Academic Writing Difficulty of Chinese Students: The Cultural Issue Behind Chinese and British Academic Writing Styles

Zhilong ZHANG

Abstract


In the contemporary society, an increasing number of Chinese students pursue higher education in overseas countries. Through the observation of certain Chinese students in the UK, the author found that English academic writing style brought huge obstacles to these learners. Under such background, this study was conducted in order to help these students better adapt to English academic atmosphere. The author reviewed previous studies and noticed that learners’ cultural background influenced their writing mode. By the comparison of national cultures and writing styles, it is found that the main differences of Chinese and British academic writing styles exist in students’ comprehension of academic argument, the way of utilizing others’ achievements, and the structure of academic writing styles.

Keywords


Academic writing style; Comparison; Chinese and British national culture

Full Text:

PDF

References


Archer, L., Hutchings, M., & Ross, A. (2003). Higher education and social class: Issues of exclusion and inclusion. London: Routledge Falmer.

Browne, J. (2010). Securing a sustainable future for higher education: an independent review of higher education funding and student finance. Retrieved from http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05739.pdf.

Cai, L. J. (2013). Students’ perceptions of academic writing: A need analysis of EAP in China. Language Education in Asia, 4(1), 5-22.

Carrington, B., & Short, G. (1995). What makes a person British? Children’s conceptions of their national culture and identity. Educational Studies, 21(2), 217-238.

Carter, N. (2010). Technical writing basics: Top down structure. Retrieved from https://freelance-writing-articles.knoji.com/technical-writing-basics-ii-top-down-structure/

Cassen, R., & Kingdon, G. (2007). Tackling low educational achievement. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Connor, U. M. (1997). Contrastive rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cottrell, S. (2008) The study skills handbook. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dyson, A., Goldrick, S., Jones, L., & Kerr, K. (2010). Equity in education: Creating a fairer education system. Manchester: Centre for Equity in Education, University of Manchester.

Hogue, A., & Oshima, A. (2005). Writing academic English (4th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

Huge survey reveals seven social classes in UK. (2013). BBC news. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22007058

Hunter, J. (n.d.). The importance of citation. Retrieved from http://www.web.grinnell.edu/Dean/Tutorial/EUS/IC.pdf.

Kaplan, R. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning, 16(1-2), 1-20.

Kaplan, R. (1987). Cultural thought patterns revisited. In R. Kaplan & U. Connor (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp.9-22). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Kavan, H., & Wilkinson, L. (2004). Dialogues with dragons: Assisting Chinese students’ academic achievement. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heather_Kavan/publication/238714534_Dialogues_with_dragons_Assisting_Chinese_students’_academic_achievement/links/58603cb808ae329d61fadbbf/Dialogues-with-dragons-Assisting-Chinese-students-academic-achievement.pdf

Krampetz, E. M. (2005). Writing across cultures and contexts: International students in the Stanford study of writing. Retrieved from https://ssw.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Krampetz_ICE_Final.pdf.

Kurland, D. J. (2000). How the language really works: The fundamentals of critical reading and effective writing. Retrieved from http://www.criticalreading.com/critical_thinking.htm.

Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Lyons, J. (1977a). Semantics (Vols. 1 & 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martin, M. P. (2003). A genre analysis of English and Spanish research papers abstracts in experimental social sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 22(1), 25-43.

Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural differences in academic rhetoric: A text linguistic study. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

McCrone, D. (2002). “Who do you say you are? Making sense of national identities in modern Britain”. Ethnicities, 2(3), 301-20.

Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: software of the mind. Retrieved from http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html.

Moreno, A. I. (1997). Genre constraints across languages: Causal meta text in Spanish and English RAs. English for Specific Purposes, 16(3), 161–179.

Morris, C. W. (1938). Foundations of the theory of signs. In O. Neurath, O. R. Carnap, & C. Morris (Eds.). International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (pp. 77-138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

National Equality Panel (2010). An anatomy of economic inequality in the UK. London: Government Equalities Office.

Piper, D. (1985). “Contrastive rhetoric and reading in a second language: Theoretical perspectives on classroom practice”. Canadian Modern Language Review, 42 (1), 34-43.

Poore, M., & Craswell, G. (2011). Writing for academic success. London: SAGE Publications.

Qi. (2001). Cultural differences in everyday conversation. Retrieved from http://www.qi-journal.com/Culture.asp?Name=Cultural%20Differences%20in%20Everyday%20Conversation&-token.D=Article.

Rowan, K. (2006). Meroitic - an Afroasiatic language? SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, 14, 196-206.

Sapianza, F. (2008). Culture and context: A summary of Geert Hofstede’s and Edward Hall’s theories of national cultures and cross-cultural communication. Retrieved from http://www.filippsapienza.com/CultureContextEnglish.html.

Schrock, J. R. (2013). China vs America - Quality, plagiarism and propaganda. Retrieved from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130606162606556.

Sodha, S., & Margo, J. (2010). A generation of disengaged children is waiting in the wings. London: DEMOS.

Swaffar, J. K., Arans, K. M., & Byrnes, H. (1991). Reading for meaning: An integrated approach to language learning. N Jersey: Prentice Hall.

The Times Higher Education. (2015). The world university rankings. Retrieved from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/world-ranking.

UKCISA. (2015). International student statistics: UK higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/Info-for-universities-colleges--schools/Policy-research--statistics/Research--statistics/International-students-in-UK-HE/#.

Wolfe, J. J. (2007). Six features of academic writing. Retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~rhetoric/morphing_textbook/pdfs/MT0200S07IRSKWR.pdf.

Zhang, W., & Luo, L. (2004). Some thoughts on the development and current situation of college English teaching in China. Foreign Language World, (3), 2-7.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10570

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Zhilong ZHANG

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Share us to:   


 

Online Submissionhttp://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard


Reminder

How to do online submission to another Journal?

If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture