Chinese students studying in UK Universities contribute significantly to the UK economy (Leedham, 2011). There are other non-economic potential benefits to both UK universities and Chinese students...Show moreChinese students studying in UK Universities contribute significantly to the UK economy (Leedham, 2011). There are other non-economic potential benefits to both UK universities and Chinese students which are not currently efficiently utilised. These include academic skills, cultural competency and the knowledge base of domestic students (Arthur, 2015). Students’ success at university depends on their ability to write academic English however, some UK academics report that Chinese students’ writing is not at a sufficient level for academic success. Previous studies have examined Chinese students written errors in their home countries or during their pre-sessional course, but have not examined the main grammatical errors affecting students’ in-course writing. A corpus of Chinese students academic writing in UK universities was accessed and examined to identify the main grammatical writing errors following the procedure for Error Analysis proposed by Corder (1967). The main errors were examined using Lado’s 1957 Contrastive Analysis procedures to determine the difficulty of the grammatical forms for Chinese students. Previous strategies for redressing Chinese students’ grammatical errors are reviewed and the importance of the link between academic success and cross cultural communication competence in the efficient utilization of the non-economic benefits of Chinese students studying in the UK is highlighted.Show less
