Summary of “International Student Adaptation to Academic Writing in Higher Education”

Adaptation to Academic Writing in Higher Education provides readers with ground-breaking and in depth insights into the complexities of the adjustment of international students to host institutions. The process of adaptation comes from the students’ intrinsic desire to succeed in their respective courses and the eventual participation in their disciplinary community. However, disparities arise in their internal negotiation in relation to what they really value in the writing requirements and the final writing patterns they adopt in composing their texts. The book takes a critical perspective on contemporary views of foreign students. It demonstrates that the students’ process of adaptation to academic practices seems to be a lot more complex than what current literature says. The literature says it is only dependent to language and cultural factors. Writing tends to be a crucial factor to the students’ adaptation. Adaptation to Academic Writing in Higher Education offers rich context for issues underpinning foreign students’ adaptation to academic writing practices in the new institution. It further addresses the analysis of how the international student addresses academic writing from an insider, or an academic point of view. Drawing on case studies from foreign students from Vietnam and China and lectures in Australian higher education, the book traces many unresolved issues pertaining international students’ cultural, linguistic, intellectual and personal persuasions. Adaptation to Academic Writing in Higher Education further reveals complex factors pegged to the adaptation of international students academic writing, including such critical aspects as communicating ideas in academic writing, displaying critical thinking, and transforming learning through negotiating academic writing. Coming to International Students and Distinctive Cultural Writing Traditions, the book delves deep into reviewing of the distinctive Vietnamese and Chinese writing traditions. The book reveals that research writing on contrastive rhetoric, across cultures and intercultural education, shows a great influence on the international students’ writing experiences by their distinctive writing traditions sculptured by their previous schooling experience in their home country. The book further reviews the key factors of the wider context which embodies forms the beliefs and principles underpinning Vietnamese and Chinese writing traditions. Different Approaches to ESL Academic Writing in Higher Education comes into consideration, in attempt to find out how seamlessly home country cultures of international students can dissolve and pave way to more comprehensive learning of ESL academic writing. There many more issues tackled including International Students’ Writing within the Institutional Context. This investigates the international students’ standing in writing within the disciplinary discourse community, and the nature of the students’ subjectivity and agency in academic writing. A notable contribution of this book is the structuring of a transdisciplinary which relies on a modified version of Lillis’ heuristic of talk around text and positioning theory for the interpretation of the perspective of international students’ and lecturers’ within the institutional structure. Handling all these cross-cultural barriers remain the unwavering focus of this book, making a significant attempt to bring up clear knowledge of how these differences influence the entire process of learning and cripples the nature of interaction between members of the academic fraternity.