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

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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING JOURNEYS Introduction As part of the methodological approaches for the research, all participants in the research were asked to write a life story to provide an overview of their prior socio-cultural and educational experience. Participants were invited to write about their demographic background, schooling, learning of English, motivation for studying overseas and initial experience of studying in the UK. The aims of these stories are to introduce students in their own words, and provide important information on the context of their Chinese origin to help readers gain a deeper understanding of these students‘ learning experience in later chapters. The length of these stories is between 1000 and 3000 words. In total, there were 18 life stories. Six of them are presented in this chapter in participants‘ own words without any editing apart from omitting the identities of people and places and smoothing out infelicities of grammar and spelling. These six particular autographical accounts were chosen based on these students‘ interesting learning experiences and their active engagement in the research. The remaining twelve stories are attached in Appendix 8. In order to protect participants‘ identity, their name was anonymized by using pseudonyms. In order to help readers visualize where these six students featured in this chapter come from, the location of their hometown in China is illustrated below and each participant‘s hometown is represented by a number on the map (Figure 5.1). Figure 5.1: student participants‘ hometown locations in China 118
These particular six student stories were chosen because they develop three themes that emerged from the students‘ stories and subsequent interviews: communities of learning, learning across language boundaries and becoming an independent learner. A few days before the one-to-one interviews, I asked each participant to recall and locate their learning experience on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is the lowest while 10 is the highest score). The first diagram represents their attempts of assessing the value of their learning experience as they perceived it from a very early age until now. Second diagram represents their assessment of learning experience in the UK. The diagrams used in this chapter are used to help readers understand the students‘ own perceptions of their learning journeys. They are not external measurement of their journeys. Figure 5.2 to 5.13 are not measured against any norms. At the beginning of each narrative, a table is created to provide basic information of each participant. Communities of learning The following section relates to Chapter 6. Chapter 6 draws on many student voices but in this section, I am trying to provide a sense of two particular life narratives related to a particular theme of ‗communities of learning‘. In doing so, these two autobiographical accounts might enhance understanding of those students‘ learning journey through their own words. Louis Age Gender Degree subject(s) Length of study in UK to date 21 Male BA Business and English Study Hometown (on Fig 5.1) Notes One year No.1 Participant of a ‗2+2‘ exchange programme 12 I was born in south China. My hometown is a small but very special city. It is located between two provinces, a relatively isolated position with a unique culture here. We speak a dialect which is totally different from other languages. We also have many special customs such as weddings, funerals, festivals. This culture shapes special personalities of the people here. 12 His Chinese university has a ‗2+2‘ exchange undergraduate programme (2 years study in China plus 2 years in the UK) with his university in the UK. 119
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TRANSFORMATIONS THROUGH LEARNING: T
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people
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ABSTRACT This thesis explores the e
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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .........
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Learning and teaching styles ......
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LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: Layers of
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CHAPTER 1: CONTEXTS OF ORIGIN Intro
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of openness (Deng 1984). China‘s
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p.249). They are restricted by the
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These schools of philosophy pervade
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and Northern Dynasties (386 - 581)
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Benevolence (ren) is the characteri
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Daoism‘s doctrine of non-action (
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Neo-Confucianism Neo-Confucianism w
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Chinese education values / underlin
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imperial civil service examination.
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The Chinese education system As the
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National College Entrance Examinati
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eferred to as a ‗jargon of broken
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Private learning of English has bee
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proficiency by taking the Test of E
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CHAPTER 2: CONTEXTS OF DESTINATION
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The original six civic universities
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University and Liverpool Hope Unive
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People‘s (1949) to policy change
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Massification of higher education T
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Thatcher‘s Conservative governmen
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Internationalisation ‘at home’
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modules at the University of Wales
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prospective students would certainl
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The lower satisfaction of East Asia
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Some international students take up
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challenged linguistically and cultu
Page 67 and 68: From the perspectives of psychologi
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Page 73 and 74: settings; when reaching the end of
Page 75 and 76: (comprehension) in order to grasp e
Page 77 and 78: overwhelming advantage over any oth
Page 79 and 80: approach - by Biggs. The strategic
Page 81 and 82: version of the SBQ inventory - Stud
Page 83 and 84: The concepts and constructs of appr
Page 85 and 86: attend not only to his or her own t
Page 87 and 88: L2 research on transfer in writing
Page 89 and 90: their native language to assist the
Page 91 and 92: The next section of this chapter ex
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Page 95 and 96: PART II - RESEARCH DESIGN This part
Page 97 and 98: I started primary school at the age
Page 99 and 100: after my study. However, in 1998, t
Page 101 and 102: In my previous studies, I taught th
Page 103 and 104: - and I use that capability to push
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Page 107 and 108: The methodology has built on - grow
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Page 111 and 112: Its total student population is rel
Page 113 and 114: contacts. The researcher once taugh
Page 115 and 116: Data collection phase two Value of
Page 117: PART III - INTERPRETATIONS This par
Page 121 and 122: I think this culture shapes a very
Page 123 and 124: much in the first year except I mad
Page 125 and 126: was like a nightmare with fear and
Page 127 and 128: Figure 5.6: Ridi‘s perception of
Page 129 and 130: Again I was especially weak in list
Page 131 and 132: ecause I knew too little English to
Page 133 and 134: Figure 5.11: Peter‘s perception o
Page 135 and 136: The academic life here is higher th
Page 137 and 138: High School. In the second year, I
Page 139 and 140: CHAPTER 6: COMMUNITIES OF LEARNING
Page 141 and 142: … Since I was a child, my father
Page 143 and 144: would love to repay my family by be
Page 145 and 146: Chris was another participant who h
Page 147 and 148: having them completed as soon as po
Page 149 and 150: just have some short conversations
Page 151 and 152: found in Appendix 9. This finding c
Page 153 and 154: It was the kind of student-tutor re
Page 155 and 156: Chinese students are studying in co
Page 157 and 158: confidence gradually increased with
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Page 161 and 162: prior English learning experiences
Page 163 and 164: een aware of the differences in rel
Page 165 and 166: learning and study skills, research
Page 167 and 168: Writing for academic purposes All p
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insufficient subject knowledge. In
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Previous studies (Arndt, 1987; Cumm
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perceived better practice than that
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factors, two other driving elements
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I believed that it would be more ch
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they spent some time studying in th
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get to learn their culture and to l
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of consulting with their parents ha
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awareness or intercultural understa
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I‘m disappointed with things are
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the interview that they have develo
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CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMEN
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elationship for these students is t
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students in this study value learni
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students from their home country an
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elated to professional practices, c
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Academic and pedagogical support Th
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their place of origin. They appreci
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are felt being genuinely accepted a
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support services and departmental a
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assistance to facilitate the achiev
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Having said all this, academics nee
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students‘ voices which are not of
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Angelova, M. and Riazantseva, A. (1
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Brown, R. (2009) The Operation of t
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Coffield et al. (2004) Learning Sty
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Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, cited in
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Guclu, N. (1993) A Study to Identif
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T. Duffy (2002) Psychometric Proper
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Krapels, A. R. (1990) An Overview o
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MacLeod, D. (2005) Colleges to Gain
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Ministry of Education of the People
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Perl, S. (1979) The Composing Proce
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Shi, L. (2006) The Successors to Co
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Thomas, G. (2002) Who Should Call t
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Ward, C. and Kennedy, A. (1996) Cro
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Zamel, V. (1984) In Search of the K
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Appendix 2: Consent form Title of r
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SECTION 4. CONSENT Is written conse
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SECTION 5. RISKS AND ETHICAL PROCUD
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Deanery Research Ethics Coordinator
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Appendix 5: Instruction on writing
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Notes: 1. Prompts for each question
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to come back and I regrouped with m
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Peter: I came to the UK in Septembe
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with them even more. Let me give yo
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second, or to say, my third languag
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Appendix 8: Student learning journe
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way as your first language. In othe
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When I recall my high school years,
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Figure 8.6: Mia‘s perception of h
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Max Max is a 24 years old male Chin
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My father arranged a house for me t
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Figure 8.10: Vincent‘s perception
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Alex‘s graphs of his learning exp
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classmates, I do not know why. Prob
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cultures, economic and legal system
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the fame of Foshan‘s china indust
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Figure 8.17: Kent‘s perception of
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languages. They had been chosen by
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teaching styles were different. In
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I have studied in UK for almost two
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Figure 8.24: Andy‘s perception of
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