Chinese culture and academics

One of the biggest problems I have faced in teaching the Chinese thus far is learning the differences between the English college classroom and the Chinese college classrooms. There are distinct differences both in the etiquette of the classroom and in the peculiarities Chinese students have because of their culture and the way their language is structured. Firstly, Chinese students are just different than those in the United States. They are both more respectful and less respectful at the same time. Cell phones going off, students dozing and students talking in class are the norm in class. Secondly, and I do not mean this as an insult it is just truth, the Chinese students literally have no concept of academic honesty. Their academic culture has no clue what the concept of plagiarism represents. The reason I say that I do not mean this is an insult is because it is not a willful attempt to cheat, although there is plenty of that in China as well. The students just do not understand. It is not a matter of they know the rules and are looking for the easy way out. They truthfully just do not have a relating similar point in Chinese culture. They truly just do not understand the concept of plagiarism, even though I have explained it at least four times. Thirdly, the Chinese language makes writing in English complicated for them. It does not contain anything remotely similar to articles so they have a real issue with using a, an, and the. "The" in particular gives them fits and any piece of writing by them is sure to use "the" when they should not as well as not using it when they should. It is kind of the signature of a Chinese native speaker learning English. They struggle with this perhaps more than anything else. Also, culturally, there style of rhetoric and writing in Chinese is completely different than the way we write in English. Where our academic writing rewards brevity and should contain no unnecessary words, theirs is the exact opposite. They use unneeded words like they are Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a baby and it became a politician. It is a bit hard to describe but culturally, they truthfully seem to think that using a lot of unneeded somewhat confusing language with lots of repetition makes their English language more formal. They also tend to repeat their points several times. In a word (that is sort of an in joke for those that have dealt with Chinese writers) Chinese writing is redundant. It is a real problem for them to think about writing in the way that native English speakers do but otherwise the writing seems immature at best and the rambling ideas of a crazy person at worst. Getting them to conform to new rules is probably the biggest challenge that I have.