Please read the this article, written by Baruch student Elsa Zhou, and discuss what you learned, what resonated with you, and any other constructive thoughts you might have about the piece. Your response should be at least four sentences long.
7 thoughts on “Blog Post #15: Article Review”
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I learned that not all ethnic chinese students come from mainland China. I also learned that one of the reason why college like International students is to make more money since they are not most of the time qualified for financial aid. Something else that I thought of was the part where she explains the cultural differences by stating that:”Mainland China’s culture emphasizes on obedience.” I agree with that part because the same thing happened to some African students, we are raised in a way that we should obey our elder no matter what and that affects us a lot when we come to the U.S. For example when I first came in the U.S, I couldn’t make eye contact to my teacher while speaking because according to my education it was disrespectful. However, I got to move out of my comfort zone and challenge that side of myself
Reading this article, I learned that many students from China had followed the trend to enrolled and studied overseas for college. Doing this also gives an advantage to the colleges as this is one of the ways they can make money since the student will be required to pay a lot more for tuition without any financial aid. One part that resonated with me was the language barrier. Learning a new language other than your native language is hard, especially if it’s for studying. This will lead them to shut themselves out from the community and stay in their own zone because they’re more comfortable that way. When I see students that struggle with the English language, I go out of my way to help them if I happen to speak the language they do so they’re more relaxed in the school environment because I know how stressful it is to be in a community where you can’t communicate that well.
I will start with how this students didn’t use sophisticated or hard words, yet still got to the point and made her writing interesting. I learn that many Chinese students have chosen to enroll in overseas universities which at the same time benefits colleges by providing them more money on tuition. When it comes to cultural differences, I find my culture related to her culture. In my country we are also expected to not respond back to things even thought we might be right and the other person’s wrong. Another thing that stood out to me was the difficulties on learning a new language. I had difficulties keeping up with my classes because of the new language learning process.
I totally understand what the author of this article is writing about because I personally experienced most of the issues she explained. The only new thing I learned is that it is difficult for Chinese students to learn latin, but they are still working on that aspect and doing great.
The idea of language problems really resonates with me. To be more clear, I am from country where people speak both Kazakh and Russian, the languages which have rude sounding. I remember the day, when I was speaking with my brother and since we had some connection problems, I raised my voice so that he could hear me. My friend who stood near was looking at me in a shock and wondering if everything was alright and trying to see if I was mad or not. That is in culture. We do not usually speak loud, because it seems as we are arguing, which was my problem here in US. English is softer in sounding and it took me a month to learn how to speak louder so that everyone could hear me. Another thing I want to add, it is very difficult for us international students on quizzes and tests where professors use sophisticated words.
Also, I truly understand what the author is saying about tuition fee and F-1 status along with being unable to work off-campus for your own expenses.
Regarding the culture, I also had mixed feelings between being happy to be here as well as being stressed, lonely and having no friends here. It took me half a year to find myself again and get used to new things in my life.
I liked how Elsa did not use hard vocabulary to show off her work but used simple language to explain what she’s trying to say. she also explained things with a small paragraph which made her writing very interesting and organized. The language part and the culture where you learn to be obedient resonates with me. In my culture, we must listen to the elderly and obey what they say even if we don’t agree. Also, language was a big problem for me when I came here. I agree with the author when she says, “the lack of ability to communication leads to frustration,” I struggled hard to keep up in my first year of high school but things changed with time and I got better with things here.
After reading the article, I can say that I understand many of the points that Elsa makes even though I am not an international student from China. To some extent, I have experienced many of the topic she talks about. Growing up in America, I have seen how the language barrier separates the international students and those who were born here. The part of the existing community and cultural difference is also something that is seen in not only a college environment but also in places like Chinatown. There is already a community with people who are similar to you and share the same culture, why would people like them go out of a comfort bubble that already exists?
Through my reading, I noticed that international students have faced lot of difficulties with expressing their ideas because it’s not easy to communicate in different language and norms. Just by reading the beginning of the article I understood that this article is about controversial issues because starting from the beginning she is trying to persuade something about where the Chinese student were coming from. Also, the purpose of writing this article is not only about explaining the issues, it’s also about feeling and understanding what it means to be a international student. I like the way how she gave a titles for each paragraphs, it’s really unique and clear for all the readers. I wonder if she could provide some statistics or proves, instead of saying, “‘Many or More’ so that readers could trust and feel the population of these students.