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

of the basic cultural background makes it more difficult for me to understand the
lesson. For example, in Stylistic class there are many cultural references such as a
joke or some special connotations of words which confuse me a lot. (Jo,
autobiographical account)
Culture, as ‗socially acquired knowledge‘ (Alptekin, 1993, p.137), plays a significant role
in cognition, which in turn considerably affects comprehension and interpretation.
Therefore, the awareness of cultural background would facilitate students‘ understanding
of a particular subject. Having a good knowledge of dictionary definitions of vocabulary
is insufficient for students to comprehend new information, as Alptekin (1993) stated,
lack of ‗culture competence,‘ defined by Wallace (1988, p.33) as ‗a very complex
package of beliefs, knowledge, feelings, attitudes and behaviour‘ is the underlying issue
here. For instance, one of the participants commented:
Even if I have learned English for many years, there are still a lot challenges.
Lacking the knowledge of local culture and values is probably one of the problems.
Sometimes, we found it difficult to understand the dialects, colloquial idioms and
some pronunciations. Also we need to pay attention to various ideologies in order
to express ourselves more clearly, for example towards politics: people from the
East might have a different view from those from the West or a Muslim world.
(Mia, autobiographical account)
Another interesting issue emerged from the data was the relationship between thinking
and language. Do Chinese students think and form ideas in their native language, and
then express them in English One participant Peter found it quite a struggle to switch
between his first language/dialect and English, and most of time he used his local dialect
to help him thinking. For instance he recalls his mobile number in his dialect before
reciting it in English. Another participant Mia recounted that she used Chinese to assist
her in generating, planning and organizing ideas for writing. Holly remembered at the
outset she read and wrote in Chinese, and then later translated the writing into English.
Learning and teaching styles
There are considerable differences in learning and teaching styles across culture. Chinese
students adjusting to the academic life of UK universities need to adjust to western ideas of
learning, and of pedagogical practice. From the data, it can be seen that the participants have
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