GuyInTaiwan]

I wonder why there is such arrogance amongst a lot of Taiwanese about the abilities of (educated) native speakers to speak or write English. I have met few Taiwanese who can speak or write English even remotely as well as the average Dane, Swede or Dutchman, and yet the average Dane, Swede or Dutchman is far more humble about his English abilities in comparison to native speakers.

[antarcticbeech]

@GuyInTaiwan

I wonder why there is such arrogance amongst a lot of Taiwanese about the abilities of (educated) native speakers to speak or write English. I have met few Taiwanese who can speak or write English even remotely as well as the average Dane, Swede or Dutchman, and yet the average Dane, Swede or Dutchman is far more humble about his English abilities in comparison to native speakers.

Yes that really shits me. Each time I meet a Finn or Norwegian the conversation runs along almost flawlessly. I had no problem speaking English in Singapore, either. But Taiwan is a crapshoot. A few weeks ago I went to the Main Station to get a train timetable. I went to the ticketing info desk and said, ‘Can I have a train timetable?’ The girl at the desk said, ‘Ok, wait a minute’ and then started typing into her computer. Five minutes later I was still waiting and she was still typing. Then she asked, ‘What time do you want to leave?’ I replied that I didn’t want to leave, I just wanted a timetable. More typing. Eventually, another staff member came to her rescue and asked me what I wanted. So I told him and he promptly asked me what time I wanted to leave. So I got out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote ‘timetable’ and showed him. He reached directly in front of me and pulled one booklet from a rack on my side of the desk and gave it to me. It was a timetable.

And that, my friends, is the English ability at the info desk in the capital city’s main train station.

Last night, in the classroom, I met a guy who’s been studying English for 15 years yet didn’t know the word ‘trumpet’, even though he’s been playing a trumpet and carrying it around for the last 5 years. This is normal: students don’t know their own majors or their own hobbies or even the fact that their really very cute ‘small cat’ is actually a kitten. There is something supremely ineffective about the way Taiwanese learn English that, if nothing else, at least adds a little to the oriental mystique. I’ve no idea how they maintain this level of uselessness, or why, but it is impressive and all I can say is: Confucius, I salute you.

GiT: Every time I come across this arrogance I pull out* this map of English proficiency:

http://www.ef-australia.com.au/sitecore/__/~/media/efcom/epi/pdf/EF-EPI-2011.pdf

And point out that the Japanese outscore Taiwan (and they all know how bad the Japanese are ). Then I point out that (the dark skinned ) Malaysians do quite well. And the Finns - despite not really testing or studying very hard - do very well indeed. Then I (very slowly, otherwise they may not understand) read them this:

[quote]Taiwan and Hong Kong also have scores that are lower than many would expect. Both show that economic development and spending on education alone are not equivalent to high levels of English proficiency.

. . .

[More emphasis needs to be placed on] both communication skills and strategies to negotiate meaning when communication breaks down. To gain maximum benefit from time spent studying English, both students and teachers should place the priority on communication, not grammatical correctness. Many adults, having studied in a more traditional English as a Foreign Language context, need extra practice listening and speaking.[/quote]

All of this is usually enough food for thought, although I like to also say that I’ve never had a Taiwanese student that can write well in English. They’re all stuck on the ‘think in Chinese, create a Chinese sentence and translate’ road to error.

*I usually carry a netbook to class.

[finley]

[More emphasis needs to be placed on] both communication skills and strategies to negotiate meaning when communication breaks down. To gain maximum benefit from time spent studying English, both students and teachers should place the priority on communication, not grammatical correctness.

Getting all philosophical for a moment, I wonder if it really does have something to do with this:

There is something supremely ineffective about the way Taiwanese learn English that, if nothing else, at least adds a little to the oriental mystique. I’ve no idea how they maintain this level of uselessness, or why, but it is impressive and all I can say is: Confucius, I salute you.

The story that tsukinodeynatsu relates makes no sense at all to a western audience. It’s just dumb. If you were genuinely in the two brothers’ position, well, you’d find a plan B, wouldn’t you: you’d leave for the next-door kingdom. Or you’d eat what the usurper didn’t provide (i.e., everything not growing on state-operated farms). “Bitter” doesn’t come into the equation because their suffering was self-inflicted.

Now, I have heard that eastern philosophers often used a technique similar to irony or reductio ad absurdum to make a point, and possibly (as tsukinodeynatsu points out) that story is probably an example of that. But it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is it simply that Chinese culture is just far more alien than we’ve ever realised, with values and goals so different to our own that we’re jumping to all the wrong conclusions? Could it be, for example, that the aim of showing your published paper to a foreigner is not to have your language corrected, but simply to show off: “look, I wrote an academic paper in your barbarian language!”. And the aim of sending your kid to English school is not so that he can learn English but so that you can say to your neighbours “well, my kid studies English now. It’s very important to give your kid an international education, wouldn’t you agree?”.

What I mean is, maybe the important threads of communication in Chinese culture are not the ones that are important in Western culture, regardless of the language you’re using to do it. Stephen King spells it out very well in his book On Writing: writing is telepathy. Good writing (or speaking) transplants an idea from one mind to another. Yet it seems that in Chinese culture, this is not the underlying aim. If that were the case, it’s actually an advantage to speak awful english, because you can baffle your listener while still (apparently) appearing clever and bilingual.

I wonder why there is such arrogance amongst a lot of Taiwanese about the abilities of (educated) native speakers to speak or write English. I have met few Taiwanese who can speak or write English even remotely as well as the average Dane, Swede or Dutchman…

Indeed. I am insanely jealous of those guys and I’d love to know how they do it with such apparent ease. And I would also be very interested to hear a speaker of Chinglish explain why they are so damn confident in their abilities.

[housecat]

@finley

Could it be, for example, that the aim of showing your published paper to a foreigner is not to have your language corrected, but simply to show off: “look, I wrote an academic paper in your barbarian language!”

Perhaps–if they weren’t PAYING you to revise it.

[GuyInTaiwan]

antarcticbeech: That was quite interesting. Thanks for that.

Everyone knows why people are so bad at English here. Here’s a classic example:

Last week, we (the eighth grade students, three other adults and me) went to Hualian and Taroko Gorge for a three day excursion. On the second day, we were meant to have an English-speaking guide with us (us being, me, my wife and the seven best English-speaking students). I rocked up at the information centre and had great difficulty explaining that we were to meet a guide/ranger. Okay, so my Chinese sucks. Anyway, that’s at the information centre for probably the country’s premier international tourist destination outside of Taipei.

We eventually got our guide, who was a retired university professor. His English was actually fairly decent. However, while the rest of the kids raced ahead on the trail and got to see some cool stuff, we lagged behind. You might be thinking that he was going into great detail explaining the fauna and flora of Taroko Gorge (he did a tiny bit of that at first, which had me excited that it was actually going to be really cool), or its geological history, or something to do with the cultural history of the place. No. We didn’t even get halfway along the trail before the other kids started coming back (they’d already finished). We’d been sitting in one spot for almost an hour and a half while he did drill and kill on the most obscure grammar points with the kids. I just wanted to jump into the gorge. At some point, I went down the trail and contacted my supervisor by walkie talkie and told him we needed to pull the plug on this in the best possible way because we were scheduled to spend the entire day with this guy. My supervisor came along and ended up making up a story about another kid getting heatstroke and us needing to go back to Hualian (which we didn’t do, of course) so we could ditch the guide and no one would lose face. The guide should have just talked to them about all the cool stuff in Taroko Gorge, just like he does with the international visitors he shows around. That would have been ten times more interesting and they would have actually retained some of it. That right there is exactly why so few people can communicate in English here. They’re not learning English. They’re studying linguistics. It breaks my heart every time I see so many really smart people putting so much effort into doing really dumb things.

[GuyInTaiwan]

finley: Those are all very good questions and points, and things that many of us have wondered about before. I could offer all sorts of possible explanations for how things are done here, but really, I don’t know. It just doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

A couple of years ago, I went to a conference hosted by Hess (which was surreal because I saw, and ran into, a whole bunch of people I used to work with – indeed, my friend and I were possibly the only non-Hess people there). Anyway, it was something to do with “I love reading”. The reason my friend/ex-colleague and I went was because they had a guy from the Finnish embassy there who was going to give a lecture on the Finnish education system. The lecture was pretty decent and insightful, though not as good as I had hoped. The really fucking crazy thing about it though was that here was a guy who was talking about how Finland does X, Y and Z, and he was talking to an organisation that embodies the ideal of how English (and everything else for that matter) is taught in this country, which is to say, the complete opposite of X, Y and Z. It was fucking weird, to say the least. Probably from his point of view, he hadn’t done much homework on Hess, or maybe he did indeed know about how Hess (and Taiwan in general) does things and was trying to gently enlighten and persuade them in that very easy-going Nordic way, or maybe it was just the kind of general PR bullshit that embassies engage in everywhere in the world. I don’t know. It was fucking weird though. My friend and I left before the giant circle-jerk of Hess in-house speakers followed.

I wondered what Hess’ motivation in having him there was. Obviously, they (and Taiwan in general) are not about to just send a huge team of boffins over to Finland for six months who would then return and sincerely implement what they found. So, was it basically about latching onto someone else with a really successful education system so as to project an image of being cosmopolitan, academically rigorous, etc.? Was it to project the illusion that someone here has a fucking clue what he is doing and why he is doing it (other than to make money and extend his guanxi)? That would seem like the obvious answer, right, but surely it can’t be. Are these people in government, academia and business really the best and brightest that this nation of 23 million people have to offer? Surely not! What the fuck is going on here? The longer I’m here, the less I understand anything.

[finley]

They’re not learning English. They’re studying linguistics. It breaks my heart every time I see so many really smart people putting so much effort into doing really dumb things.

Sure, Guy … but what I really, really want to know is: why are they doing that? As you say, the people we’re discussing here are smart people. It’s not like they couldn’t do it if they wanted to. So … why do they choose to do this crazy stuff? What was going through that professor’s head as he was boring the crap out of those kids? What is it in about Taiwanese culture, or the education ministry, or whatever, that encourages mediocrity (not just in language skills but in general terms, as the OP started off discussing)? If we assume that people are basically rational, there must be a reason.

[GuyInTaiwan]

finley: Well, I don’t think people are rational, so maybe I’m beginning from a different point to you. Why did Germany, which was one one of the most culturally advanced countries on the face of the planet do what it did in gutting its own culture with anti-Semitism? Why have cultures and societies gone downhill or made stupid mistakes throughout history? Not everyone is always on the right track, and not indefinitely.

On the topic of Taiwan, I don’t know. Is it because they have a testing culture that dates back a long way? Is it because of Confucianism and its conservatism? Is it because of face?

In some ways, what goes on here is a rational response to the incentive structure offered. Those at the top don’t have a massive incentive to change things really, for several reasons:

1. Their own children don’t go through that system. They send them to international schools and/or educate them abroad, and if things really go to shit here, they can move abroad, be it China, the West or anyone else – no one is going to turn away a family with a few hundred million NTD;
2. They would be bucking the culture, which might upset the general populace (not really too sure how important this one is);
3. As long as enough people can get through the system with some shot at upward social mobility, it can be claimed to be a successful system, even if it operates entirely by its own internal logic;
4. As long as Taiwan’s economy is going well and other economies are not seen to be overtaking Taiwan because of superior English communication skills, there’s no external pressure.

Those below the top movers and shakers don’t want to rock the boat. The pay-offs aren’t worth the risk. Bureaucracies are like this all over the world, but here they seem worse because those above them seem particularly vain and closed-minded, perhaps exacerbated by this face bullshit.

I think as long as the economic desires of the Taiwanese middle class are being met there won’t be a great impetus for educational reform. If 3. breaks down, perhaps because of 4. breaking down as the result of Taiwan’s stagnation while traditionally poorer countries in the region catch up to, and overtake Taiwan, then things will probably change quite rapidly (or Taiwan will stick its head further up its own arse). That’s probably a while off though and could, to some extent, be mitigated by the rise of China (and integration into China) which would give Taiwan a huge market to tap into and no need to really learn English excellently at all.

You know though, I could be way off the mark on any or all of the above.

[Loretta]

@finley

If we assume that people are basically rational, there must be a reason.

Why on Earth would you assume that? Show me the evidence to support this outrageous claim!

As for all the guff about Finland, someone explained that to me while ago: We are interested in Finland, because they do so well in international tests. If we study their methods, maybe we too can do better in tests.

[pqkdzrwt]

@Loretta

[quote=“finley”]If we assume that people are basically rational, there must be a reason.

Why on Earth would you assume that? Show me the evidence to support this outrageous claim!
[/quote]

Exactly I often find that when people are finding it difficult to understand how or why things are they way they are or a person is acting the way they are, it is because of an incorrect underlying assumption that people are rational. There is not always a logical (misguided or other) reason behind everything.

[GuyInTaiwan]

@Loretta

[quote=“finley”]If we assume that people are basically rational, there must be a reason.

Why on Earth would you assume that? Show me the evidence to support this outrageous claim!

As for all the guff about Finland, someone explained that to me while ago: We are interested in Finland, because they do so well in international tests. If we study their methods, maybe we too can do better in tests.[/quote]

That’s where they miss the boat. Finland doesn’t do well on international tests because it tries to do well on tests. Finland does well on international tests precisely because it doesn’t give a shit about international tests. It cares about educating people. Good test performance follows from that.

[housecat]

@GuyInTaiwan

That’s where they miss the boat. Finland doesn’t do well on international tests because it tries to do well on tests. Finland does well on international tests precisely because it doesn’t give a shit about international tests. It cares about educating people. Good test performance follows from that.

AAaaaHhHHHHhhh!!! Too. Much. LOGIC!!

[finley]

Exactly I often find that when people are finding it difficult to understand how or why things are they way they are or a person is acting the way they are, it is because of an incorrect underlying assumption that people are rational. There is not always a logical (misguided or other) reason behind everything.

Starting from a certain set of axiomatic assumptions, people usually make decisions which are rational (exception: Psycho XiaoJies). I never implied that those axioms were good or sensible. For example, “All South Asians are inferior to all Taiwanese people”,“Environmental protection and economic performance are mutually exclusive”, and “Formal education is more valuable that other kinds”, are common memes which go largely unquestioned. So, for example, treating Indonesian carers like third-class citizens follows quite logically from their status as inferior beings.

However, if we assume that people make decisions that are inconsistent with their beliefs and self-interest, we might as well all give up now. As GiT explains, the general attitude to education is consistent with certain beliefs, i.e., rational.

So … what’s up with those axioms in Taiwan? For example, in England at least, our cultural standard is that it’s best to tell the truth about mistakes at work - largely because lying about something just makes things worse for all concerned. I’d like to hear someone spell out the equivalent assumption in Chinese culture.

then things will probably change quite rapidly (or Taiwan will stick its head further up its own arse)

We live in interesting times.

I suspect the asshat scenario is more likely. Ten years ago, attempting to deal with Mainland Chinese companies was a complete and total waste of time. Now, more and more of them are professional, responsive, and staffed by extremely competent people. In Taiwan? Same as it ever was.

btw, GiT: are you English? I notice you prefer the British arse. As opposed to American ass.

[GuyInTaiwan]

I prefer neither the British arse nor American ass. Many Taiwanese girls have nice arses though. So do Czech girls. Brazilian girls are world famous for their arses. By the way, why the “the” for British, does British arse have a special status, or is there only one with which the rest of the world is familiar, perhaps Princess Kate’s (which is far too scrawny for my liking)?

I’m Australian.

I think that Taiwan would be served much better if its elite weren’t hedging their bets, either for themselves or their kids, with dual citizenship, houses, overseas, etc. If they absolutely had to throw their lot in with the rest of the Taiwanese populace, a whole lot of stuff would get sorted out quick smart because the elite would not want to deal with how shitty certain situations are, or may be in a couple of decades.