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

Private learning of English has been thriving. Most popular private learning has been through
TV and radio broadcasts of English language programmes, such as the popular English TV
show Follow Me in the 1980s, and Family Album U.S.A. in the1990s. English Corners
(yingyu jia) have been the favourite place for English learners to discuss and converse in
English. Students and adult learners attend evening or weekend English classes. The
popularity of English and its official status was enhanced with China‘s entry into the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and Beijing‘s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games.
The importance of English has also been reflected in the development of ELT in the formal
education system. English has been highly promoted in the secondary school curriculum and
higher education since the opening up of China to the world in the late 1970s. English is a
core subject for entry examinations in secondary schooling and a compulsory subject for
entry into universities. English is also compulsory in the entry examinations for master‘s and
doctorate levels of study. The instruction time allocated for English in secondary schools has
generally increased from 656 hours in 1978, 768 hours in 1982 (Adamson, 2004) to 1000
hours currently. Irrespective of their majors in Arts or Science, non- English majors‘ students
in universities are required to study English. A pass in the College English Test Band Four
(CET-4) is a prerequisite for obtaining an honours degree at undergraduate level. For able
students who would like to demonstrate their high level of proficiency in English they can
choose to take CET-6 (optional). For English majors, different English test systems, which
set a much higher standard than the tests for non-English majors, are used to assess their
English proficiency.
The year 1982 was a turning point in secondary school English curriculum with a set of
revised new textbooks and new syllabuses emphasizing learning of foreign cultural and
scientific knowledge (Adamson & Morris, 1997). In the new textbooks political contents that
prevailed in previous textbooks were removed in favour of the introduction of western culture
and scientific knowledge. In the revised 1982 curriculum, the pedagogical approach to ELT
was a mixture of traditional Chinese methods of a structural/Grammar-Translation approach
and Western methods of Audiolingualism and the Functional/Notional approach (Adamson &
Morris, 1997; Hu, 2002a). The audio lingual approach was characterized by oral drilling
through repeating structural patterns and phrases; and pronunciation, intonation and stress
were practised through oral repetitive drilling. Although there was an infusion of the oral
repetitive practice, emphasis was still placed on stressing learning grammar rules,
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