The speaking competitions are often a joke in China. And, quotations of well known people are abused greatly there as rephrasing doesn't seem to be in Chinese text books. It scares me where this nation is going as its new generation will most likely use only what they've learnt from their plagiarist predecessors.
Cheers and beers

a few months ago, i had to quit which was partially due to my academic program manager's inability to explain all the students what the term plagiarizm meant. well, this manager, a chinese national, never took her time to follow up on the program's guidelines and so i eventually ended up reading some perfect work of others, not my students. worse then that, these students revolted against me as, to them, i was completely unfair.

It's a great pity that you had to suffer a student revolt on account of your principles, but that's how the cookie crumbles in the rotten culture the natives here follow!
Another way that GAC/ACT scam students and their parents is by deliberately failing to mention what happens in the West in contrast to what happens in China re students' initial degrees and job opportunities.
I'll elaborate this point - in the West, it doesn't really matter which university a student has graduated from. but it does matter if said student was among the cream of the crop of his graduating year group. Since degree exam question papers are firstly approved by a body of professors made up from academics from a variety of universities, so as to ensure they are of the same level of academic difficulty, and cheating in exams is very seldom risked by students, potential employers can trust students' grades, and the best jobs go to those with the highest grades, irrespective of which university they attended.
But in contrast, it's far more important for a student in China to have attended a key university than his actual grades in his finals. When Chinese employers participate in job fairs, they will only consider jobseekers from the key universities, and pay less attention to their actual grades. That's why the Chinese think that where their offspring study is of much greater importance than how well they study there. Not true in the West!
It suits GAC/ACT not to highlight this difference while stressing that the GAC courses are of great benefit to students looking to enter top Western universities. But the main problem is that students who end up studying GAC do so primarily because of their parents' ability to pay the high tuition fees rather than because of being the most intelligent! Sadly, many turn out to be unfit academically and mentally to study GAC well. That doesn't worry the providers - they will have made a pretty penny out of the participation of such students! I think, as a former GAC facilitator here in China, you'll have made similar observations in the classroom to mine during my brief time teaching GAC here, and i think you'll agree with me that it is a scam here. Over and out, English expert Gibson.

a few months ago, i had to quit which was partially due to my academic program manager's inability to explain all the students what the term plagiarizm meant. well, this manager, a chinese national, never took her time to follow up on the program's guidelines and so i eventually ended up reading some perfect work of others, not my students. worse then that, these students revolted against me as, to them, i was completely unfair.

plagiarism, the dishonesty or accepting bribes are quite common around the world and the developed countries aren't much different. not long ago, the current US president obama spoke to american students on plagiarizm and i remember jean cretien, the former canadian "prime mistress" that tried to buy votes with second tax rebates in one year..that were just a month before elections. in china, it all seems to have an interesting twist as many people take it for a part of their daily lives. on my first job in china, i experienced some of the local public school teachers that paid to get their jobs there. my wife, a chinese national, was one of them too and when the exams period came, some of the local teachers opted to use the copy machine to teach their own classrooms how to pass the upcoming exams then. that copy machine copied the actual upcoming exams then and my wife only wondered how it could've been that those teachers had gotten a hold of the exams. stunned i was as her students spoke english the best atlhough passed the exams on the worst scores of all other students in the school. for me it was as stunning coz that public school leaders had more respect for those dishonest teachers there and little saved for my wife that was only my friend at that time. to my knowledge, there are still many chinese that actually pay to get their jobs and then they have to suck it up as if they don't there'll usually be repercussions of all sorts. as dangerous as it is for the upcoming generation in this country as they are learning what their older generation is practising and preaching.

cheers and beers to honesty and integrity