Teaching Styles
You will soon be starting your new course or research project at Surrey. It is important that you understand what to expect from a British education. Three areas sometimes cause concern for new students from overseas:
The amount of formal (classroom) teaching
This may well be less than you are familiar with in your home country. In the British system students are expected to learn how to work on their own (often through specially designed assignments). It is the ability of our graduates to think independently that has made British education so highly respected over the past several hundred years.
Marks
You may well have come from an education system in which very high marks are often given. It can be a shock to be awarded say 60% for a piece of work in Britain when you have always scored 90% at home. Please remember that lower marks are quite normal in the British system - indeed our highest class of bachelor's degree (first class honours) is awarded to the small proportion of students scoring over approximately 70% (not 80% or 90%).
Plagiarism
This is simply using other people's work (either fellow students, or from books, papers or the Web) and pretending that the work is your own. You CAN use other people's work provided you make it absolutely clear where the material came from. For example, the University of Surrey Skills website gives really useful information and advice to help you adapt to study in Britain. Had we simply copied the text from the web-site onto this page and pretended the work was ours then that would have been plagiarism. Accessing this site will give you information on areas such as time management, essay and report-writing and also has some useful advice on the correct use of English.
