Acommentary in a recent issue of Washington D.C.-based Chronicle of Higher Education provides a revealing snapshot of what it is like for an American professor to teach a semester in China.

Angela Sorby, a Fulbright professor from Marquette University, has been teaching poetry to students at Xiamen University in Fujian province. Her experience highlights the differences between American and Chinese students.

Chinese students work harder - much harder - than American students. Sorby can delve deeply into the subject she teaches with her Chinese students because she can assume they would have laid the foundation for in-depth analysis by having done their homework. Often, that is not the case with American students, for they will try to "wing it" rather than come to class prepared.