Chinese Students’ Writing in English: Using visuals and lists

In the UK, Chinese students now comprise the largest international student group; yet, little is known about their university-level writing. This study draws on a large corpus of undergraduate student writing from UK universities. It explores Chinese students’ written assignments in English, contrasting these with assignments from British students across a range of university disciplines. The paper points to the L1 Chinese students’ higher use of visuals, lists and formulae in their discipline specific writing when compared to the comparison group of L1 English students. 摘要. 目前，中国留学生已构成了英国最大的国际学生群体。然而，关于中国留学生在大学层次上的写作情况却鲜为人知。基于英国大学本科生的写作语料，本研究分析了中国留学生的书面作业，并与不同学科的英国大学生的作业进行比较。文章指出，就学科内写作而言，同英国以英语为母语的大学生相比，中国学生使用图型、列表和公式的频率更高

‘Enjoyable’, ‘okay’, or ‘like drawing teeth’? Chinese and British students’ views on writing Assignments in UK Universities

Research in academic writing is a growing field within Applied Linguistics, yielding a wide range of conferences, journal publications and books. However, comparatively little work has been conducted on students’ attitudes towards the production of writing for assessment. This article reports findings from a questionnaire study of Chinese and British students (n=202) across 37 UK universities. The study aims to uncover the extent to which students feel they were prepared for tertiary-level writing, how useful they find assignment-writing, and whether they enjoy this activity. The focus of the article is on the similarities and differences in attitudes towards assessed writing given by the two student groups. Chinese students were selected as a contrast to British students as the former are now the ‘largest single overseas student group’ in the UK with more than 60,000 Chinese people studying in 2008 (The British Council, 2010). Detailed, open-ended responses from the questionnaire were coded and followed up with email and face-to-face interview questions with a subset of students (n=55). The findings indicate that neither student group feel well-prepared for the challenges of tertiary-level writing, and reveal a depth of feeling regarding the enjoyment and perceived utility - or otherwise - of academic writing

Book review of: English Language Teaching in China: New approaches, Perspectives and Standards

Current figures suggest that there are between 200 and 400 million users of English in China (Hansen Edwards, 2007). It has been estimated that there are in fact more learners of English in China than there are native English speakers in the entire United States (Taylor, 2002). This book would seem, then, to be a timely addition for the English language teacher who wishes to understand this huge market

From traditional essay to 'Ready Steady Cook' presentation: Reasons for innovative changes in assignments

The prose essay, case study and laboratory report, composed by individual students in isolation from their peers, used to be the mainstay of undergraduate writing. However, in recent years an array of alternative assignment types such as blogs, letters and e-posters have widened the repertoire of texts expected. This article attempts to describe the reasoning behind changes in assignment types at undergraduate and master’s level at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Data from 58 semi-structured interviews with lecturers in three UK universities is used together with course handbooks and some clarifications with lecturers via email. Suggested reasons for new assignment types are grouped into three categories: external, lecturer-driven and student-driven. The article surmises that, because of these pressures, students are now expected to produce a wide variety of text types, and greater attention should be paid to guidance in new assignments for both native and non-native speaker students

“Enjoyable”, “okay” or “rather pointless”? An exploration of Chinese and British students' views on innovative and traditional assignment types in UK universities

In the U.K., Chinese students are now “the largest single overseas student group” with more than 60,000 studying here in 2006 (British Council, 2008) yet there has been little study of their views towards British assessment methods, particularly innovative assignment types. The focus of this paper is on the similarities and differences in attitudes towards assessed writing between Chinese and British students in U.K. universities. Data was gathered in 2007-8 and consists of 200 questionnaire responses from Chinese and British students studying a wide range of subjects in over 40 UK universities together with follow-up emails and interviews. Students are asked to describe how they plan and write assignments and how this has altered over the course of their university study. Also explored are the use of aids such as electronic and paper dictionaries, translation software and proofreading by native or non-native speakers. The main focus of the study is British and Chinese students’ views of assignment-writing, particularly in relation to recent, alternative assignment types such as blogs, letters and e-posters. Currently students in U.K. H.E. are expected to produce a wide variety of text types with several writers suggesting that more discipline and text-specific help is needed (e.g. Hewings and Hewings, 2001). Jin and Cortazzi have pointed out the “increasingly diverse” nature of Chinese students in the U.K. (2006) and Gu and Schweisfurth suggest that the notion of ‘the Chinese learner’ invites an unhelpful view of homogeneity (2006). In this paper I consider the difficulties facing U.K. university students in terms of the range of writing requirements which are now expected and how British and Chinese students embrace these challenges

Learning from lecturers: What disciplinary practice can teach us about ‘good’ student writing

This study brings together the methodology of corpus linguistics and the framing of academic literacies in an exploration of Chinese and British students’ undergraduate assignments in UK universities. I consider how student writing, particularly that of non-native speakers (NNSs),1 is traditionally framed as deficient writing within corpus linguistics, and discuss how an academic literacies approach challenges this assumption. One finding revealed through the analysis is the Chinese students’ significantly higher use of tables, figures, images (collectively termed “visuals”), formulae and writing in lists, in comparison with the British students’ writing, and the chapter provides data on this from Economics, Biology, and Engineering. Detailed exploration of individual assignments in Engineering together with interview data from lecturers in the three disciplines suggests that high use of visuals, formulae, and lists rather than writing mainly in connected prose is a different, yet equally acceptable, means of producing successful assignments. This is in marked contrast to the usual focus within English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes on traditional essays written in continuous prose. In this paper I argue that writing teachers could usefully draw on an academic literacies approach as a way to expand their ideas of what constitutes “good” student writing and to transform their pedagogical practice in a way that recognizes student diversity rather than deficit

“Do I speak better?” A longitudinal study of lexical chunking in the spoken language of two Japanese students

The prominence of lexical chunks or prefabricated language has grown over recent years, however there have been few longitudinal case studies exploring changes in non-native speaker (NNS) speech and little work done involving NNSs in identifying chunks in their own speech. This study attempts to track changes in two intermediate-level Japanese students' spoken usage of lexical chunks over a period of five months in the UK. Each NNS was recorded three times in conversational long turns at two-month intervals. Twelve native speakers (NSs) were asked to order transcripts of each student's speech by perceived fluency level and three also underlined the lexical chunks; however there was little coherence amongst NSs in these tasks. Identification of chunks using Wordsmith software suggests an overall rise in the percentage of talk within chunks and a reduction in ill-formed chunks over the five months. Following some awareness-raising training on identifying lexical chunks, the Japanese students themselves were asked to identify chunks within their own transcripts. Despite the difficulty of the task, they were able to do this and additionally offered insights into which chunks were common for them. These insights included an awareness of typical Japanese phrases and how they felt their speech had changed overall. A further recording and transcribing cycle suggests that this training resulted in some short-term uptake as the percentage of chunks used increased after the lessons. Both students found it highly motivating to record and analyse transcripts of their talk as they could see progress in their own spoken language development

RAPID ANALYTICAL VERIFICATION OF HANDWRITTEN ALPHANUMERIC ADDRESS FIELDS

Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens, Hitachi, IAPR, NICI, IUF This paper presents a combination of fuzzy system and dynamic analytical model to deal with imprecise data derived from feature extraction in handwritten address images which are compared against postulated addresses for address verification. A dynamic building­number locator is able to locate and recognise the building­number, without knowing exactly where the building­number starts in the candidate address line. The overall system achieved a correct sorting rate of 72.9%, 27.1% rejection rate and 0.0% error rate on a blind test set of 450 cursive handwritten addresses.

Counterexamples to a conjecture of Lemmermeyer

We produce infinitely many finite 2-groups that do not embed with index 2 in any group generated by involutions. This disproves a conjecture of Lemmermeyer and restricts the possible Galois groups of unramified 2-extensions, Galois over the rationals, of quadratic number fields