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Studied half a year in the USA, I find we Chinese guys are very good at independent work. We can finish our homework independently most of the time. We can get "A"s in exams. On the other hand, American students usually finish their homework by group study. And relatively they are not so good at exams as us. It seems we can solve problems better than American students. However, real problems in research usually cannot be solved by a single person. If we lack cooperation (spirits, experience and methods), we will not do better than Americans.
In China, we were trained to be highly independent since elementary school. We were taught that one should finish his homework all by himself, otherwise he's cheating. In self-study classes from elementary school to high school, we were not allowed to discuss with others. I don't know how Americans study from elementary school to high school, but for college, I can see the difference. In universities in China, there's hardly group study room in library. I remember there're some in Fudan University's library, but anyway it's not a popular thing over China. In UCI, there're lots of group study rooms in the library. In students' offices, blackboards or whiteboards are provided to be used in discussion. Students are indirectly encouraged to discuss with others. American students like to study together to solve their homework problems. And that's why we graders find they do very well in homework but not as well in exams.
In my opinion, it's not important that by group study they lose some training of independent work. The point is that they gradually learn how to cooperate in solving problems. Cooperation cannot be learned in one day. Someone may say, "Cooperation is easy. For a 4-problem homework, 4 guys study together. Each person solves one problem and then copies the other 3 problems from the other 3 guys. Everybody can do this." However, I don't think this is real cooperation. First of all, copying is not good and one learns hardly anything by copy. Secondly, the 4 people almost don't need to communicate with each other unless the 4 problems are correlated (usually homework problems are not correlated). Thirdly, efficiency does not rise, because each person solves one problem and learns one problem, and the efficiency is the same as that each person solves 4 problems and learns 4 problems. In this example, I would like to suggest a better way: people solve the problems simultaneously by discussion. Apparently this is real cooperation, but problems are raised. How to start simultaneously? What if people's schedules conflict with each other? What if a person's late? During discussion, a person gets stuck even after others explain the problem to him many times. How to deal with this situation? Or people have different opinions toward a problem and they cannot persuade each other. How to resolve the conflict? How about a person keeps talking about irrelevant topics? ... I think it takes a long time to learn to deal with all these situations skilfully and smoothly.
