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

with this a lot. I found the process of gathering arguments is such a suffering. (Rita,
interview)
To write critically is a problem for me and I think my prior educational experience
in China might have contributed to it. I may have been kind of writing critically in
my prior learning, but, in China, writing is just to write what you think without
much research involved. (Vincent, interview)
The participants were aware of the concepts of academic discourse and discourse community.
However they pointed out that they had limited knowledge of how to write in a different
discourse community from the one they were used to, and of what they were expected by
their academic discipline.
Plagiarism is another issue that emerged from the data analysis. Chinese students have been
stereotyped culturally as being prone to plagiarizing and copying (Sowden, 2005; Wyrick,
2001). However, the participants of the research were aware that plagiarism is a serious
offence in the academic community and proper acknowledgement of appropriate sources is
required. They understood that it is wrong to borrow or copy others‘ work without proper
referencing and they were taught not to plagiarize in their previous education in China. The
difference between their experience in China and UK concerning plagiarism, the participants
remarked, was the level of seriousness. The offence of plagiarism was not taken seriously by
teachers in China. There was a lack of clear policy regarding plagiarism at institution level in
China, one participant recalled, in that ‗you would unlikely receive any punishment if you
had been found plagiarising in the writing.‘
Closely related to the issue of plagiarism is the proper referencing system. The participants
voiced the confusion they had with different systems required by different disciplines. The
difficulties were reported to have caused by lack of experience of using referencing systems
in their previous education and of clear instruction provided by tutors on how to reference
appropriately in the UK. Some participants commented:
I‘m always confused with the different referencing systems. Some of my modules
require MLA referencing and others ask for Harvard referencing. In China I had
never come across these different referencing styles (Jo, interview)
We were told to use Harvard referencing but the tutor didn‘t give us examples of
what Harvard referencing is. So I searched it on the internet… but it turned out
there were slight differences from what my tutor requires (Mikki, interview)
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