It's a difference in culture. It's a difference in teaching methods. It's a difference in learning styles. And it's no surprise.
In school, I was actually discouraged from memorizing. Learning, as opposed to cramming, it was said, is a better way to become familiar with the material. In other words, memorizing uses a part of the brain that remains very surface. So after you no longer use it, it disappears.
Learning it, however, means that you maintain that knowledge. Means that you can pass on that knowledge.
Chinese people are good at memorizing. In the process of remembering how to read and write tens of thousands of characters, their sounds, and what they mean, they develop an unbelievable skill.
It's sort of astonishing how quickly they can memorize things. For quizzes, I usually give them a topic in the first five minutes of class and about 10-15 minutes to prepare it before presenting. Because it's spoken English, I don't let them read from a paper during the presentations.
The really diligent students don't bother to write things down. They just think about the topic and what they want to say about it.
The majority of my students, however, quickly jot down a little spiel and then memorize it with the rest of the time.
While they are preparing, there are 30+ sets of mouths quickly moving with whistling whispers.
This presents several problems: 1. They are almost universally unable to talk to me spontaneously. They have to prepare every little thing they want to say. It's so bad that a student will (often) ask another student to help when they want to ask a question after class.
2. Sometimes their great skill fails them. They memorize most of it, but can't remember something important. They think for a minute before skipping it entirely. Their quiz winds up sounding like garbled nonsense. And they can't speak extemporaneously to make up for it.
I've tried to explain that this really isn't speaking English. I've tried to combat it by giving less and less time to prepare. I've tried to encourage them to not memorize by making them put all their books and notes away.
But somehow the little scoundrels still stand before class with minds racing around their memorized words.
