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I spent the allotted discussion time explaining the content we were supposed to discuss, by any means I could think of, and I’ve done so ever since. Perhaps this is why the room was so divided on my first day. Maybe younger students, with more recent experience in the Australian university system knew to avoid becoming unpaid tutors for their classmates. The workload is overwhelming enough without having to piggyback someone else through it too. Just five weeks in I’m feeling the drain.

To be fair, it’s mostly other Chinese students with slightly better English who take on this responsibility day-to-day. There’s nothing stopping me leaving them to it and switching seats in class, but when it comes to assessment there is often no such option. The university assessment process is heavily weighted towards group activities, hence my barely-beyond-teenage friend’s free bilingual speed-tutorial on contemporary film making.

Either he’s an exceptionally patient and placid specimen of 21st century masculinity or this isn’t his first time at the language-gap group assessment rodeo because he did a spectacular job and didn’t seem even slightly surprised at having to do it. Simply observing made me so furious I fired off an email to the head of the course offering some “feedback” on the group assessment paradigm as my privilege and middle-aged bad temper compels me to, but what of my young Chinese friends?

“Group Assessment work enables the students to develop communication, cooperation and teamwork skills,” says a 2019 publication from my university titled “Assessment Processes”. The bloody cheek of it. It goes on, “Group assessment work is inclusive and accessible: it enables full participation by students from diverse backgrounds.” Mmm hmmm. It’s a pity the classes don’t.