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British University Students Studying Abroad in China: Issues of Interculturality

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International Students in China

Abstract

While study abroad contexts have spawned a wealth of intercultural research, the voices of Chinese-as-a-foreign-language (CFL) students are largely absent from this literature. The teaching and learning of CFL outside China has been largely under-researched, and British CFL learners’ experiences and perceptions remain a relatively uncharted area. This chapter aims to answer the call for transcending culturalist impasses in stays abroad by taking a first step in examining the use of culturalist discourses by CFL learners at a British university. It explores their use of culture, Chineseness, and Britishness in their study-abroad reflections. More than 70 reports collected over the past three years were analysed in NVivo. The findings reveal interesting patterns regarding the students’ discourses on culture. This chapter reports on and discusses these findings in light of recent interculturality theories. Finally, it suggests ways for taking the research agenda forward.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

    Jiayi Wang

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  1. Jiayi Wang
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Correspondence to Jiayi Wang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Fred Dervin

  2. Confucius Institute, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Xiangyun Du

  3. International Affairs, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland

    Anu Härkönen

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Wang, J. (2018). British University Students Studying Abroad in China: Issues of Interculturality. In: Dervin, F., Du, X., Härkönen, A. (eds) International Students in China. Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78120-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78120-4_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78119-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78120-4

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

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