Plagarism

I assigned homework for my students last week. I thought it was an easier assignment than the previous 500 word essays, but it proved to be the most difficult assignment of all.

The assignment was, 'write a poem about the moon.' The week before was the mid-autumn festival, where everyone in China goes home to visit family, eats moon cakes and looks at the giant, harvest moon. I thought it was an appropriate assignment, and not too difficult considering they all are English majors and need improvement expressing themselves in a foreign language.

But I received groans and lamentations as if I ordered them to flagellate themselves with a coarse piece of rope.

I told them not to worry about making it rhyme, be pretty or wise, and just to write a poem that they liked.

So, this week I collect the poems, and some of them are surprisingly good.

Here is one example:

art thou pale for weariness

of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth

wandering companionless.

Among the stars that have a different birth

and ever changing like a joyless eye

that finds no object worth its constancy?

(amy)

Obviously, plagiarized.

others were not as obvious, but then I would find the same poem written by multiple students in my class. Here is one:

look at the moon

look at the moon

like a big silver spoon

so round and so bright

in the sky tonight!

(sarah & lydia)

In one of my Mongolian classes, I asked two boys to read their poems aloud. They were greeted with whispers and laughter, and right after they both read their poems, a girl brought me her textbook and pointed to the poem that one of them had just read. The class seemed nervous and embarrassed that the boy (their monitor!) had been ratted out. I handed them back the poems and told them they had to write them over again. I told the class that if I caught them copying, I would make them re-do the assignment or give them an F for the assignment. When I went home and read the poems for all the classes, I weeded out that about 25% of the poems were fakes.

Why was this assignment so difficult for students? I came up with a few reasons.

1. In the Chinese education system, and in the Chinese language there is no room for abstract ideas or creative thinking.

2. My students have low critical thinking abilities, and are weary of having "their own" opinions. They are unsure of what having an opinion means.

3. They have no idea what a poem is. They have never been asked to write one before.

Some of my students wrote poems that I think are original and quirky because of their grammar mistakes.

Here are some of my favorites:

the crescent moon like a boat

the little boat has two point

I sit in it

only the glittered stars and the blue sky

(jane)

the moon of the fifteeth risen up in the sky

in mongolian girl waiting for her Mr. right by a tree.

they are run after other in the grassland

losing themselves in the moonlight shadowy.

(danny)

bright moon willows space in the shone

light wave glitter on the lake waters

bright moon as flying a clear mirror

my heart for into bright

(vivian)