Abstract
This case study explores the problematic issues in academic writing of three Chinese postgraduate students studying in UK academic environment. It aims to attempt to identify mismatches in lecturer and postgraduate student expectations and to understand the reasoning behind these mismatches from the students’ perspective. This study was carried out based on the extended academic essay assignment feedback of three British lecturers on a Postgraduate Masters course in Human Resource Management. By using research method of qualitative analysis, this present study found that eight categories of negative comments. It contains lack of criticality; lack of voice; unreferenced sources, unsubstantiated statements, plagiarism; inappropriate referencing conventions; lack of clear relevance and focus; inappropriate academic style; unclear expression (language concerns) and cohesive and structural weaknesses. And then, it has been concluded that the pedagogical implications of such research are far-reaching. The students themselves require a far greater understanding not only of what is expected of them, but also of how to meet these expectations in practice and trainers need to focus on the development of the schemata.
Highlights
The increasingly popular domain of contrastive rhetoric was introduced in cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education that proposed the notion that first language cultural conventions were often transferred into second language writing performance
Results from this study reveal that Chinese postgraduate students who did not even have the concept of voice, much less the skill to engineer it into their writing
This research study has demonstrated that significant mismatches do exist between the academic essay writing expectations of the three Chinese postgraduate students and the three UK lecturers
Summary
The increasingly popular domain of contrastive rhetoric was introduced in cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education that proposed the notion that first language cultural conventions were often transferred into second language writing performance. Research into cross-cultural writing styles and rhetorical organisation had become widespread. One cultural group that seems to have become of particular interest to researchers was the Chinese. This interest will presumably increase with the dramatically increasing influx of Chinese students into Western educational institutions as a result of improved economic conditions and increased freedom of movement in China. This study will demonstrate the evaluation and contextualisation of a paper by Kirkpatrick (1997) on the influence of traditional Chinese essay forms on Chinese students’ English writing and design a case study, it will be carried out in order to investigate mismatches in anglophone lecturers’ and sinophone students’ expectations regarding academic writing in a British Academic Institution
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