The United States is a preferred destination for higher education for international students. The Open Doors Report, an annual publication of Institute of International Education (2013) in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, states that there are 819,644 international students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. This is a 10% increase from 2012–2013. This is also the seventh consecutive year Open Doors reports an expansion in the number of international students. In the mid-1950s, international student enrollment was 35,000, so international education in the United States has come a long way.

Although international education may have come a long way, many questions still need to be addressed. How satisfied are international students with the educational services they are getting? How ready are the teachers to teach large numbers of international students? Is international education enrolling many international students and having them study in the existing system designed for domestic students? Or should it create new educational policies that aim to serve the needs of the “newcomers” who have a different culture of learning?

Currently, there is an urgent need to create up-to-date educational policies that serve a plethora of needs stemming from differences in the educational backgrounds of students in freshman composition courses. Instructors need to get to know students’ culture of learning because, if students are not familiar with the methods and the approaches a teacher uses to deliver lessons, effective learning may not take place.

What is culture of learning? Culture of learning, also known as cultural transmission, is how a group of people learn and pass on information to each other. Learning styles are very much affected by the way socialization takes place in a culture. Cortazzi and Jin (1996) state that the term includes “socio-cultural aspects of key practices, expectations and interpretations of learning” (p. 5). Although each student is unique, students from the same country most probably share a similar culture of learning influenced by their educational background. This educational background is mostly built on the cultural and educational policies of the country of education.

This is an important concept for the classroom environment in terms of syllabus design, teaching, and assessment. If there is a mismatch between the culture of learning of a student and the teacher, there may be challenges both for the learner and the teacher. Cortazzi and Jin (1996) claim the importance of culture by stating “it might be a determining factor on what happens in language classrooms and what is judged to successful language learning” (p. 4). Therefore, culture is also a determining factor for second language writers when they are learning to write in new academic contexts and genres.

U.S. universities have certain academic expectations of international students, and international students have expectations of their new schools. Yet these expectations may not match. Thus, the scholarship on cultural studies related to culture of learning, an often overlooked and neglected concept, is gaining traction. There is a need to step out of our cultural bubbles and familiarize ourselves with the cultures of students. It is important to acknowledge that it is not an easy practice to learn about each and every student’s culture of learning in very diverse educational settings. It is a challenge, yet we should take a step toward educating ourselves in this issue.

Given the increase in the number of Chinese students now studying in U.S. colleges and universities (they constitute 26% of the international student population), an important first step for U.S. L2 compositionists is to educate ourselves about Chinese culture of learning. This study looks into how Chinese students studying in a research university in the United States perceive their own culture of learning and the culture of learning in the United States and how they feel about being in the new system.

Rationale

International student enrollment at Purdue University has increased drastically since 2010–2011. Purdue University’s (2013) Fall 2012 International Student and Scholar Enrollment and Statistical Report says that the university now has 9,505 international students from 126 countries (para. 3). In 2011, a large number of international students enrolled in freshman composition courses. Chinese students ranked first in this enrollment, with 1,700 Chinese students enrolled.

In my freshman composition course of 15 students, 11 were Chinese. At this point, I regret to say I did not know much about the Chinese culture or educational system, so I was wondering how I could teach this group of students effectively. I was an English language teacher coming from a Turkish-American educational background, whereas my students were mostly Chinese students in a U.S. context. This put me in a complex, threefold cultural interaction.

First, I decided to take a step toward understanding students’ perceptions to see if they had an understanding of what was expected of them in their previous and current educational settings. By no means do I aim to place cultures into boxes or discriminate one over the other. All I wish to do is to gain an understanding of how students perceive their previous and present culture of learning so that I can be of more assistance to them. The U.S. educational system generally requires students to be assertive and participate in classes, yet Chinese students tend to be on the quiet side and prefer listening. What do students think about these issues?

The Project

I conducted semistructured interviews with 10 undergraduate freshman composition students on their perceptions on Chinese and U.S. cultures of learning. One student had come to the United States to attend high school and had stayed for her higher education. Because she had spent more time in the United States, she had been exposed to the U.S. education system and culture longer than the rest of the class. She had advanced-level English proficiency. The other 9 students had just come from China and were experiencing the U.S. education system for the first time. They had intermediate to advanced English proficiency.

The interview included open-ended questions for further elaboration. These questions, based on my in-class observations, asked students why they were often quiet in class, why they tended not to raise their hands and participate, how they were expected to behave and whether they were expected to participate in the Chinese classroom, how they were expected to behave in class and participate in the U.S. classroom, what the role of the teacher is in the Chinese classroom was, how they perceived the role of the teacher in the U.S. classroom, and in which system they feel more comfortable.

At the end of the interview, students were shown the findings of a study called Chinese students’ views about teachers of English in China (Jin & Cortazzi, 2006, p. 105) and they were asked whether they agreed with these views.

Findings

Chinese students views’ on Chinese culture of learning:

• Teachers always speak and ask questions.
• Teachers are the authority.
• Teachers deliver a lot of information.
• There is no chance for students to speak.
• Students do not ask questions in classes because it is not their role and teachers have a lot to explain so students do not want to interrupt.
• Students are afraid of talking, losing face, and making errors.

Chinese students views’ on U.S. culture of learning:

• Teachers ask for students’ opinions.
• Teachers do not care if the answer is right. She or he cares that you participate.
• Communication is three way. Teacher talks to students, students talk to teacher, and students talk to each other.
• Teachers guide you, not control you.
• Students have self-autonomy.
• Students get individual attention.
• Not easy to adapt to this system, change gears at once; very challenging process.

Discussion and Conclusions

These findings indicate that students are very well aware of the differences between the education system that they are in and the one they come from. They are not responding to the U.S. education system and they are remaining silent in the classroom, not because they do not know the expectations of the U.S. education system or do not care. They are definitely not just “empty vessels” just sitting there. They are just saying, “We like the U.S. education system, yet it is taking us a lot of time to get used to it.” They claim they are enjoying the freedom and expression of speech they did not have back home.

When asked about how they felt in their current institution in the interviews, some students reported, “We feel comfortable in the U.S. education system, we like it yet it is taking us a lot of time to get used to it.” They claim they are enjoying the freedom and expression of speech they did not have back home.

As Ronaldo (1989) points out, “Thought and feeling are always culturally shaped and influenced by one’s biography, social situation, and historical context” (p. 131), so it is a challenging experience to exist in a new educational setting. Students are “individuals-in-context” who should not be expected to exist separately from their social worlds (Atkinson, 1999, p. 642).

Scholars and institutions need to respect this otherness arising from cultural differences. Therefore, it is important that scholars are aware of the cultures and cultures of learning of their student population so that the academic needs of these students can be met in the new environment they are in. Guiding international students will involve creating appropriate pedagogies “to prepare learners to be both global and local speakers of English and to feel at home in international and national cultures” (Kramsch & Sullivan, 1996, p. 211). The feeling of being at home will decrease students’ affective filter, as Krashen points out, making them better learners of another language.

When we have “explicit understanding of each other’s culture, this would mean mutual convergence of cultures of learning” (Schumann, 1978a). Such convergence will create a positive learning environment that combines “cultural synergy” (Jin, 1992). This may aid learners to have more motivation, confidence, and interest in learning in the new and unfamiliar education context they are in and may help them become better learners. To make this happen, I propose the following:

• Writing instructors in the United States should be provided with staff development and intercultural training sessions to raise awareness on linguistic, sociolinguistic, rhetoric issues related to Chinese language. Such awareness may give instructors insights into what Chinese students are trying to communicate in their written or oral language, and make L1 interference easier to spot. In addition, if writing teachers keep in mind that these students (a) are navigating from an education system that values memory, imitation, and repetitive skill practice and (b) feel comfortable working from templates and using others’ written work by treating them as wise masterpieces, it would may clearer why these students would have challenges in the U.S. education system, which values spontaneity, originality, and individual creativity.
• As learning habits cannot be changed overnight, when instructors design writing courses, they should integrate Chinese-learning-style-friendly teaching methods that take these students’ educational background into consideration and then slowly introduce U.S. educational policies, explaining the rationale behind the expectations of the new system.
• It important to have open dialogues with students on how they are coping with their work and integrate the feedback to our teaching policies.

Courses should marry the cultural and educational values of both cultures. Last but not least, creating appropriate pedagogies will bring an end to Kubota’s (2001) argument that “underlying assumption in the discourse of cultural dichotomy is that U.S. culture is the norm” (p. 24).

References

Atkinson, D. (1999). TESOL and culture. TESOL Quarterly, 33, 625–654.

Cortazzi, M., & Jin, L. (1996). Cultures of learning: Language classrooms in China. In H. Coleman (Ed.), Society and the language classroom (pp. 169–206). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Institute of International Education. (2013). Open doors report on international educational exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors

Jin, L., & Cortazzi, M. (2006). Changing practices in Chinese cultures of learning. Language, Culture and Curriculum 19(1), 5–20.

Kramsch, C., & Sullivan, P. (1996). Appropriate pedagogy. ELT Journal, 50(3), 199–212.

Kubota, R. (2001). Discursive construction of the images of U.S. classrooms. TESOL Quarterly 35, 9–38.

Purdue University. (2013). Fall 2012 international student and scholar enrollment and statistical report. Retrieved from http://www.iss.purdue.edu/resources/Docs/Reports/ISS_StatisticalReportFall13.pdf

Ronaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Schumann, J. (1978). Social and psychological factors in second language acquisition.  In J. Richards (Ed.), Understanding second and foreign language learning: Issues and approaches. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.