Student A says:
“Before I came to study at A University, I knew that I would succeed. After working in a highly integrated international department at a prestigious high school in Beijing, I have gained both professional capacity and confidence. However, I’ve noticed during my first two months of study that some of my fellow Chinese students have shown lack of confidence in class, especially when it comes to express themselves in English. However, I’ve also noticed that Chinese students who are in their second or third year of study seem more comfortable in class because they have a displayed better command of English. I then became very concerned about this anxiety among us and curious about the relationship between overseas studying experience and language anxiety. Since I am one of the vast majority of Chinese students at A University, I could feel how they might feel about the teaching style, class environment and classmates’ relationship which are all very different from those in China. I think that all these factors could affect their classroom performance, but most importantly, it is the English proficiency that holds back their performance. However, I do believe that it would be insufficient to study the matter of language solely since it is relevant to many other factors. |
Student B says:
“This is my second year of overseas higher education experience. Though I might have been more prepared than I was three years ago, coming to a place I have never been to and quickly settling down to foreign higher institution with a strong academic atmosphere still brought me more anxiety and pressure than local students. Not to mention my Chinese classmates who are experiencing a more challenging moment due to little exposure to foreign (North American) classrooms before. It has become an obvious phenomenon that usually most of the Chinese International students keep complete silence during the whole lecture process (without asking any questions or discussing any relevant cases in public) and often contribute less in the group discussion session if they were assigned to multi-language groups. Even I myself sometimes experienced language anxiety, by going through a rapid heartbeat and a high blood pressure when speaking up, and skipping some problems that I actually did not understand. After talking to my Chinese classmates about this issue, I found out that the anxiety of speaking-in-class has become extremely common among Chinese International students and ranked on top of the factors that affect their academic achievements as well as cause a sense of isolation in their study life. Therefore, having experienced several weeks’ pressure and confusion myself when at the same time, noticing the same (even worse) “symptoms” happening to my classmates, I suddenly became very aware of this speaking-in-class anxiety. And due to the inexorable trend of more and more Chinese seeking further education abroad, this issue would be more essential and drawing remarkable attention in the future. |
An interesting study was conducted by Amri Priyadi in 2013 on why Asian students participant less in classroom. This pilot research was conducted as a requirement in Qualitative Methods course at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. The research observes class participation of 98 students in the interdisciplinary programme of development studies, and involves 27 respondents (half Asians and half non-Asians), to find out about the factors contributing to participation patterns of Asian students. Main finding includes language barrier, different education system, and specific cultural factors from Asia as factors explaining the pattern.
|
|