Job Discussion Forums

[Steppenwolf]

My graduate students are top learners and have the potential of becoming their country's first batch of Albert Einstein clones! I taught them what a "first name" and a "last name" is, and they actually absorbed it successfully without the help of any textbook. They thus proved they have ears to listen, brains to understand and mouths to speak!

So they had to introduce themselves in a manner that a foreign person could understand how to address them: Jiang Zedong is Mr Jiang, not Mr Zedong..., and Mao Zexi is not Mr Zexi, nor is Mao is first name... contrary to what they had learnt under their Chinese teachers...

So the first guy took to the little platform and spoke about himself; "my surname is Liao, and my first name is..." And since the order was to add a little personal information he informed the class that "every evening I go running around the little lake on the campus..."

I was amazed! Never had I had a Chinese student bragging about being a SPORTSMAN!

Then a girl took over, and she too was a "runner"... I wasn't totally sure whether she had said "learner" (which often sounds more like "lunner" as the 'R' gets mangled or ignored) or "runner" but some of her classmates, by repeating what she had said, used the noun 'runner'.
Of the following six students, 5 were 'runners' too...

[abusalam4]

Ha, your "graduate" students....
Does their master thesis also cover that topic of introducing themselves?
Very "interesting".....lol

To be honest, I would send my graduate students back to undergraduate classes or even to kindergarden if their level was such.....

You may better give them some lectures on great Ferdinand (de Saussure), it seems more appropriate at this level. But since it is China, I have my doubts that that would really work.

Well, I can say I have got my all my graduate students working on their Master or Doctoral dissertations, and the topics they have are somewhat more exciting and interesting than those you are mentioning.

[Ahchoo]

Are you sure they're not 'sporters'?