Empirical realities of international students and their first-year
experiences recommend non-specialised transitional programs to meet the special needs of these students and facilitate their transition into university (ibid.). For international students, the level of difficulty in transition is often compounded, and the issues related to their learning difficulties become more complex and multidimensional.
Dislocated geographically, culturally, socially and linguistically, new international students experience major impediments that go beyond the usual transition of educational institutions. Many research findings published in English demonstrate that international students manifest significantly higher degrees of psychological and socio-cultural stress in their new learning environment (Burns, 1991; Spencer-Oatey and Xiong, 2006; Gu and Maley, 2008; Zhou et al., 2008;
Brown and Holloway, 2008), and attest that the symptoms of cultural shock associated with these students have predominantly negative impacts on their academic performance. When international students first arrive in their host country, they are expected to contend with new social, cultural and educational behaviours, and as such they often switch to a 'stress and coping' mode (Zhou et al., 2008; Brown and Holloway, 2008). Their reticence and anxiety to articulate their opinion further disassociates them from the local, critically thinking learners in a typical classroom setting (Liu and Jackson, 2011). Their academic performance, demonstrated by grade point average (GPA), negatively correlates with their psychological stress. These students' emotional and psychological well-being is strongly linked with their intellectual achievements.
For most of these international students, especially the 'Chinese learner', the journey to obtain a degree in an English-speaking country is a family one.
When their families spend a large sum of savings, in many cases their life savings, to send their children to an anglophone country to study, the family expectation is that these students will gain 'universal-mobile' knowledge in English and receive a 'high quality education' (whatever that implies) that can be demonstrated with a glossy certificate and a distinguished academic transcript for their transcultural and transnational futures. This commonly assumed cultural advantage of family expectation, for some international students, has become a significant disadvantage. According to a UK-based study conducted by Gang Li, Wei Chen and Jing-Lin Duanmu, the high level of family expectation and the culturally perceived importance of education can be a liability and have an adverse effect
on the academic performance of Chinese students (2010). For the student, the family's expectations of academic success often translate into additional pressure in their survival mode of coping in the new environment. Paradoxically, the family-inflated stress could perhaps partly explain why international students tend to survive their first year in the university and complete their study even if it means they graduate with a GPA as low as 3.5 (Song and Cadman, 2013). High expectations from families account for their anxiety as well as their perseverance and persistence.
While for local Australian students there has been a strong link between previous academic performance and their university performance (McKenzie and Schweitzer, 2001; McKenzie, Gow and Schweitzer, 2004), the same cannot be said for the international students. Such an affirmative correlation does not automatically extend beyond the linguistic and cultural hurdles they face. What they achieved in their home country in secondary education often has little bearing on their academic performance in Australia (Song and Cadman, 2012).
Instead, academic research has consistently attributed the difficulties international students experience in their first year to their inadequacy in English as well as their cultural heritage. In terms of their linguistic ability and cultural background, these students, compared with their local counterparts, are considered 'poorly-prepared' and automatically remedial. Indicators of their 'poor' performance in classrooms include inability to communicate effectively, passivity in class participation, using ideas in their essays without proper referencing, and the absence of critical thinking skills, all of which are prerequisites for academic success in higher education within anglophone countries.
These two major hurdles are closely linked to the fact that English as Additional Language (EAL) students, most of whom are also international arrivals, perform significantly worse than their local counterparts when measured by their GPAs (Foster, 2012). According to the data collected from undergraduate programs within the business school of two Australian universities in 2008-10 (ibid.), EAL students 'earn persistently lower marks' and 'perform significantly worse' than their local counterparts. Aside from the cultural and social dislocations they face on a daily basis, they have to deal with the realities of learning outcomes measured against the established assessment criteria in the existing curricula.
Similar to the situation faced by what Foster calls 'poorly-prepared' students in less-
established universities in Australia (2010: 302), international students have few options other than to make up the numbers of natural attrition in the universities' assessment system, with limited opportunities for being taught up to 'a market- supportable standard' with 'value-added teaching' (ibid.: 303). At the same time, as there is no 'counter-pressure' against the initial recruitment standard set by the universities, the painful consequences of mismatches caused by students' diversity and a 'market-supportable standard' can only be borne by students and teachers alike. Measured against the established academic standards, the very educability of these students is called into question, as the 'poorly-prepared students' cannot be taught by the value-added teaching demanded by the standards of the market within the current higher institution system without a significant increase in funding (Foster, 2012).
International students in anglophone countries, many researchers note, can be very diligent and conscientious in their first year of study, demonstrating higher levels of motivation in learning than local students (Ramburuth and McCormick, 2001). For many of these students, especially those from a Chinese cultural background, who firmly believe hard work will eventually pay off2, their academic transcript can be a constant source of agony and frustration. They frequently report negative experiences in their new university and are unhappy that their presence on campus amounts to little more than 'cash cows' for financially struggling universities (Ryan and Louie, 2007: 411). One study, which involved 67 third-year Chinese international students, suggests that once these students have survived their first year in university, they remain remedial throughout their undergraduate studies. These students, mostly from the Faculties of Commerce, Social Sciences and Humanities, had an average GPA of 3.5 on a scale from 1 to 7 (Song and Cadman, 2012), suggesting these students had completed two and half years of tertiary learning with merely 50 per cent passes. For some of these dislocated international students who are endeavouring to achieve the best grades possible, for the value of their family's investment, 'their problems are really due to racism or to victimisation by unsympathetic staff' (Ballard and Clanchy, 1997: 3). What is more agonising for them is the apparent nonchalance of their higher education
2 The Chinese proverb 只要功夫深, 铁杵磨成针 ‘If you work hard enough at it, you can grind even an iron rod down to a needle’ (that is, ‘Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success’), deeply entrenched in the students’ psyche, is part and parcel of the Confucian educational doctrine.
institution towards their ongoing emotionally negative experiences. By holding up a mirror of ideal excellence prescribed in the essentialised 'graduate attributes' to reflect their performances, the higher education institution inadvertently relegates EAL international students to the 'antithesis' of the desired students. Some even go on to question the much promoted multiculturalism in Australian universities.
One such international student, at the end of his final undergraduate degree wrote in a shaky hand, 'Multiculturalism is a big fat lie' (Cadman and Song, 2012: 3).