Comma splices, be damned!

My minors just handed in papers where they were asked to write a paper defining either Strength or Education.  You never know what you’ll get.   I asked them not to come to me with a dictionary’s definition of strength or education.  They needed to come up with their own thesis.  We reviewed that a thesis for a definition paper should look like this:   “Topic + is + Definition.  Topic + can be found in + 2-4 examples.” 

Lemon wrote a fairly short, to-the-point essay, stating:  “Strength means the power that supports a people to deal with issues or overcome difficulties.  Strength can be solid, such as a firm will or a strong body to overcome hardness.  It can also be as liquid like a warm heart to show loving care for everyone without any prejudice.”

He then proceeded to provide two very different examples of strength:

“On the one hand, strength can be hard, which means bravery and firmness.  Strength is the hardness to face the tough issues of life or to shoulder the responsibilities that no one wants to undertake.  We can see this kind of solid strength from the fearless police officers in Hong Kong who bravely protect citizens from the terrorists and mobsters and keep the peace there.  Moreover the students around me diligently do medical experiments until midnight everyday also show that sort of strength. Their school life focuses on experiments.  In their academic work there is no time for them to relax.  They are leading such a tough lifestyle, but we haven’t heard any complaints from these guys!”

(Dave and I have both noticed how quick the minor students are to bring up Hong Kong and politics into our discussions, especially when we go out of our way not to wrestle with that issue.  It feels as though their nightly news is announcing the role the US is playing in the struggle. They then walk into class and lo-and-behold  see an American.  They thus feel as though it is their civic duty to make sure we know what is going on….)  Lemon, however, just touches on the politics, and then jumps over to the safer example of strong medical researchers, burning the midnight candle.

He then turns from bravery and hard strength to  “liquid strength”:

“On the other hand, strength can be soft as well, which means devotion and love.  Strength is the softness to devote oneself kindly into magnificent careers, such as volunteer projects or to warm up the society by offering helping hands to everyone I meet.  We can see this kind of liquid strength from the volunteer teachers in rural areas in China.  These teachers work in the poorest village schools where there is even no electricity or portable water supply for free.  They abandon their comfortable city life, and work toughly in rural areas, just because of their sympathy and love for these poor kids.  And my grandma, who was always willing to help her neighbors and passers-by.  She was appraised as having great strength within by our villages.  Surely she has this liquid strength.”

He concludes:  “Strength is a positive word and people use this word to symbolize the power without and within.  It can be a solid, powerful word to describe bravery and strong will.  Moreover, it can be a liquid mild word to describe devotion and fraternity.  With the strength – both solid and liquid – our society could be a better place full of active people brave and loving.”

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Another essay that veered into the political in a surprising way was Isa’s essay on strength.  As a bit of background, a grammar issue that I frequently see in Chinese writing is comma splices:  two sentences fused together by a lone, weak comma.  As I illustrated for my students:  I hate comma splices, they make me crazy.   This was not a problem that I saw as often in American students’ writing.  Americans tend to play it safe.    If they’re nervous about writing, they’ll go for the simple sentence every time. 

Chinese is different.  The more semi-colons, the more whiches and thats that can be strung together, the better.  This is partly a cultural linguistic matter.  Chinese sentences allow, indeed encourage, a number of images/ideas to be stacked together.  Each image builds off the other. Just as their characters shape-shift depending upon what they stand next to, their sentences take on multi-dimensions, depending upon how they are stacked up together.   It’s thus not unusual to find a sentence like this:  “Those who have experienced the earthquake, when they are waiting for rescue under the ruins, there is no food, no water, so what supports their weak body, it is their strong spiritual strength.”  The accumulation of phrases stacked should make you feel the strength of the lone person, waiting for rescue as her spirits grow weak. 

One of my students, Isa, actually told me that high school teachers encourage students writing in English to write long and complex sentences.  You get more points on the exam, the longer the sentence.  She was shocked, when I pointed out that this was a problem in her last paper. 

Her introduction on strength thus starts out very carefully.  Clear and short sentences were her guiding light:

 “Life can be hard sometimes.  We may need to face a lot of things, and there will be a lot of difficulties.  We need to hold on.  It is necessary to show the world our courage and determination.  Strength is the ability that something has to resist, hold heavy weights, or the quality of being brave and determined in a difficult situation. There are three examples of strength.  The first can be found in creatures from nature, the second is about Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the third one is about advantages.”

As you can probably guess from this list of examples, Isa has a lot more to say about the “Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” (aka WW II) than creatures in nature or the more ambiguous “advantages.”  

We learn in the paragraph devoted to creatures in nature that Ants can lift 100X times their weight:  “When I was a child, I liked to stay in the background and observe them.”

We learn in the paragraph about “advantages”:  “Last but not least, strength can present advantages.  It can be the quality that a person has that gives him an advantage.  When we want to compliment someone, we say he has a lot of strengths.”

But the paragraph talking about the “Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” dominates the essay:

“Chinese people have gone through a difficult period of anti-Japanese War, which began the war of resistance on September 18, 1931 at the Mukden incident and ended in 1945 which lasted for 14 years.  This was is the most important war in the history of Chinese Nation and is not only a war about Chinese people against Japanese aggression, it was also an important component of World War Against Fascism which brought victory, victory means that China had completely won the battle against the foreign invaders for the first time in modern times.  At this time the main political parties in China were Communist and nationalists, the two parties are rivals, they fought each other.  But during this time, the two parties came together and fought foreign aggressions…”

Comma splices be damned when you’re writing about foreign aggression.  There is really no way to demonstrate the power of the people without dropping the foolish grammar rules introduced by the Imperial powers and writing with the passion that you really feel when you want to explain about the aggression that your country faced and the strength with which they combatted it!

*                           *                           *

A third student, Brittany, chose to write her essay on Education.  She offers three examples of education: “Education means a high level diploma and getting a well-paid job with social superiors….  It also is getting to know the right standards to treat others and personal behavior.  Finally, it is keeping yourself hungry and foolish to pursue the truth of life instead of focusing on personal benefits.”

In her paragraph devoted to traditional education – the high level diploma and getting a well-paid job, she writes:

“... Many companies hope their company leaders who represent the firm will be graduates from top universities, so during the promotion process education level is always taken into account.    Take my father, for instance; my father is an expert in generators.  He helped solve many issues for the company he worked for.  Now working as a manager of his department, my father knows clearly that this is the position where he will retire from because a higher position requires bachelor degree, and my dad never made it.  Intellectual education builds the stairs which you step on to achieve higher goals.’

She then turns to the education involved when working with others:

“Another aspect of education I call personality education.  Just because a person has achieved the average level of education background or higher, it doesn’t mean that you have fulfilled education.  How you treat others, your family members how you behave in public.  All items need another sort of education, and it is absolutely necessary.  I know an uncle who graduated from one of the top universities in China, 20 years ago.  It is universally acknowledged that he would be the social elite who earned a lot of money.  On the contrary, when he first worked in the company, he didn’t know how to respect others, he didn’t know the polite way to talk to others, that his words made people angry, he didn’t know how to treat his parents, he has never been educated in this aspect.  Knowledge is important, but you need to be a good person first.”

(Again, notice how those comma splices appear when an accumulation of frustrations needs to be expressed.  You really can feel how much he was educated and yet still how much of a disappointment he was to the family.)

She ends surprising me with her final example:

“Last, but not least, education is keeping yourself hungry and foolish to pursue the truth of life instead of always focusing on personal benefits.  After having enough knowledge in your major to make a living and being a well-behaved person with good manners, there is still an important road from anybody to a somebody. The difference between these two kinds of people is the willingness to follow lifelong self-education.  For example, what makes Steve Jobs himself?  As his speech at Stanford says: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”  Lots of people get lost when they achieve economic independence because they don’t know what else to obtain.  That is when you need mental education to help find yourself a higher goal that has nothing to do with personal benefit.”

She concludes:  “Education is a lifelong thing.  For me, it can be divided into intellectual education, personality education and mental education.  All of these three aspects work together to make you an integrated person.”

I love these essays because they are so Chinese – in their values, in their grammar, in their outlook. I feel privileged with what the students seem willing to share.  I also feel that  as I receive a brief glimpse into their lives --  their unfortunate, outspoken Uncle, their hardworking father, their history teacher anxious to teach them about a modern war that China won-- I am being educated as well. These little exercises could so easily be formulaic.   When I assign them in the US, strength is about a lost or won sports game; education is a summer camp experience or drinking  when you are underage.   In these students’ hands, they end up educating me about the anxieties, hopes and dreams of a new China.