The challenge of academic writing for Chinese students within ...

– and I use that capability to push forward my thinking and inform my discussions
and presentations.
My first model – my starting point – represents three overlapping contexts which are
of relevance to the student experience that I am studying: context/s of origin
(Chinese), context/s of destination (UK and, more specifically, England), and the
institutional context/s (HE) within which the students participating in this enquiry
hope to graduate (See Figure 4.1).
Chinese contexts
of origin
Institutional
learning contexts
British
contexts of
destination
Figure 4.1: Contexts of the study
I found I needed to explore in greater detail the content of the overlapping circles that
comprise Figure 4.1. This exploration involved further reading and discussion. The
category of ‗Chinese contexts of origin‘ opened up diverse specialist literatures
relating, for example, to geopolitical and geo-economic contexts, Chinese educational
values, Chinese traditions and family structures, the Chinese education system, and
English language education in China. In exploring these literatures, I found important
sub-topics: for example, the literature relating to geopolitical and geo-economic
contexts opens up subsidiary literatures on students‘ education experiences, urban
versus rural, north versus south, and costal area versus inland area. My reading was a
constant process of discovery.
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