Write a 500 word minimum essay using Microsoft WORD. Correct in WORD. Copy and paste your essay below between June 19 and 23.

TOPIC:

What can the HIT administration do to create an ESE for you?

Write a 500 word minimum essay using Microsoft WORD. Correct in WORD. Copy and paste your essay below between June 15 and 18.

TOPIC:

What can the HIT administration do to enhance the social culture and the academic culture at HIT to make the educational experience of International Students [...]]]> INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS WRITTEN TAKE HOME FINAL

Write a 500 word minimum essay using Microsoft WORD. Correct in WORD. Copy and paste your essay below between June 15 and 18.

TOPIC:

What can the HIT administration do to enhance the social culture and the academic culture at HIT to make the educational experience of International Students better?

We will chat about this when Holistic English class discusses Supersize Me and McLibel. THIS THREAD WILL BE OPEN FOR COMMENTS AFTER WE DISCUSS THE TWO MOVIES.

CHINA DAILY – North 2005-03-28 06:14

Fast foods doing harm to kids, research shows

HOLISTIC ENGLISH PERCEIVED BENEFITS

The seed of discontent with China’s current English teaching pedagogy and methodology was planted in April 2002 at a Joint Venture Business Institute at the fourth tier Railroad [...]]]> COMPARISON OF 4^TH TIER VOCATIONAL COLLEGE, 3^RD TIER COLLEGE, 2^ND TIER UNIVERSITY, 1^ST TIER UNIVERSITY AND IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITY

HOLISTIC ENGLISH PERCEIVED BENEFITS

The seed of discontent with China’s current English teaching pedagogy and methodology was planted in April 2002 at a Joint Venture Business Institute at the fourth tier Railroad College in the Wuchang District of Wuhan, Hebei Province. Subsequent germination began later in September 2002, in a Joint Venture Business Institute at a fourth tier college in Shanghai and was simultaneously watered at a Joint Venture program at another fourth tier college across town in Shanghai. The students lacked intrinsic motivation and the English programs were dull, boring and did not apply much in the way of extrinsic motivation. It was noted that both the Wuhan and Shanghai business institutes provided a free choice movie viewing room with an English movie library and large screen TV for viewing. It appeared that those few students who took advantage of this resource were making the most progress in their English development.

In November 2002, Holistic English began its incubation at a third tier Agricultural College in Henan Province. (Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Liu Qiang, “Can You Get a First Class Education at a Third Tier College in China?” in Progress in Education Vol. 13 (Nova Science Publishers, 2004).

Refinement of the Holistic English program started at Tong ji University, Shanghai, a first tier university, in March 2003, Shanghai Normal University, a second tier university, in March 2003 and simultaneously at a Joint Venture Business Institute at Shanghai Normal University, and a Joint Venture Business Institute at Shanghai University (Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, Dissatisfied Customers: Chinese Business Institute Students Speak Out (Frontiers in Higher Education, Nova Science Publishers, 2007)., a second tier university, in September 2003.

Further refinement occurred in 2004 in both the business department and the English department at Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Jiangxi Province, a second tier university.

In 2005 the Holistic English program returned to its original incubator at the third tier agricultural college in Henan Province. From this base the program was initiated, on an experimental basis, at Guangxi University, a second tier university in Guangxi Province, Shenyang Normal University (Edwin Roessler and Peter Griggs, “Holistic English at a Joint Venture Institution,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). , a second tier university in Liaoning Province, Yang En University, a second tier university in Fujian Province, Xinyang Normal University, a second tier university in Henan Province, and Xinyang Vocational College, a fourth tier college in Henan Province. ( Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, “China EFL: Holistic English, the revolution has begun,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

Implementation of Holistic English at Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province followed and subsequently also at a private language school and three IT Corporate Training Centers in Dalian, Liaoning Province. ( Martin Wolff, “Incompatibility of Holistic English with Corporate Training Centers,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform, (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

PetroChina, China’s largest corporation, brought the Holistic English program to its corporate training Center in Guangzhou, Guangdong in September 2007. (Martin Wolff, “Incompatibility of Corporate Training Centers and Holistic English,” in China EFL: Curriculum Reform (Nova Science Publishers, 2009).

In March 2008 the top tier Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou embraced the Holistic English program wholeheartedly. (Wang Zhe and Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: A Revolution Not An Evolution,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: The Revolution Continues,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Martin Wolff, “Holistic English: The Revolution Blooms in Spring 2010,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).

Prior to the time of this writing, the Holistic English program had proven its efficacy with Chinese students (undergraduate English and non-English majors and post-graduate non-English majors) in the low fourth tier colleges, Joint Venture business institutes, third tier colleges, second and top tier universities ( Teng Hai, Martin Wolff and Niu Qiang, “Can You Get a First Class Education at a Third Tier College in China?” Progress in Education Vol. 13 (Nova Science Publishers, 2004); Martin Wolff and Stacy Meeking, “Student/Consumer Satisfaction Survey,” in Of The Students, By The Students and For the Students (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). However, the program had not yet been tested at any of China’s top nine “Ivy League” Universities—Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Xi’an Jiao Tong University. (People’s Daily Online, “Formation of China’s Ivy League Hailed”: (accessed July 29, 2011)

Negotiations commenced in April 2010 to bring the Holistic English program to one of these universities^. (Martin Wolff, “HE Matriculates to the Ivy League” Ch. 8, “The Lowdown on China’s Higher Education” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011).. On May 12, 2010 the negotiations culminated in an onsite inspection of facilities and a sit-down meeting with the English Department leadership. But it was not until September 2011 that Holistic English matriculated to China’s Ivy League at The Harbin Institute of Technology.

The eleven year odyssey has been chronicled in four books:

(2009) Martin Wolff, China EFL: Curriculum Reform, Nova Science Publishers, New York

(2010) Martin Wolff, Of The Students, By The Students and For The Students, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London

(2011) Niu Qiang and Martin Wolff, The Lowdown on China’s Higher Education, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London

(2012) Martin Wolff, Holistic English in China’s Ivy League, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The following charts provide a comparison of the students’ self-evaluation of perveived benefits received from the Holistic English Program from the lowest 4^th tier vocational college to China’s Ivy league.

CHART ANALYSIS

Although most of the students claim to have received great benefits in the areas of vocabulary, reading, speaking, writing, listening, (Chart 1); confidence, motivation, self-discipline, creative thinking and autonomous learning (Chart 2) and world view (Chart 3 ) there are always the unreachable and unteachable whose negative attitudes about English are simply unchangeable.

Chart 1: Vocabulary, Reading, Listening, Writing and Conversation

The discrepencies of perceived benefits received must be understood in light of the varied beginning skills levels.

Chart 2: Confidence, Motivation, Self-discipline, Creative Thinking and Autonomous Learning

The more uniform perceived benefits received are due to most students starting with the same lack of any appreciable psychological development .

Chart 3: World View

The more uniform perceived benefits received are due to most students starting with the same base line lack of any appreciable world view.

Lucky PG 4 Harbin Institute of Technology December 25, 2011

As a post graduate student, I feel ashamed about myself, since I have no idea of IMF and WB. We are occupied with our perquisites class ignoring the outside world and our country’s policy. How we become our nations master if we have no idea about our nation. It is the time to extend our span of knowledge. You know what, what I have gained from the course is that we should have a wide horizon not only limited on the text book.

“Without successful political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform and the gains we have made in this area may be lost,” he [...]]]> FORBES   3/18/2012

Chinese Leader: Cultural Revolution Coming to China

Will China descend into a decade of chaos?  Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is worried that it will.

“Without successful political structural reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute economic structural reform and the gains we have made in this area may be lost,” he said on Wednesday morning in Beijing.  “The new problems that have cropped up in China’s society will not be fundamentally resolved, and such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution may happen again.”  Mao Zedong’s decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution killed millions and nearly destroyed Chinese society.

Wen, during his press conference that closed the National People’s Congress annual meeting last week, actually issued two stunning warnings about another Cultural Revolution.  One of them was made in connection with economic and political reform—the one described above—and another followed his remarks about the endlessly fascinating Wang Lijun incident.

While Americans were watching the Super Bowl, Wang, a high-level Chongqing official, attempted to defect to the U.S. at the American consulate in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, carrying with him papers that many believe document the foreign assets of the wife of Bo Xilai, his former boss.

Bo, then the Chongqing Party secretary, tried to prevent Wang from getting away by ordering hundreds of his armed security troops to cross into neighboring Sichuan province to surround the Chengdu consulate.  The effort failed as Wang was escorted to Beijing by officials of the Ministry of State Security.  Wang, now detained, has been officially branded a traitor to the country and the Communist Party.

Bo has not fared well either.  He was stripped of his Chongqing post on Thursday, and virtually all analysts believe he has no chance of being named to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee this fall.  Many believe that Hu Jintao, China’s current supremo, engineered this bizarre incident as a means of sidelining Bo, but events could spiral beyond control as the Party’s factions scramble to take advantage of a fluid situation.

China watchers, for the longest time, seemed to believe that the form of the Chinese political system no longer mattered.  They told us that the Communist Party had institutionalized itself and had solved the problem that had plagued hardline governments since the beginning of time: succession.  We were told that the upcoming transfer of power, from the so-called Fourth Generation leaders to the Fifth, would be “smooth” and uneventful.

They were wrong.  For one thing, Bo is still holding on to his seats on the Central Committee and the Politburo, giving him the opportunity to fight back.  And at the height of the crisis in Chengdu, he ran to the 14^th Group Army in Kunming, in Yunnan province.

Bo’s move is widely seen as an attempt to get the military involved on his side in this ever-widening struggle.  Hu Jintao tried the same maneuver last decade when he enlisted generals and admirals in his tussle with Jiang Zemin, his predecessor, who refused to gracefully yield power.

Hu in effect opened the door to flag officers to become referees and sometimes power brokers in the Communist Party’s increasingly nasty political struggles.  And the result of that is the reversal of more than a decade of declining military influence in China.  Since then, the budgets for the People’s Liberation Army have mushroomed and the top brass have become vocal on matters once considered the exclusive province of civilian officials.  There has been, in short, a partial remilitarization of politics and policy.

It is not so much that China’s flag officers have been gaining control over civilians; the generals and admirals are winning the latitude to conduct their own affairs with only limited interference from civilians.  In January of last year, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke of the “disconnect” between China’s civilian and military leaders.  As he suggested, the regime is dividing into constituent elements, which often carry out their own policies with little evident coordination.

In this environment, it is not surprising that in the last few months there have been rumors of coups, all of them fascinating, none of them confirmable.  But we have to remember that people do not talk of military takeovers when a regime is stable.  And people are gossiping now because they know how powerful the military has become.

That’s undoubtedly why Hu Jintao issued a warning of his own on Monday.  In Beijing, he reminded military officers that the People’s Army was subordinate to the Party.  As a retired senior colonel said to the South China Morning Post, recent comments from flag officers have “undermined the absolute leadership of the Communist Party.”

At the moment, the Communist Party is dividing along factional lines during a historic leadership transition, and the infighting is accelerating the splintering, further eroding the ruling organization’s ability to govern.  This is occurring while the economy is faltering and other critical challenges arise.

It seems inconceivable that Party splits could lead to another Cultural Revolution, but this is how that disaster started in 1966.  Unfortunately, the Chinese political system has not essentially changed since then.

Sharp Maoist-style politics, Premier Wen tells us, are making a comeback in 21^st century China.

Yet, Chinese college and university students arrive on the school’s doorstep almost completely lacking in any appreciable development in any of these areas, even [...]]]> Who would argue that a 2^nd language student possessing confidence, intrinsic motivation, self- discipline, autonomous learning skills and creative thinking ability, would not excel over students lacking in such psychological attributes?

Yet, Chinese college and university students arrive on the school’s doorstep almost completely lacking in any appreciable development in any of these areas, even post-graduate students with four years of undergraduate work under their belts.  In short, they are lazy procrastinators who, at the last minute, cram for the exam.

Most Chinese students are gold medal champions when it comes to memorization skills. This has given rise to the Chinese three-day educational system. Students literally sleep through an eighteen week semester. Then, the first day before the exam they memorize all the materials, even the teacher’s PPT’s that the kind teachers freely make available. The second day they spit out everything on the exam. On the third day they forget everything they had memorized.

The tests include: Listening Comprehension, Vocabulary, Cloze and Reading Comprehension. The questions are multiple guess or fill in the blanks from the choices on offer. Such tests contribute nothing to development of creative thinking and without substantial feedback, merely reinforce wrong answers.

Uniform exams, with uniform answers, graded by uniform templates, for the assembly line production of Human Robots with uniform skills and uniform capabilities.

This testing methodology is extremely unfair to the students who are not accomplished in memorization skills. They are also no measure of growth and development and do not reward actual effort expended. They only measure an accomplishment level that a student may have attained even before taking the course. They penalize a student who has made a significant effort and improvement but has not attained the required uniform English level.

In Holistic English we attach great importance to the development of the psychological skills of confidence, intrinsic motivation, self- discipline, autonomous learning skills and creative thinking ability. Once a student possesses a degree of such skills or attitudes, learning will be a natural consequence.  Each student is free to progress and develop their English skills in accordance with their personal degree of confidence, intrinsic motivation, self- discipline, autonomous learning skills and creative thinking ability. There is no predetermined level of English skills that must be attained.

The testing in Holistic English is designed to measure the progress in developing the psychological skills necessary for real learning. Real learning will be a natural consequence that will be commensurate with the degree to which the psychological skills have been developed.

For instance one measure of the psychological skills is contained in the oral portion of the Holistic English final examination. On the first day of the semester, all of the students are given the three oral final exam questions and the correct answers. They are advised to start working on them immediately and continuously to get them right. The oral final exam is given one week in advance of the date the students expected. Ten percent of the students will take the opportunity and admonition seriously and will excel at the time of the oral final exam. Ten percent of the students will outright fail the oral final exam, having made no effort beforehand, because they were counting on the Chinese three days educational system mentioned previously. The remainder will do a “so-so” job and fall somewhere in the middle grade wise.

Another measure of the development of the psychological skills is found in the written final examination. The students are given a five week advance take-home exam. They are instructed to write and correct in WORD. A submission deadline is given.  Ten percent of the students will follow the instructions in a timely manner and will submit excellent papers. Ten percent of the students will either not follow the instructions to write and correct in WORD or they will attempt to submit an untimely paper. The remainder of the students will submit a timely “so-so” paper.

The results of the oral and written final exams are thoroughly discussed during the time initially thought to be set aside for the oral exam, usually the last class of the semester. This comprehensive review gives the students one last learning opportunity where it is once again emphasized that they must learn to follow instructions because an employer demands this; they must learn to do things on time “Don’t Delay – Do It Today” because procrastination can result in job failure; lose your “so-so” attitude and strive for perfection because your employer and country require this to move from a developing stage to a developed stage; and be prepared to creatively respond to whatever circumstances life might hand you at any given moment. These principles are reinforced and hammered home through the Holistic English testing methodology which provides real life experiences of each principle. .

Those students who grasped these principles early on made demonstrative corresponding advancements in their reading, writing, listening and speaking English. Those students who rejected these principles from the get go and never changed their attitude failed to make any appreciable improvement in their English. The remainder of the students made correlative improvements in their English commensurate with the degree to which they embraced these principles. The extent to which the students continue to implement these principles will determine the extent to which their English continues to improve through autonomous learning efforts and strategies.

It is time to move away from tests that are unfair, only require memorization skills and only measure standardized results.

For more than the past 30 years, ESP (English for Special Purpose) has been taught in China to pass exams, College Entrance exam, TEM and CET. The entire English pedagogy and methodology, from primary school through college or [...]]]> Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

For more than the past 30 years, ESP (English for Special Purpose) has been taught in China to pass exams, College Entrance exam, TEM and CET. The entire English pedagogy and methodology, from primary school through college or university, is test driven.  The text books are specifically written and the course teaching plans are designed to maximize test scores.

China annually produces more than five million college and university graduate who know more about English than most native speakers but who are functionally illiterate, unable to use that which they have studied for up to sixteen years.  They are simply unable to produce comprehensible English.

The tests have been roundly criticized but the test authors mount a rousing defense. To quell the opposition and maintain the test royalty income, the test authors fine tune or tweak the tests from time to time.  They staunchly maintain the efficacy of the tests even in the face of the reality that the tests inappropriately drive the curriculum and produce functional illiterates. They tinker with tune ups when a major overhaul is mandated.

China’s tertiary education system is like a factory assembly line, producing more than five million end products (graduates) each year.  Most responsible factories have quality control personnel who inspect and weed out defective products.  But China’s colleges and universities produce over five million defective Human Robots each year, i.e. functionally illiterate graduates. TEM and CET are the quality controls but they are flawed quality inspection tools that are incapable of discovering product defects.

A factory which produces flawed products cannot remain in business, yet, China’s colleges and universities have continued to produce defective products for over thirty years.

Some efforts have been undertaken to eliminate the tests.

Wang Shugua, President of Harbin Institute of Technology, is quoted as saying ‘I recognize CET as a good tool to promote English studies but I am against the practice of regarding a CET certificate as the prerequisite for graduation, which is totally misleading.’ He tried to eliminate the requirement for a CET certificate in order to graduate from HIT, but gave up without success. ‘I had to reconsider the usefulness of CET certificates in job hunting for our graduates.

Almost all employers want their recruits to have a CET certificate, so I had to push my students to pass the CET for their good, although it is against my will. (Beijing Review, “Education Feared to Raise Robots” http://www.bjreview.com.cn/special/txt/2007-08/31/content_74644.htm (accessed July 10, 2008).

Chinese graduates who go abroad for further study find their English so poor that they are required to take expensive and time consuming remedial English courses before being allowed to participate in the foreign school study.

Albert Einstein would call this insanity.

China must develop an English pedagogy, curriculum and methodology that develops graduates who can produce both oral and written comprehensible English output, with confidence.

Then a testing system should be developed that actually measures the efficacy of the curriculum instead of the current system where the curriculum measures the efficacy of the tests.

Producing functionally illiterate graduates is a National disgrace, a monumental waste of time and resources and does NOT make contribute to a better off, harmonious society.