Grading Papers in "Chinglish"

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I have been so busy with school, and halloween preparations and such!

I was grading some papers this morning, and realized how subjective my grading has had to become.  When I give homework, I try to give questions and assignments that will be more open-ended so my students will have some freedom in their answers, and so that they can practice their writing skills.

So this week, we covered learning styles, and keeping motivated when studying/learning, and my assignment for them over the weekend was to write a "personal mission statement"  This meant that they needed to think about what their purpose was, and what they wanted to accomplish in their life.  Mainly, picking a really long-term goal, so that they can stay motivated to work towards that goal.

Here was Susan's answer:

"My mission is to have love and belonging to love my family, become a housewife. My life motivational needs is very simple, just love and family member's health.  Also, Inner harmony is the most important values for me.  I will cook a lot of delicious food and I will make the house clean everywhere.  I hope all my family members happiness and health.  I will buy a lot of time in my home, maybe I haven't contribution to society.  So I want to donate my organ when I die.  I just want to live in a small city to become a kind and wealthy person.  Finally, I want to use a word to describe my ideal life style.  That is laid back."

And here is Aimy's:

"The world peace, I don't have plan to it.  Nowadays is so peaceful so that I can do creat more achievement under this environment.  I think I must enrich knowledge about my interest and my occupation.  As a result, I the wisdom and financial security have ensured.  And another is the love that I hope that I have this attitude for anything and any one.  If these done, my career is (word I can't read) by myself.  I want to be a woman that is wisdom. Beauty. Breave. Healthy and Honorise.  I want to have a job and life in a big city because has more chances and you have to good training in here.  And have a good financial security in the future."

Huh?!?!?!?!?

Ok so here are two examples of the work that I get every week.  In the first, I can at least read it, which is good.  But then this girl's life plan is to cook and keep the house clean, and she doesn't have any plans on contributing to the world, so instead she'll graciously donate her kidney when she dies?  I don't know whether it would be appropriate to re-look at her goals, or if that would be culturally insensitive.

And then the second one?  I don't even know how I can possibly grade that.  It makes absolutely no sense!  The hard thing about my class is that I am teaching a subject course, so I don't have vocabulary.  I don't have any idea what the students know.  And there is such a diverse group in my classes, so some of their English is MUCH worse than others.

So it's a little frustrating...

Anyways though, everything else is going well... Halloween was fun, and now I'm back in the swing of things.  I was walking outside of campus this morning, and saw this:

I took this with my phone, so it's a little blurry, but if you look closely, you can see one man sitting on a little slab of wood, seemingly cleaning that sign or something, but then look up at the roof.  There is a man HOLDING him there.  Literally...I had to look twice... He is holding that rope while the guy sits there and does his work.  And that was about 3-4 stories up!  Anyways, I thought it captured China well :-)

Have a great week!