Degree by committee.

Last week one of my coteachers asked me to proofread a few pages she had written. It was an abstract for a thesis she was writing for her Masters' program at Suncheon National University. She had surveyed teachers in the area about the differences between their attitudes toward their students and toward their children. Interesting that only 25% responded that they favor their own children more than their students. Anyway, there were a few small problems with it---mostly with collocations and ambiguity---and though the four-paragraph abstract was a little weak compared to American dissertations I've read, it was fine.

She also attached another abstract to hers, written by one of her colleagues. Maybe she didn't think I'd notice, I dunno. I don't recall the exact title of it---it did contain the word "applicability"---and it was summarizing the "applicability" of Yin-Yang and 5 Elements Theory to psychiatry. Sounds a little confusing, and it was. I did a quick read-through of the one page abstract before I attempted to fix grammar and spelling, but I just had to stop. The first paragraph or two wasn't that bad; it was fairly typical of what you get from Korean adults. However, it then came time to address what his study had found. His two conclusions were (1) yin-yang governed everything in the universe, and (2) according to five elements theory, the face is the most important indicator of personality. The abstract didn't say how he arrived at these conclusions or what implications such findings had for the field. These are pretty vague, and widely held, philosophical tenets that, as beliefs, cannot really be proven or disproven. (And, I don't think we can really credit Mr. Kim on the 3rd floor for concluding that yin and yang govern all things.) One could certainly argue about how applicable they might be to psychiatry, but my amateur mind cannot grasp how to do anything more than review the literature and speculate. And, really, these two ideas have been expounded in all kinds of New Age and McBuddhist books for the past decade or two, so it's not like such a position is out of the ordinary. In my mind, his two points should have inspired his study, not have concluded it.

After thinking about it for a few minutes I told my coteacher that I couldn't proofread that paper. She wanted me to just fix up the grammar---which would have been a chore in and of itself that, by Western standards, would be considered appropriation and plagiarism---but to me that'd be like repapering the walls of a bombed-out building. Academic writing in English is quite a difficult skill for people to acquire---my time in a university writing center showed me exactly how many native speakers suck at it---and something that takes years of development and thousands of dollars of tuition. I didn't think I could give a lesson on successful academic writing and linear discourse in my 45-minute break time. I didn't see the sense in cleaning up a thesis like that, although I think my coteacher told her colleague---another teacher at our school---that it was kinda beneath me, because he seemed upset at me, wouldn't talk to me, and eventually gave the paper to another (Korean) English teacher to fix.

Before I finally said that I wouldn't proofread the paper, I told her my problems with it, and gave her a few suggestions to pass along to her colleague. I also said that he ought to meet with his academic advisor in order to strengthen his abstract and frame his research properly. I said that if he makes the changes I'll be able to reread his abstract. She said that he was very busy and didn't want to take the time to do any more changes.

The strange thing about all this is that these papers are being written in English. In fact, my coteacher translated her colleague's paper (which was now on its way to be proofread by another Korean English teacher, with disastrous results I'm sure). That seemed bizarre to me since neither was being written for a language program or the education department. I asked another coteacher later why they were writing in English, and he told me that all theses and dissertations had to be written in Korean and English.

That knowledge makes things a little more tricky. First of all, there are different styles of writing and argumentation between English and Korean. (Yeah, I know some people hate idea of culture-bound discourse patterns, and I'm not suggesting I agree with the rigidity of Kaplan, but if you have a look at the opinion pages of the Korea Times or Herald, you'll notice a difference.) A paper that might make perfect sense in Korean would, when translated into English, be pretty weak.

Moreover, a topic like his would have different implications for Korean and American audiences, and a review of each language's literature would likely take you in two different directions, assuming the author is even skilled enough to intelligently read in both languages.

There are also different ideas about ownership of text, so in Korean it might be perfectly reasonable to conclude that yin and yang govern all things, as such a position has millenia of roots in this part of the world. As readers are assumed to agree with it, even before Mr. Kim comes along, is there any need to prove it, and is there any reason to attribute it to a particular world view?

Likewise, quote-unquote English words that make little sense to native speakers might convey a lot of meaning to a Korean audience. This is one of the pillars of Konglish. Words that seem out of place or inappropriate to native speakers convey a certain feeling or meaning to Koreans. Just look at words like "wonderfull" (sic), "ubiquitous," "bravo," and "gentle(man)."

It brings into quesiton who the audience really is. Ostensibly the bilingual approach is to appeal to an international standard, and to increase potential readership. But I have to wonder who spends their time sifting through the English-language theses at lil' ol' Suncheon National University. Oh, I'm sure that any half-decent academic at Suncheon University would spend some time looking through the research already compiled there, but I also suspect that they'd be searching among the Korean versions, not the English ones. Who's to say that the two are even the same? Are they? If one writes a paper in Korean, following Korean standards and patterns, and another paper in English following academic English standards, wouldn't they be considered two papers anyway?

And who's judging the English content anyway? Would an academic advisor outside the English department be able to understand what's written? Hell, would an academic advisor inside the English department understand it? Would an academic advisor understand it in a different way than a native speaker would? To which standards should a thesis written in English in Korea be held? Would a shitty English thesis prevent anybody from earning his/her post-graduate degree?

As somebody who likes writing---but despises academic writing and its authors who have no trouble writing a lot of words without saying anything at all---I was a little upset to see so little thought given to the sanctity of the written word. I was a little amused at the perversity of this "degree by committee" process: one person writes a paper, another person translates it, and a third proofreads it. I guess it's not too different than having an overbearing advisor back home who would love nothing more than to see his name all up in every internal citation. But, still, if getting a Master's from Suncheon National University is so easy, I think I'ma pick mine up next week.

Anybody else have any insight into proofreading papers or the degree-awarding process at universities here?

* Edit: I guess it's not too different than having a team of research assistants, and I think the Western academic world puts a little too much stock in the pursuit of originality. I know if I were writing in a foreign language I'd run my paper past anybody who would read it before I submitted it. Just found the whole situation weird, that's all.