Monday, October 15, 2007
Week 9 question
We are beginning a chapter on writing a compare and contrast essay. I would be interested to hear about how your classes at SAL are different from and/or the same as university classes in your country. You only need to write one paragraph, so you may only want to focus on one or two points. If you haven't attended university classes in your country yet, you can compare high school classes there with our SAL classes. If you are one of our new class members, I know you have only had 4 days of SAL classes. You can choose to talk about your orientation week at SAL as compared to your college orientation week in your country.
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There are two differences between classes of SAL and classes of my university in Korea. First of all, in classes of SAL, students can ask teacher easily about what they don’t understand. Because this situation is very common in America, teachers also respond to a question as if they were already prepared. On the contrary, in Korea, students hesitate to ask to teacher even though they can not understand what s/he said. Because classes in my university are usually consisted of more than 30 students, it is difficult for teachers to consider all of students. Therefore, students, who know this situation, are reluctant to ask. Second difference is style of teaching. In classes of SAL, teachers give us questions to discuss each other. Throughout processes to find appropriate ways to solve problems, we can find the solution by ourselves. However it sometimes takes long time. In Korea, teachers always summarize the point of the chapter and give some exercise to practice a lot. It makes students study a lot for a short time. Still, students might feel difficult about solving a problem alone.
Before I start to write down my opinion, I totally agree with jae kwang's opinion. In Korea, we are not used to asking some questions through a lecture in front of many students; however, it is very common in the U.S.. For me, there are another difference. My major is related to English, so you may think that my classes are in English, but that is not ture. Actually, it could be differnt up to teachers, but usually we don't say in English. In the U.s., I can tell you that we just use English in classes. Nevertheless, there are same thing between the U.S. and Korea. All of students want to study, so they are coming to classes!! It doesn't matter which country we are from, but we just want to know something from the classes.
There are some differences as compared classes at SAL with classes of my university. One different thing is the assignment. When I was in university, I usually did my homework for myself. I hardly ever did team projects. Furthermore, I had no opportunity to do the presentation. In contrast, most homework at SAL is team projects. I can’t do the homework without help of my team members. I can have the many opportunities of presentation. Another different thing is the style of education. Most classes are one-sided. Professors usually explain the important parts of the subject to students. Students just listen to the professor’s lecture and take notes. However, classes at SAL are different. Students attend the lecture positively. Students can talk with other classmates to solve the something like assignment or question.
Until now, i can't figure out the difference exactly between SAL and university classes. It must depend on my short experience with SAL. When i read other comments, i totally agree with that. I think the most different facter is interaction in the class. It also depend on professors. But an atmosphere of class is not freely. Actually it might depend on person. But most Korean students aren't familir with expressing our opnion.
In my opinion, the classes are totally opposite between the U.S and Taiwan. First, one obvious difference is the teaching way. In Taiwan, professors always like to give students lectures in stead of discuss together. The only thing that students in class need to do is to listen and take notes because most of courses are about professional knowledge. In contrast, SAL’s teacher would like to find topics or current issues to discuss with students. Since they want students have more chances to study and practice English, discussing with others maybe a good way to achieve this goal. Furthermore, in Taiwan, when students have questions, they always ask their classmates because they think they may ask stupid questions for professors. They so shy that they are afraid to face professor. However, for all I know, SAL students are not afraid to ask teachers questions in general.
There are many differences between the SAl course and my university class. The first difference is the way of teaching. In my country, teachers hardly discuss with students. In class, students always write everything from the blackboard to take it to review in home. Only few students ask the question in class, for others think their question is maybe easy to other students or teacher. Thus, they always solve by themselves or ask other classmates. The second difference is presentation. I never use this way in teaching. Instead of presentation, we usually use quiz and papaer to test what we have learned. In Taiwan, students feel awesome to teachers, so they hardly express the comment on studing.
My orientation week at SAL and my college orientation week in Thailand are totally differences. First, language is different. I must adapt myself to listen what he said in orentation week at SAL because he spoke English in the other hand I feel comfortable when I went to my college orientation because I am used to speake and listen in Thai language. I can understand every sentence in Thai language but my orientation week at SAL,I could not catch up some sentences. For example, the beginning of orientation week at SAL, I was confused halfway through when a guy who are a SJSU student introduce SJSU's gymnasium. He spoke fastly. What's more, I don't have senior partners at SAL's orientation. I must help everythings by myself such as buying student books, doing homework and etc but at my college orientation, My teachers use the end of two digits of a student identity card for arranging partners to me so I have senior partners who advise me. For example, he can help me to choose extra English books which are very helpfull or to teach my homework. However, I feel happy in my orientation at SAl. I meet many nice teachers, stuffs and students in there eventhough they are diffents from my college orientation in Thailand.
There is one significantly different property between Sal and my university in case of learning English; that is the time to be able to speak English. Whereas I just have one or two hour to speak English in Korea, I can talk with any one in English for unlimited time until I am in Sal. If I tried to speak English out of class time, my classmates would ostracize me because speaking English at the outside of class room is not common in Korea and most students do not want someone to be special. Therefore, Sal has better circumstance to learn English than my university in the case of speaking.
In the SAL classes, we usually have the chance to talk to each other in class, but in the university in my country, we usually listen to the profession what he teaches. For example, teachers at SAL not usually have the conversation with students but also make the classes more interesting. In contrast, teachers in my country’s university don’t make conversation with students, but only few teachers do this. It’s the biggest different between SAL and the university of my country.
The differences between the SAL and the German University classes are teaching methods. In Germany students sit in a huge classroom where up to 300 people are. Especially if you study business, you can sit with so many students together, because it is a very famous major. Because of the enormous number of students, it is very anonymous. The professor neither know your name nor you attend his or her class. You have to schedule your own time and make sure that you read all the pages which the professor teaches you during the class. Sometimes you read 1000-2000 pages during the semester. There is not any homework. At the end of the semester the students have an exam for about four hours. But German University also have classes with only thirty students. It is similar with the SAL classes. It is obligation to attend the class; students create projects, have group discussions, take an exam and write a term paper.
The most different thing is frequency of presentation between in SAL classes and my university classes. In my case, even though I am a junior in my university, I just did presentation twice in my university life. In my university, the professors usually use lecture way to teach in their class. In contrast, I already had four times to do presentation in SAL classes during just one session. From presentation, I could understand the topic much more easily, but I get less information about the topic from SAL teacher compared with my university professors.
In my opinion, the major difference between the classes in SAL and in university of my country is the student number. There were usually thirty or forty students in a class, sometimes there may be more than fifty students in a class if the teacher of the class was popular. Rarely can we find a class having as few students as a SAL class has. And the difference of the student number may lead to another difference between them. That is the way the teachers taught us. Teachers usually have to take care of more students in the university, they can’t have enough time to have good interactions with all of the students. So they taught us formally by the way of writing notes on the blackboard, and we copy it in the whole class. But in SAL, there are fewer students in a class, so students have more chances to interact with teachers in class or after class. And the homework needn’t to be restricted to only one answer, because teachers have more time to go through. And that may have more benefits to us.
According to most universities' classes in Thailand, my country, those students still study as a children because the teachers always teach them what to think. On the other hand, for here at SAL and many US universities, it's pretty different from that point; meanwhile, the students here are always taught how to think and how to get the answer by their own. Actually, in Thailand's classes, the students seldom do reserches or learn by themselves as well; therefore, that is one reason to make mostly Thai students to lack of their confidences also. Furthermore, Thai students are not only unconfidence sometimes, but also fewer of initiation if they are compared with most of american students. That has been effected from the way they think because they are always taught to think as same as their parents or their teachers' ways whether what is correct or not. All in all, there are some differences between those; however, they also have the same thing as well that is the teachers' concern to all students anytime.
By comparing American to Korean classes, it is interesting for me.
There are siginificant difference.
Way of class, for example, Korean is likly going on one-way communication, no interaction. Korean doesn't like making any controversy in class because some controversy cause to distribute going on class. In contrast, American usually enjoys some interaction each other during class. Sometimes these situation make me confuse because I could not concentrate on class. However, I really enjoy a new way of class.
In homework of class, the other of difference, there are no brainstorming work each other in Korea, just handle with own homework myself. Therefore Korean likes studying by oneself and then makes it an in-depth study. On other hands, most homework in America, which encourages to share information each other and then makes it various idea.
In conclusion, although the two of view are different, there are unique strengthes each other. It will be better, when we align the integrated strengthes for class.
Everybody has a dream about their own campus lives. I had spent two and half years campus life in Korea. Also, I have been here for seven months in SAL. During those two periods, I could naturally compare the differences. The biggest difference between SAL and my university class is the atmosphere of class. Specifically, SAL classes are consisted of very small group, and distance between teacher and students is close. Accordingly, we can talk very easily and conveniently. In addition, most SAL students want to talk another country student to use English, so every SAL students are familiar each other. Otherwise, my university class’s atmosphere is more competitive than SAL class. To get a good grade in university class, we have to surpass their classmates. It was very stress for me, so I’m afraid of my rest campus life. Thus, I have been satisfying today’s SAL life because we don’t have to be competitive in SAL.
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