First day of school
Yesterday I had my first class. It's a class I teach together with Patrik, a friend from Bonn who I'm doing this internship with. In this class the students have to prepare a 10 minute presentation about a subject of their choice. We also try to teach some basics about academic writing since most of the students lack in that department A LOT! Since I can't keep my gob shut I was a little hoarse after class but I hope I'm back 100% next week when teaching commences.
Today was all day Skripsi-correcting. We stayed 7 hours. It's hard work. Imagine a 30 page essay where there are almost no sentences that are correct. Very few have simple spelling mistakes, most of them are in deep structural trouble and some are simply indecipherable. I don't want to bash the students because most of them are trying very hard but. I also don't want to say that the teachers aren't good since I have no way of knowing right now (maybe in 3 months time). It's just that these students come form a culture that is far less focused on the written word than western culture. But now they're supposed to produce a 30 page bachelor thesis that is (supposed to be) judged after these western standards. Can't end well in my opinion.
But it's not as bleak as I'm making it out to be. It's just that we are under a little bit of pressure. Quite a few students are supposed to hand in their thesis papers next week and some of them are just not gradable. Both Patrik and me are working friday night and saturday to get the corrections done, to talk the students through them on monday so they can implement them till tuesday :/
We might go to the ocean on sunday (we need a day off too!) so there might be some more pictures on the Facebook this weekend.
Today was all day Skripsi-correcting. We stayed 7 hours. It's hard work. Imagine a 30 page essay where there are almost no sentences that are correct. Very few have simple spelling mistakes, most of them are in deep structural trouble and some are simply indecipherable. I don't want to bash the students because most of them are trying very hard but. I also don't want to say that the teachers aren't good since I have no way of knowing right now (maybe in 3 months time). It's just that these students come form a culture that is far less focused on the written word than western culture. But now they're supposed to produce a 30 page bachelor thesis that is (supposed to be) judged after these western standards. Can't end well in my opinion.
But it's not as bleak as I'm making it out to be. It's just that we are under a little bit of pressure. Quite a few students are supposed to hand in their thesis papers next week and some of them are just not gradable. Both Patrik and me are working friday night and saturday to get the corrections done, to talk the students through them on monday so they can implement them till tuesday :/
We might go to the ocean on sunday (we need a day off too!) so there might be some more pictures on the Facebook this weekend.