Tal was an African student from Gambia who recently began a postgraduate business administration course at a British university. It was the first time he had been to a foreign country, but having won a Gambian scholarship to attend university he was confident of his ability to do well. He applied himself enthusiastically to his studies and felt he had few difficulties with the material presented. However, when he received the first assessment of his papers and contributions to tutorials, he was disconcerted to find they were not very favorable. He was told that although his ideas were ' interesting' he did not keep to the topic, brought in too many irrelevancies and did not present his arguments in a logical manner. Tal was puzzled by this, as his work seemed logical and relevant to him, so he sought advice from Tony, one of his British classmates. Tony showed him some of his papers that had been given good grades, but this only increased Tal's confusion, because Tony's work seemed to Tal to be insubstantial and dull.