Cheating

            The worst class I had ever taught was a Master course a few years ago.  The teaching arrangement was partly to blame, as the class of almost 40 students were split into 2 groups to be taught by myself and another professor concurrently; we would then switch students halfway through the semester because each instructor would focus on one direction of interpretation only, Chinese to English in my case.

            With the first group, I made it abundantly clear that this was not an English or Chinese language improvement course.  This was going to be a course on interpretation and I assumed that everybody had a good, if not excellent, grasp of the two working languages.  I drew upon an analogy of a musician conversant with the piano and guitar, trying to adapt a score for the 2 instruments.  The musician would have to be able to play all the single notes and chords for both instruments, in order to play a live performance.  I even administered a small test to sift the chaff from the wheat.

            After the initial difficulties, the class was able to forge ahead in the direction I had outlined.  They were given the usual sight interpretation exercises, Socratic treatment, project and Zhuang Zi's "Master Chef" lecture.  The difficulties arose when I took over the second group for the remaining half of the semester.  I had gauged their linguistic capabilities and told them frankly that there was a shortfall in my expectations, especially for a class at the Master level.  The students were equally surprised when I told them I had screened my first group of students.

            The teaching content and methodology was identical with the first group; however, the second group never got up to speed.  One particular student even insisted I should focus exclusively on providing English, Chinese glossaries.  I repeatedly responded that this was an interpretation course where I assumed everybody had a good command of the 2 working languages, and we should be developing interpreting skills and strategies.

            The final disappointment came in the form of a suspected case of collective cheating at the end of semester exam.  I suspected that a group of students sat near each other in the multi media room, where the ringleader recorded his answers first and then the other students copied his answers verbatim.  The answers were so identical my suspicions were aroused immediately.  I made transcripts of all suspected student recordings and presented these with the audio tapes to the school.  In the audio tapes, one could distinctly hear the ringleader followed by a verbatim answer of the suspected student.  In the transcripts, I had listed and counted all the similarities; but these efforts were in vain as the school decided not to investigate the issue.

             I blame the school for admitting more than 100 students in a Master degree program where the only criteria for acceptance is the ability to pay school fees.  Some students in this particular class were barely able to speak in English, and some most certainly were not proficient in Putonghua.  Students having paid school fees were anxious to pass the course, regardless of whether anything was learnt.  In the words of one student: "We're paying school fees, so we're your boss and we want to pass this course.".

            This, unfortunately, is the mentality of most students in Hong Kong.  On the bright side, if all Master and PhD students are like this, my career as conference interpreter and part time university instructor will last well into the next few decades, or till I retire, whichever comes first.

外貌吸引智商較高 【明報專訊】選美要「美貌與智慧並重」，既漂亮又聰明的女孩子實在難求。 ...

First published 31 December 2007.  Copyright of Pierre Wong.