Blog#6 by Kaier Feng

My mother tongue is chinese, a pretty complicate language which requires students to accept the knowledge of both classical and modern literature, as well as polished expression of different kinds of sentence for higher education. It seems to be totally different between English and Chinese in terms of organization and expression. What should be pointed out is that quoting a famous sentence literally with the citation is regarded as a sign of respect to source, which is opposite to the rule of English. Actually I have many troubles in dealing with writing in my first language, one of which is organization, the same problem in English writhing. I am quite confused about how can I use diverse conjunctions in the appropriate position and about the included logic between sentences. In addition, I can not well acclimate to the expression of English style on account of the different grama and form. For instance, I want to express the idea raised in my mind, but I have to translate the Chinese expression to English, which makes the sentence into bad structure. I think I need to strengthen my ability of organization and expression and the most useful lessons is the summary of many critical articles, which actually makes me more logic and better expression. 

I am really confused with the tactics of citation and the specific rule of conduct. Comparing with the norms in China, which also takes the intellectual property and originality into account, I find that it is not as strict as the norms in America, which brings plagiarism into “a big moral issue”. It makes sense if we think about the diverse culture backgrounds. The most typical difference is the usage of textbook. In china, textbook is in the status of authority, so students have to repeat the important content word by word in order to get grades in a test. Consequently, It is kind of hard for Chinese to distinguish what actions are regarded as a violation of the norms of conduct and what actions are totally fine like the author in the article “Cheating Across Cultures said.

Nowadays, English speaks in everywhere which is the commonest language in the world. I speak Arabic language which makes me proud of myself because the Holly Quran (a book that Muslims read for their religion) written with Arabic language by the God. Many people around the world are trying to read it, but it's hard for them to understand it correctly. It has many rules such as grammar and the way of writing. When I write a paragraph in my language, I begin from the right to the left. Therefore, it was difficult to write English from the left to the right. I also can repeat the subject more than once, but in English, there is no need to write the same subject again and again. My weaknesses with English are conjunctions and how to organize my writing. Personally, I think E106 is helping me to improve my writing.
I believe that students need to be serious with plagiarism because it's the most serious problem for them to learn. On the other words, learning plagiarism is so difficult that we can't go away from it. I would say my most difficult thing with plagiarism is citation and paraphrase. First, when I was in my country, I write references at the end. Therefore, I couldn't understand citation in the beginning of the class. Then I get more and more the meaning of that. The other point is paraphrase which I have a hard time with it. In my opinion, I think that Culture plays a very important role with plagiarism. Each country has its rules for plagiarism, so in my country it is illegal to plagiarize. Taking information from others sometimes helps us to write a good an essay, but that becomes nicer by putting references in the last page.

Blog 6#

    I found chinese and english are different in many places.For example ,in chinese article ,the author always give some example and opinion at first ,and then give people the final issue.I think english is difficult in vocabulary and sentence structure,and i was working on it .I need to improve the sentence structure ,and use some new words to improve my vocabulary.I think EDU160 is very useful to our international students . Let us know what is plagiarism and show the article of what the people think about the cheating problem . The EDU160 not only teach us the plagiarism but also the culture between America and other country.The most important one is :this class give us a time to fit the culture and language before step into real academic world.
    The most difficult for me to understand is how to make a yardstick to different concept of common language .I think this problem is the cause of international students cheating. For example .In china ,people can download the free game and movie online.But in america, they have a different concept of intellectual property ,people think they should pay before they use or enjor the produces.In "Cheating Across Cultures",the author give a same issue of different concept common language.This is a very important point of why international students cheating.In my opinion, i think people in other country need to show respect to the culture form different country.In Fish opinion,he point out "if you get into academic area ,you must follow the rule of it".I know what that mean and i was working on it.But i need time to learn the rule and the culture in america.
(may be hold extreme views)

Blog#6 Writing Self Evaluation

I think the important difference between English and Korean which is my mother tongue is structure. Order of English is Subject, Verb then Object but Korean consists Subject, Object then Verb. It is so confusing that i have to think again and again to write in english.
Aspect of english that makes me hard is Two-word verbs. It's about prepositions. Two-word verbs can be different by prepositions. I am really confused what preposition is appropriate.
I think i have to know lots of words to improve my english skill. If i didn't know many words, I would not read, listen, write and speak well. I can't express or understand anything.
Through this class, Professor Eric Benson have taught me essential words such as descriptive verbs and informative verbs. It is really helpful to me when i write an essay.

To me, criteria of Plagiarism is the most difficult thing to understand. I don't know from what to what is plagiarism. In my country, Korea is generous about the plagiarism. In my previous university, many students got a good grade as submitting a essay by making from some books without any citations. We have a concept of plagiarism but it is very weak and many people don't care about that. I think it's because of culture. If some koreans had been taught about the plagiarism, we would not be like this. For example, I was able to change my concept of plagiarism because I study here in america. That means the culture in each person's country affects their indication to plagiarism.

Myself Writing Evaluation.

    My mother language is Chinese, every single Chinese word consists of several different Chinese character components, just like English words consist of 27 letters. For me, the difficulty in Chinese writing is using some beautiful expression like ancient Chinese poems and proverbs and allusions. Because I have to understand and recite them first and then pick a right one to express my meaning, moreover, people do not use them at the most time of our daily talk. This is also a difficulty in my English writing although English expression such as idioms is much less hard to remember than Chinese. As a foreigner, it costs some time to learn as well. Another difficulty is organization, I usually think in Chinese and the structure of Chinese sentences are different from English. So I have to organize the structure of sentence and the whole article in a new Western way, and make it easy to understand for English speakers. In this class, I have learned that English articles begin with a topic sentence which is the main idea of the whole article, and give some specific details to support your idea by using descriptive and informative words. Of course, I also learned to be careful to use someone else idea.
    I think the Western style of citing sources is a way to force students create their own idea, but what if a couple of students have the same idea about an article without sharing it. What will the teachers regard them? Are they cheating? Another question is when a student finish his essay and all the ideas, does he have to check his idea through Internet in order to avoid plagiarism? As I said, some people may have the same idea as well, it is unfair to regard one is cheating and one is not. In China, we barely have the software to find out who is cheating ——we may have this technology in the near future, this is the weakness of our writing system. Because students may download papers from the Internet. But for citing sources, students in China do not do it often, because we do not have this rule and we just think it is not necessarily to cite unless we are going to publish our paper.Culture plays an important role,since different countries have different measurement of misconduct. For international students study in US,they have to adapt to the new rules which is not easy for them.Moreover, like Timothy mentioned in Redden's artical, international students have the pressure of achieveing a certain high GPA to maintain their Visa in US. This is another reason of why international students are inclined to commit misconduct.    

Blog #6 Writing Self Evaluation - Chanho Park

I am from South Korea, and the native language I using is Korean. In the writing essay, the most difficult thing I hardly make is grammar mistake. Contrary to English grammar form which is ‘Subject-Verb-Object’, the usual grammar form in Korea is ‘Subject-Object-Verb’ word order. To cover this problem in writing, I have had to practice and training in working with the word order in right way. Naturally, the students who learn first time can get easily make an error. This is also why I easily make grammar mistake in writing essay. I am not sure whether I made a grammar mistake or not right now in this writing. Also, there is an expression problem that English never use like a Korean type expression. In Korean conversation, for instance, set a high value on honorific talk each other depend on peoples’ age even if one years younger than others’. However, The English has no specific expression that honorific talking as much Korean except using like ‘could’ or ‘would’. In Korean manner, when we call someone, we should consider the listener’s age because we should call brother or sister after the name. According to Korean talking, if I say ‘you’ or calling name to someone who older than me is very impolite manner but English talking is only put ‘mister’ or ‘miss’ right before name is naturally thing. These are the things what I thinking about difference between English and Korean. In conclusion, I think the most useful thing in class I attending now is fully understand the academic conduct in university and law of writing.


I have had to hard time that I understand the difference between plagiarism and academic misconduct. The reason is that it is hard to distinguish the plagiarism is the part of academic misconduct because I already knew both two things are prohibited manner in university. In my country, there is a little academic misconduct which only focused on gets high GPA in whole course. Particularly, Korean students tend to put an effort and time on gets high score in whole school record even if valued as extra credit. They really do whatever to get high score in GPA by fair means or foul. Naturally, the mainly required academic process except gets high GPA can be ignored, and this turns out cheating each other and copied from internet. Also, I believe that culture role is totally reflected on their academic for main two reasons. This is because; the environment around an education is giving a huge affect on students in each country. For example, student have been seen, listened, and felt from childhood. In this manner, the culture in country depends on perception which decided their country condition. To sum up, I consent with cultural difference is affect on academic conduct.

Blog #6

I have learned how to improve writing essay and summary for almost one month. Actually this is not my first time to learning those stuff. When I was in high school in States, I had took ESL courses in Freshmen year. However, still I feel confused when I express my opinion in writing. Mostly, conjunctions and words order obstacle me to write beautiful essay. After I graduated high school in States, I improved my skill by using conjunctions and other stuff in essay. However, eventhough I know hard words, such as; SAT words and few GRE words, I do not know how to put these words in sentences appropriately. For example, the words barrier, obstacle, interupt, interfere, and disrupt have similar meanings. However, people use these words in different sentences. In korea, we use these similar vocabs in every sentences and sentences are not wrong. Also, I did not knwo that informative and descriptive words makes my essays more better. This lecture helps me to write proper words in essay. It teaches me when I should use informative and descriptive words.

Plagiarism and academic misconduct are really hard for international students to fully understand. In Korea, good answers for test are how much I write the answers similar to textbook or what professor taught to us. Also, students do homework together most time. Because we think, if we study as a group, we can learn each other more and support each other to get good grade on tests. Therefore, I think that cultural difference mainly influences to international students in States. We see many Asian students study together, and prefer to use resources as one of the study strategy. The reason Asians concentrate on exact resources are because of grade. We, as I am also Asian, get good grades in different ways in our own country. However, in States, we should create our own thinkings. Essay should be creative, and we can use few resources with quotations and reference resources. These are unfamiliar studying strategies in Asian countries. As a result, I agree with cultural difference affect international students not to fully understand academic code and role in USA.