On my birthday this year I served as a judge for my school's English language competition (most likely because of my grasp of the language). The students were required to memorize a five minute long monologue, and were then were asked to tell a story about a random photo they were shown (see the middle photo above). The students excelled at the memorization section of the competition, even making it seem easy. But when it came time to think creatively, almost none of them could say anything about the photos except for basic descriptions. This is indicative of the education system here in general where the major focus seems to be rote memorization, which sounds impressive until you discover most students have no idea what they are saying. The most amusing part of the competition was that all the boys wore suits and heavy make-up.
I don't know of any Chinese language competitions in the US. If they are learning English it must be difficult to choose the right words to describe a photo. Even adults can't do that.
ReplyDeleteThe US is certainly not a very worldly culture and they need to be, but they do emphasize creativity a bit more than what I'm seeing in schools here.
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