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

contacts. The researcher once taught some Chinese students on a foundation course at
Liverpool Hope University, and these students subsequently stayed to study for a
degree. The other recruitment method was snowball selection which involved
participants‘ identification of other students who fit the research selection criteria. The
majority of participants were recruited by the snowball selection method. The profile
of each participant is shown in Table 4.1 below.
Narrative inquiry: autobiography
The study is about the experiences/learning journeys of 18 Chinese undergraduate
students and therefore is subjective based on perceptions rather than objective truth.
With this in mind, the method of autobiography is used. At the beginning of data
collection, each participant was asked to write a life story to provide an overview of
their prior socio-cultural and educational experience. Participants were invited to
write the story on their demographic background, schooling, learning of English,
motivation of studying overseas, initial experience of studying in the UK. The aims of
these stories are to introduce students in their own words, and provide the important
information on the context of their Chinese origin and help me gain a deeper
understanding of how their prior learning experience influence their current learning
in the UK. This method has proved to be a very powerful tool. It has enabled the
participants to tell what have been the most important influences in their learning
journeys, and encouraged them to reflect on their current learning experience in the
UK. The research participants appreciated the opportunity to tell their stories in their
own words.
The length of these stories is between 1000 and 4000 words. These stories are
presented in Chapter 5 and Appendices in the participants‘ original words apart from
correcting spelling mistakes and omitting the identities of people and places. In order
to protect participants‘ identity, their names were anonymised by using pseudonyms.
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