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

Academic and pedagogical support
The findings of this study show that Chinese students come from a learning environment
considerably different from that of the UK. Some Chinese students who enrolled on the
undergraduate courses are secondary school graduates, so they have no experiences of higher
education in China let alone of UK HEIs. If the transition to the higher education is difficult
for indigenous students, it is even more demanding for international Chinese students since
not only do they need to learn to adapt to the new learning environment but do so in a second
language setting. In conjunction with language difficulties, Chinese students are facing
unfamiliar academic rules and conventions, and pedagogical approaches of the UK HEIs.
Moreover, often these rules vary from discipline to discipline. Also pedagogical methods are
culturally conditioned and are shaped by the cultural norms of a society (Barrow, 1990;
Kelen, 2002). China and the UK embrace different cultural values and traditions,
consequently, Chinese students who are accustomed to the pedagogical approach of their own
culture would find it an enormous challenge in adapting to the British pedagogy. It is of
paramount importance that the UK HEIs to take into account the cultural issues in their
academic support provision for international Chinese students.
Structured academic support is required to help students understand and familiarize
themselves with academic conventions of the UK HE system. In other word, it is to establish
a ‗third place‘ for international students. The design of academic support might share the
same rationale as for providing language support provision as mentioned above. That is a
combination of pre-sessional and in-sessional academic support programmes. Pre-sessional
academic support programmes might be scheduled during the induction / orientation period,
in which students are offered opportunities to have a general overview of the UK HE
academic culture and expectations of the individual university for their students. The
introduction to academic support services available to international students should be
featured in these programmes. In-sessional academic support programmes might be delivered
by individual faculty or at departmental level depending on the numbers of international
students in each department, and run during the course of their studies. Academic skills
required by their study should be introduced with a greater attention to detail covering lecture
skills, seminar skills, assessment skills, research skills and how to use the library and on-line
resources. Regular drop-in workshops and tutorials might be offered for exchange of study
skills, and for question and answer time. These academic study skills courses might be run
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