This question arose in part from the Listening /Speaking passages on homework and asking other students for help.

The discussion also came from one student’s experiences at an American Community College. She wasn’t able to take good notes because the teacher spoke very quickly and the student’s English was not very good.

She emailed other students in the class and asked them to give her their notes so she could study them. I asked her if anyone had actually sent her the notes. She said only another international student but none of the American students.

She couldn’t understand this but, of course, I could. We had a great discussion about student culture in different countries (lots of vocabulary came out of this!).

As the students explained to each other, in some countries, students “stick together” at all costs. Sharing notes is considered helping out your fellow student, and everyone is expected to support everyone else.

In other countries, education is very much an individual endeavor. Asking someone else for their notes can sometimes be seen as not wanting to do your own work and just wanting to benefit from the work of others. As this student soon learned, the situation in the US is much closer to this end of the spectrum.

This was a great opportunity for me to point out to the students why we spend so much time on note taking skills! Being able to take notes is a very important skill, and it’s one my international students need to develop—they may not be able to look at anyone else’s!

My students come from many countries—Italy, Kazakhstan, South Korea, China, France, Spain, and the Dominican Republic. I asked them to tell us any experiences they have had with volunteering.

Some had volunteered in high school: in their own country or elsewhere (India) when they were older. They were very articulate about all the things they learned from this experience even though some had initially been reluctant.

However, the idea that the best colleges in the U.S. would use community service as a way of selecting students was completely foreign to many. When one student pointed out that service shows leadership skills, some of the students were quite adamantly opposed to this concept. In fact, they couldn’t believe anyone would say this. Fascinating, huh?

When pressed, they responded that “leadership skills” can be seen from high test scores. We had a LIVELY discussion. We all left the table with something to think about. Students had mini-debates in groups of 4, 2 on each side for and against the “mandatory” aspect of volunteering.

Students also loved trying to figure out other “oxymorons”—“mandatory volunteering,” “the undead” (students of all countries know about vampires and zombies), a “fake reality,” and so on.