Extract from Bridging our Worlds

From Qualifying, sequence 1: approaches to learning

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Section 3: Qualifying
Topics: Approaches to learning, Practicalities of learning
Extract from "Note to trainers"

This section focuses specifically on the academic aspects of student life, contrasting the perceptions of students from many different educational systems, comparing these with UK systems and expectations. It includes comments from staff on what we might call the ‘international classroom’.

Approaches to learning contains clips on the values implicit in educational systems and the ways that teaching, academic support and assessment are delivered. Practicalities of learning looks at understanding and managing key activities such as writing and speaking.

Lengthier and more detailed reflections on challenges in teaching and learning with internationally diverse student groups are found in the Specialist Sections II and III, Research on teaching and learning and Practice in teaching and learning.

Extract from "Questions that can be asked"

• How culturally determined is study in the UK?
• What are some of the cultural values inherent in the UK education system?
• What are the implications of some of the study approaches described in this section?

Extract from "Exercise 6: Writing an essay from a different cultural base"

This exercise was devised originally by Jude Carroll, to whom we are most grateful for her permission to reproduce it here.

“Some years ago, an African student consulted a personal tutor. The student was in considerable distress and reported that they had just received a devastatingly low mark for a piece of written work that they, themselves, considered to have been one of the best pieces of work they had ever produced. There being no reason to doubt the student’s sincerity and distress, the tutor invited the student to discuss..."

Training context

For use specifically with academic staff. This exercise could be used as part of a longer academic staff-training programme, (eg a half-day, whole day, or even longer course.) Additionally it could be used as one-off experiential exercise in a very short course – perhaps even in a lunchtime meeting for academic staff, where the particular emphasis is on international students and their written work.

Training Rationale

Two contrasting experiences underpin this exercise:

1. that of the newly arrived international student embarking upon some initial pieces of writing for their course
2. the challenge to tutors/lecturers in assessment of this work

The intentions of this exercise are to:

• enhance tutors’ appreciation of culturally different writing styles
• offer tutors an opportunity to experience the challenge being faced by the students, ie of writing an essay where they (the students) may not have received any coaching or study skills input on this task within a British cultural setting
• additionally offer an opportunity for the tutors to attempt to assess their work from a different set of cultural criteria

Supplementary exercises from Working with International Students

1. Pleasure giving and irritating behaviours (p82)
2. Skills needed in giving and receiving instructions (p140)

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