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

Thatcher‘s Conservative government in 1979 the UK HEIs have been under pressure
from funding constraints. The promotion of free market principles, tightened public
funding on higher education and the increasing emphasis on public accountability and
quality control in conjunction with enduring debates on the idea and function of a
university and its changing priorities (Thomas, 2002) have all pushed the UK
institutions of higher education to seek alternative sources of funding nationally and
internationally. International non-EU students have become an important source of
income for many British HEIs. It was reported that a total of £4bn fees were paid by
international students in 2004 and a similar amount of money was spent on living
expenses (Macleod, 2006).
One manifestation of this trend is the internationalisation of the student body. As the
second largest English-speaking destination country for international HEI students,
Britain continues to attract a large number of students from across the world. The total
number of international students enrolled in British HEIs in the 2006/7 academic year
was 239,210 (HESA, 2008), compared with 582,984 in the USA (Open Doors, 2007)
and 171,246 in Australia (AEI, 2007). HEAS statistics show an increase of 7% in
international students (non-UK domiciled) from 2005/6 to 2006/7 (BBC, 2008).
According to recent UCAS statistics, international applications rose nearly 8%, which
anticipates a further increase in numbers of international students in UK to exceed the
previous count of 385,000 (Hodges, 2008). International students were reported to
have made up 15 % of the total student population of 2006/7, 11% of all first degree
students, 41% of all taught postgraduates and 42% of all research students (UKCISA,
2008). It must be pointed out that internationalisation of higher education is not a
British phenomenon, and instead it is an international trend.
British HEIs have been driven to meet the needs and expectations of the diverse
student body with multicultural backgrounds and different educational experiences.
The HEIs are challenged to develop and adopt internationalisation policies and
strategies in a number of aspects of educational provision. Knight (1994) has
proposed a typology of generic approaches to internationalisation for higher
educational institutions to implement at institutional level (Table 2.2).
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