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

There is room for improvement, and services currently unavailable for international
students in some universities are in urgent need. The findings of the survey provide
institutions with a benchmark to assess their provision for international students with
an ultimate aim for best student experience. The survey only provides benchmarking
for the extent of provision; as it suggested, it is essential for institutions to assess the
quality of provision, for which student feedback is an importance source of
information (UKCOSA, 2007). A new survey of students‘ academic experience is
indeed required to assess academic quality and academic support provision for
international students, to see if the satisfactory rates are still as high as in 2004 – this
leads us through to issues of cultural and linguistic adaptation that is the central theme
of the following chapter.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed the context of destination – UK HEIs. British higher
education is internationally well-known for its academic excellence in teaching and
learning, and research, which attracts an influx of students from around the world.
There is a wide range of HEIs in which international students can choose to study,
from old medieval universities (e.g. Oxbridge), through civic universities (e.g.
Liverpool) and 1960s plate glass (e.g. Lancaster), and to the new universities of post-
1992 (e.g. Greenwich) and the newest universities (e.g. Liverpool Hope).
Although having individual characteristics, each UK HEI is shaped by the wider
higher educational environment. The massification and internationalization of higher
education have led to an increasingly diverse study body with different social, cultural
and educational backgrounds. UK HEIs need constantly to adapt to this change
institutionally and pedagogically. The marketisation of higher education can be seen
as an institutional response towards growing globalisation of the economy and
internationalization of higher education. It is imperative for HEIs to avoid developing
towards extreme marketisation compromising the institutional diversity, the quality of
learning and teaching, and widening social gaps (Brown, 2008).
A brief review of the literature on international students‘ experience in UK has
identified that international students, especially Chinese international students, are
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