Encountering Unfamiliar Educational Practices Abroad

Abstract

As internationalization efforts intensify across the globe, the number of students who are studying outside their home country for part of their tertiary education has increased significantly. The vast majority of students from East Asian nations (Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Korea, Macau SAR, Mainland China, and Taiwan) study in a second language while abroad, with English the most common medium-of-instruction. As institutions of Higher Education (HE) in other regions compete for students from this part of the world, increasingly, questions are being raised about what students gain from outbound mobility programs. Scholars have drawn attention to the need for systematic empirical research that critically examines the experiences of student sojourners in order to determine the most effective ways to support and enhance their learning (e.g., linguistic, cognitive, social, academic, (inter)cultural, and professional).

The personal, linguistic, and intercultural development of Chinese sojourners in an English-speaking country

“…The present study is part of a larger, mixed methods investigation of the learning of 246 students from a comprehensive, bilingual (Chinese-English) Hong Kong university who participated in a semester-long international exchange program (Jackson, 2016b). This paper centers on the 149 students who sojourned in an English-speaking country.…”