Understanding Essays from Major Areas of Study at PKU!!!!

(P.S. I successfully purchased a new Kindle yesterday. It only took half an hour.)

An interesting week of checking 120 essays (30 more to go on Friday). The assignment was to write a compare/contrast essay comparing the two sons in the “Prodigal Son” story. Or compare two issues from their major area of study. (The assignments mainly cover genre of English essays like Narrative, Descriptive, Cause/Effect, etc.)

The “Prodigal Son” essays were good. One Chinese proverb that was used several times, confused me: “The prodigal son changes gold”. It is not unusual to struggle with translation of proverbs. Within the culture the proverb is immediately understood, but translating it to outsiders becomes challenging. Someone finally gave a translation that made more sense: “A prodigal who returns is more precious than gold.”

But the really fun part of this assignment was reading the essays from those who chose topics from their majors. Remember, these are Ph.D. students in the premier university in China. They are assigned to our classes because their English needs some support, so at times it would be easy to miss the brilliance we are in the midst of. When they switch to their research areas, even their English improves exponentially. I suppose it might be because they read many English research articles??? Anyway, I read some really interesting articles…..I just wish I had any idea what most of them were talking about. One can still correct the English structure because there is consistency in English grammar. In explaining to students how I can grade papers that I do not really understand, I act out Lewis Carol’s “Jabberwacky”. Always fun. I can tell by their eyes that many still don’t quite understand my point, but I continue to try. As I read, I decided it would be fun to share the titles from one of the five classes. Those of you who are more science literate than I, might be able to get the gist of some of these articles:

A Brief Introduction to Vertical and Lateral Two Dimensional Heterostructure

Traditional Media and New Media

Alpha-Bond Versus Theta-Bond Oscillations

Amazing Innovation in Nucleic Acid Amplification

The Problems of the Yangtze River and Yellow River

SPY and SEC

Different Model Organisms

The Control of Holonomic and Nonholonomic Systems

Newtonic Mechanics and Analytic Mechanics

Snow Leopard: the Plateau Defenders

Damage Detection Using Waves

Wireless Communication Dilemma

Differences between Scalars and Vectors

Anammax’s Prospect

Artificial Solid-state Nanopores