An Analysis Of Chinese Students Use Of Chinese Essay References

Learning and Teaching Volume 15, Issue 2, Summer 2022: 29–52 © The Author(s)
doi: 10.3167/latiss.2022.150203 ISSN 1755-2273 (Print), ISSN 1755-2281 (Online)
An analysis of Chinese students’ use
of Chinese essay references
Another role for international students in the
internationalisation of the curriculum
Miguel Antonio Lim and Zhuo Min Huang
t
ABSTRACT
Many studies have addressed the needs and challenges of interna-
tional students in their host countries; however, there is relatively
less work on the potential contributions these students make to their
curricula. This article presents a bibliographic analysis of the academic
references (n=7,273) used by Chinese students to construct their final
essays on the theme of education and international development at a
leading global university based in the United Kingdom. It examines
(1) what knowledge resources are used in their essays; and (2) what
the characteristics and patterns of these choices are. When allowed
to construct their own essays, Chinese students appear to choose to
use a significant proportion of Chinese knowledge resources within
English academic essays. This use increases when their lecturers and
tutors explain and accept the value of non-English academic resources.
This article then discusses the implications of this result for lecturers.
KEYWORDS
academic writing, Chinese international students, Chinese references,
curriculum, essay references, internationalisation
t
The United Kingdom and other traditional host countries welcome an in-
creasingly large number of international students into their higher education
programmes, a trend which some predict will be sustained even after the
COVID pandemic. The largest number of international students comes from
mainland China, and some programmes have a large majority of Chinese
students. This has raised important questions around the internationalisation
of the curriculum in these contexts. One issue is the increasing commitment
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at higher education institutions throughout the United Kingdom and in other
host countries to internationalise the curriculum. These efforts include at-
tempts to critically understand the role of ‘Western’ and ‘Northern’ knowl-
edge resources and the potential marginalisation of scholars from the Global
South (Takayama et al. 2015). For instance, some institutions have conducted
reviews to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum (Somerville 2021). There are various
studies that highlight both the adoption of new curriculum approaches and
show the benefits of these changes (Leask and Bridge 2013; Leask and Carroll
2011; Sawir 2013). Internationalisation is a growing concern in many higher
education systems, and it is particularly relevant in countries that attract and
host a large number of international students.
A large proportion of international students hail from China (HESA 2019),
where study abroad is strongly seen as a form of personal development
(Hansen and Thøgersen 2015). However, there are also many studies that
point to the challenges that Chinese and other international students face
when studying in the United Kingdom; these include lack of familiarity
with academic writing traditions in their host countries, variations in the
definitions of criticality, differences in pedagogical approaches in different
countries, and the use of English cultural idioms that international students
are unfamiliar with because these were not formally taught (Barron 2006;
Cowley and Hyams-Ssekasi 2018; Gu and Maley 2008; Lashley and Barron
2006; Ross and Chen 2015). The internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC)
has been proposed as one response to these challenges.
The study examined a particular aspect of IoC – the use of international
references in essay writing. It aims to understand how students can con-
tribute to the process of IoC. The study contributes to the field’s knowledge
by examining a previously untapped data source material: the choices of
references that Chinese international students use in their essays. There are
a variety of frameworks around how to achieve IoC, and none, to the best
of our knowledge, explicitly use this type of data. Most of these approaches
revolve around changes in lecturers’ attitudes and approaches. A few con-
sider more deeply the role of international students themselves (Sawir 2013).
Importantly, Jenna Mittelmeier and colleagues (2018) argue that the mere
presence of international students is not, in itself, a sufficient condition for
an internationalised experience.
This study explains how a bibliographic analysis of references used by stu-
dents in their essays can contribute to IoC. It employs a bibliographic analysis
to analyse the range of materials that a student may have used beyond those

31
An analysis of Chinese students’ use of Chinese essay references t
presented in the reading list given to them at the start of term. The working
assumption is that this list offers suggested works as background reading for
the course topics and then more specific knowledge resources. The study
goes on to compare this with the references actually used by students in
their submitted essays. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has
examined the use of Chinese references in students’ academic essays.
It is not our intent to suggest that Chinese knowledge sources are more
valuable or more important than other sources; rather, it is to investigate
their use in our particular context, where many reading lists and curricular
materials have been characterised as Eurocentric (Arday 2018). The study
finds that when students are given a free hand to choose their references and
when the topic/subject is appropriate, they elect to use a large proportion
of Chinese sources. This has implications for how lecturers can dynamically
shape reading lists to actively respond to students’ own learning inclinations
and how they can use Chinese references where relevant.
The presence of international students in the classroom is the obvious
(Jones and Killick 2007) teaching resource that many academics use as an
impetus for IoC. There is also an ethical and pedagogical imperative for
critical scholars and practitioners to acknowledge international students’ lan-
guage and epistemological backgrounds, which provide a vantage point for
their learning and development in IoC. The analysis presented here expands
the ways in which lecturers could recognise the profile of the student body
and respect the knowledge sources (e.g. Chinese-medium literature) that they
can engage with. Through their choices of bibliographic references (where
appropriate), international students can shape their lecturers’ pedagogical
approaches and contribute to the agenda of internationalising the curriculum
beyond their presence and participation in the classroom (Sawir 2013). The
insights from students’ use of knowledge sources could potentially contribute
to the design and content of their courses if lecturers committed to IoC are
aware of and responsive to students’ choices of knowledge sources for their
academic essays.
This article proceeds as follows: first, it reviews the general direction of
work around IoC; second, it specifies the role of essay writing and choice of
academic references in IoC; third, it presents our research questions and our
analytical framework; fourth, it outlines our methods and data collection
approach; fifth, it presents our findings grouped into themes; and finally, it
presents the implications of our results. It then concludes with a few propos-
als for reshaping the future research agenda in this area.

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Internationalisation of the curriculum: Demand and
commitment
IoC has developed in largely English-medium universities (e.g. in Australia,
Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom) as a key approach to
respond to our increasingly interconnected and changing world (Green and
Whitsed 2015). This approach, in contrast with the historical internationali-
sation agenda usually focussing on higher education as an exporting industry
or student mobility (Green and Whitsed 2015), is now shifting to recognise
and address the responsibility of higher education for preparing graduates to
live, work and contribute effectively and ethically in national and interna-
tional contexts (Hudzik 2014; Leask 2005). In the United Kingdom, IoC has
been explicitly linked to the agenda of developing the global perspective,
intercultural competence and responsible global citizenship of all students
(Green and Mertova 2016) in order to challenge the issues of inequality and
injustice in society. In particular, it aims to enable value-based learning out-
comes which could be summarised as reflecting critically on ethnocentrism
and developing cultural relativism, applying international and intercultural
thinking to contemporary issues, acknowledging language and cultural di-
versity and engaging critically with the global plurality and politics of knowl-
edge (Green and Whitsed 2015).
However, the aims and the agenda of IoC have been critiqued as too ideo-
logical and abstract when it comes to operationalising internationalisation at
the level of teaching and learning practice (Green and Whitsed 2015). To this
end, Tony Luxon and Moira Peelo (2009) argue that the internationalising
activities for curriculum development, teaching and learning need to be
brought to the forefront of the discussion about IoC. This is so that teachers
and students who are at the centre of experiencing internationalisation could
develop practical strategies in their contexts. Additionally, different disci-
plines (e.g., Business, English Literature, Health and Medicine, Engineering,
Maths and Education) present distinctive ecologies of teaching and learning
(Heffernan et al. 2019). This situated nature (Leask and Bridge 2013) and
disciplinary ecology of IoC (De Sousa Santos 2009; Green and Whitsed 2015)
inform challenges for academics to enquire into their own teaching and their
students’ learning in a particular curriculum context (Leask and Bridge 2013)
– possibly through what Stephen Kemmis (2007) has called Critical Participa-
tory Action Research (CPAR). Thus, Wendy Green and Craig Whitsed (2015)
suggest that IoC should be seen as a way of thinking about curricula and

33
teaching and learning rather than a set of fixed, prescribed principles. They
argue that it needs to first foreground the perspectives and work of teachers
and students in their different disciplines and locales as they engage with IoC
and second bring new ways of thinking about the possibilities and processes
of internationalising the curriculum and teaching and learning.
Internationalisation of the curriculum: Essay writing and
using academic references
To properly contextualise the findings of the study, it is necessary to explain
the academic essay as a means of evaluation (and communication) of learn-
ing and critical thinking in the UK higher education system. In the United
Kingdom, a common method of assessment in the social sciences and hu-
manities is the end-of-term essay, where students are given a relatively broad
topic on which they must write a several-thousand-word essay that reviews
arguments and data in the relevant academic literature and then crafts a
coherent argument that runs through the piece. This assessment method
requires students to produce a well-referenced essay in which they present
findings and arguments made by previous authors and through which they
put forward their own findings and arguments. This method differs consider-
ably from other assessment methods, such as traditional examinations or
practical tests or laboratory work. It can probably be described as conducting
a small ‘research’ project.
There is a range of research in the United Kingdom, Australia and the
United States that documents the transition experiences of international stu-
dents (Barron 2006; Phakiti and Li 2011) and also documents the common
challenges faced by non-native English speakers with the demands of English
language proficiency and the adjustment to the new teaching and learning
style (Barron 2006). There is a range of findings about the ‘culture shock’
and challenges that non-native English speakers1
face when carrying out
academic writing in English (Mullins et al. 1995; Phakti and Li 2011; Tian and
Low 2012). One particular area of interest raised here is the commonly used
UK assessment method of essay writing (Cowley and Hyams-Ssekasi 2018),
which has been identified as particularly challenging for non-native speakers
because it requires technical mastery not only of the English language but
also of certain modes of argumentation and the demonstration of critical
thinking.

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UK universities highlight critical thinking as the essential educational
element (Fell and Lukianova 2015) in their programmes and demand its
demonstration in assessment. The essay as an assessment tool is one way
to demonstrate critical thinking. It is meant to let the student choose their
topic and then demonstrate a line of argumentation that draws upon a range
of perspectives, evaluates the strength of existing studies and then arrives
at logical conclusions. It is the presentation and evaluation of various view-
points (Shaheen 2016) that is often recognised as critical thinking. With
respect to the study, how multilingual knowledge resources are used by stu-
dents to show these diverse perspectives is examined.
The need to choose an essay topic and also the references to use in an
essay can be one element of culture shock that international students face.
Paul Cowley and Denis Hyams-Ssekasi (2018) argue that students who are
beginning to learn research approaches need to learn how to distinguish
between reliable and less reliable literature, such as works that do and do not
undergo scientific review. Students are encouraged to do their own research
for their essays and to make informed choices about which sources to use as
references in their essays. They are often guided, as a starting point, by the
academic sources in the reading list for the course.2
In writing their essays,
they often need guidance on what references are valid, reliable and useful.
The crafting of the reading list as a starting point for these choices makes it
an important part of international students’ education. Importantly, previous
research – albeit limited to two subject areas in one university – has found
that reading lists are dominated by white, male and Eurocentric authors and
researchers (Bird and Pitman 2020).
We are aware that the essay as a mode of demonstrating criticality is cul-
turally bound. Kathy Durkin (2011) showed that the understanding of critical
thinking is not universally shared and is, itself, a cultural norm that needs
to be learned. Durkin (2008) also found that certain international students
equated critical thinking with criticising, a negative process that required
them to find mistakes and fault in the thinking of others. Nisbah Shaheen’s
(2016) study shows that despite initial misunderstandings, students eventu-
ally learn that critical thinking involves the presentation of various points
of view on a topic. Academic reading presents various challenges for in-
ternational students such as synthesising information from a wide range
of academic sources and lack of familiarity with academic writing norms
(Phakiti and Li 2011). But the importance of critical thinking only highlights
the important work that lecturers and educators do when they craft recom-

35
mended reading lists that facilitate and allow the appreciation of different
viewpoints and educate students in exercising their responsibility to choose
what they read. These elements are deeply linked to a healthy enactment
of IoC.
Research question and analytical framework
Internationalisation of education tends to focus on desired outcomes, on
wishing and hoping (Leask and Carroll 2011) rather than on actual processes
and methods by which these outcomes can be achieved. Ron Edwards and
colleagues (2003) and Glenda Crosling and colleagues (2008) proposed a
framework by which to design and operationalise the themes of internation-
alisation that have been long advocated (see, for instance, Francis 1993).
Edwards and colleagues (2003) aimed to internationalise the curriculum
for home students, introducing perspectives from beyond the host country.
There is an important distinction that needs to be made in thinking about
how to internationalise the curriculum when the majority of the students
in the classroom are Chinese students learning about international issues
outside China (for example, in the United Kingdom). The principle of pro-
viding a set of readings that are able to offer challenges to preconceived as-
sumptions and beliefs should be upheld. But interestingly, what is lacking is
a diversity of readings from non-English sources and from academic sources
from the ‘home’ country of most of the students. Following the principle that
diversity of curricular content is important (Whalley et al. 1997), the study of
the authors and the original language of the source materials becomes both
important and relevant.
In light of this commitment to IoC, we investigated a practical aspect of
the teaching and learning activities – the use of Chinese knowledge sources
– in and for a particular context of IoC – an internationalised MA programme
about international education in a UK university. The aim is to argue for a
more epistemically ethical way of thinking about and practising IoC. The
study’s working hypothesis was that it is important to understand the choices
that students make with respect to the references they use to construct their
essays and demonstrate critical thinking. The general question is: what can
be learnt about IoC from an analysis of essay references used by Chinese
international students? We have specifically framed our question around the
practices of Chinese international students who represent the vast majority
of students in our chosen case. However, our purpose is to begin to examine

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the way that international students use resources from their home country
when allowed and encouraged to do so.
This general aim is further articulated by two research questions:
RQ1: What references are used by international students in their essays?
In particular, what knowledge resources are used in a course with a
large proportion of Chinese international students?
RQ2: What are the characteristics and patterns of the use of international
references by international students?
On the basis of the answers to these research questions, the study will also
discuss the implications for lecturers of students’ choices of their references.
Methods and data
The study investigated and compared the bibliographic references cited by
students in their essays over a period of three years (2016–2019) for the
Master’s level unit International Education and Development. The course
is characterised by a large number of international students, most of whom
are from mainland China, and is delivered by an international academic
team. Because of these demographics, our study focusses on the practices
of Chinese international students, and the use of the term ‘international
students’ refers to Chinese students in the rest of this article.
The study focusses on this course because its topic bears a direct relation-
ship to issues of internationalisation, which might encourage attentiveness
to and use of literature sources in different languages and/or across various
international contexts. The course could therefore provide data that fit the
research purpose. Second, one of us was responsible for the design and
delivery of the course unit over the three-year period studied and the other
was involved in the most recent academic year studied. Reflexively, the inter-
est in the study was driven by our shared commitment to developing and
internationalising the curriculum.
We are both international faculty members (with Southeast and East Asian
backgrounds) working at a large UK university in which there is a large
international student population. This positionality provides a vantage point
to be attentive to the patterns of use of ‘non-English’ knowledge sources.
The investigation into the kinds of knowledge sources (1) referenced by
the students for their assignments; and (2) recommended by the lecturer in

37
the course reading-lists allows for an understanding of the baseline of the
curriculum regarding the proportion of Chinese literature sources used by
students in the course.
The assignment brief was as follows. Students were required to ‘write an
essay based on a literature review of 3000 words on a topic of [their] choos-
ing. This topic must have been connected to the themes of education and
development within an international context’. The assignment came due at
the end of the first semester of the academic year.
Students were given the following instructions:
You should not conduct any primary research for this assignment. You may
talk about your own experience of addressing challenges to development
and education, but this should be limited to short sections.
You must critique the literature: use your research questions to evaluate the
sources; ask questions of the findings; challenge the claims they make. You
must also construct your own argument with the support of the literature.
Your argument should be clear throughout the assignment and can be sum-
marised in the abstract.
Additional guidance from the tutors included asking students to (1) pay
attention to local, national and international policies relevant to their topics;
and (2) cite references on the course reading list and beyond as appropriate.
The reading list for the course was organised by the lecturer according to
the topic of each lecture. It was also updated from time to time with relevant
and new sources as identified by the lecturer throughout the year (and over
the three-year period). The reading list served as a primary signpost of the
course to guide the students (Secker 2005; Siddall and Rose 2014). However,
in the assignment, the students were asked to engage with a wide range of
appropriate literature of their own choice rather than being limited by the
reading list.
Many students on the course, 173 out of 182 students in total in the last
academic year studied, were Chinese. Most of these students wrote essays
analysing education and development issues in China (or international issues
that had some relevance to China). The study then examined the prevalence
of the students’ use of Chinese knowledge sources.
In the study context, which is that of an English-medium university in the
United Kingdom, the study used an adapted definition of Chinese academic
sources, which includes academic texts written by Chinese-named authors in

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the Chinese language, Chinese-named authors in the English language and
Chinese-named authors working with international (mostly Western) authors
in English-language publications (almost entirely in academic journals).
Chinese-named authors are identified as Chinese where they are functional in
the Chinese language even if they have chosen to publish in other languages
such as English.
In particular, our study investigated the number of literature sources used
in the essays’ bibliographic references that were (1) in the Chinese language;
(2) written by a Chinese author (or authors) in English; and (3) written by
authors from mixed backgrounds where at least one of them is Chinese. The
analysis only included entries in the references section of the essay. We are
aware that this section’s being the only data set might mean that we were
not able to analyse how the Chinese references were used by the students in
relation to their topic in each assignment – for instance, if the students used
Chinese references to write about topics in a Chinese context only or also
in other glocal contexts. However, we believe that this area could be further
explored by future studies.
In order to collect our data, the anonymised record of the student essays
from the university’s online learning system and the reading lists of the
course in the years of 2016–2017, 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 were down-
loaded. Two student research assistants who were Chinese international
students in the programme (2018–2019) assisted in the analysis. All the data
they analysed had been anonymised, the analytical protocol was clearly set
out to avoid misinterpretations and potential conflicts of interest, and neither
assistant was a current student on the course unit under study. There were
316 assignments and 7,264 references in total written by 316 students. We
did not exclude the small number (e.g. nine in the 2018–2019 programme)
of students who were not Chinese from the data set, as we did not have the
data to confirm whether they could read Chinese as their first or second/
foreign language or not.
The analysis of the data involved four main stages. First, all essay refer-
ences were organised into separate documents according to the academic
year: 2016–2017, 2017–2018 and 2018–2019. Second, in these documents
Chinese knowledge sources were organised into three categories including
(a) literature published in the Chinese language; (b) literature with a Chinese
author (or authors) published in English; and (c) literature with authors of
various backgrounds where at least one is Chinese. Third, a basic statistical
analysis of these categories was performed in order to understand the pro-

39
portions of Chinese knowledge sources used by the students in their course
assignments. Then the most cited Chinese knowledge sources in the student
assignments were ranked in order of frequency in order to understand the
type and content of Chinese sources the students tended to use. Finally,
the findings were compared to the knowledge sources in the 2018–2019
reading list.
Methodologically, it was challenging to operationalise the concept of the
Chinese knowledge source. While recent studies have tried to define a knowl-
edge source based on the geographical location of the publisher or the host
institution of the author(s) (e.g. Price et al. 2022) and even automate the
bibliographic analysis based on the geographic data available in bibliometric
databases, the study has taken it to mean a knowledge source in the Chinese
language or produced by a scholar who is functional in the Chinese language
(but may write in other languages, principally English). Three categories of
literature (outlined in more detail below) were designed, but we realised that
these categories might sometimes be difficult to identify precisely. Issues
included how to identify authors with Chinese-looking names who might not
identify themselves as Chinese. The approach relies on identifying Chinese
knowledge sources with the names of the authors and carries the risk that
our study identifies a knowledge source as Chinese simply on the basis of
a Chinese name, even though it is possible that some ‘Western’ authors
have Chinese names. The clearest results are therefore those that pertain to
Chinese-language knowledge sources.
The findings are also based upon the data of one course unit characterised
by its internationally oriented content and learning outcomes, and its largely
Chinese student profile and international teaching team. These findings are
not necessarily representative of the use of Chinese knowledge sources in
other course units and contexts. Also, the data record involved 316 copies
of student assignments with 7,273 references in total. The number of as-
signments and references was unevenly distributed in the three years with
more essays in the last two years, reflecting the growth of the number of stu-
dents in the course. There were 33 essays with 741 references in 2016–2017;
101 with 2,056 references in 2017–2018; and 182 with 4,476 references in
2018–2019. While acknowledging these limitations, we maintain they are the
basis of the claims and arguments made below regarding the patterns of how
international students use Chinese references.

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Findings and discussion
RQ1: What references are used by international students in their essays?
In particular, what knowledge resources are used in a course with a
large proportion of Chinese international students?
The study found that the students tended to use Chinese knowledge sources –
that is, literature in the Chinese language and/or written by Chinese back-
ground authors in English – in their assignments because many of them
chose to write about a topic in the context of their home country and/or
local area.
As shown in Table 1, the number of students enrolled in the course, and
consequently the number of their assignments, has grown approximately six
times from 33 to 182 in 2016–2019, a growth rate consistent with the increase
in the total number of references. However, the growth in the proportion of
Chinese references among all references used in student assignments has
grown from 23 per cent to 44 per cent. In absolute terms, the number of
Chinese references has grown from 172 to 1,981 (unique) Chinese sources.
This is of course due to a larger number of students and thus essays sub-
mitted, but it may also be related to the lecturer’s approach – maintained
over the three academic years studied – of explicitly encouraging students to
think ‘open-mindedly’ about which knowledge sources apart from those in
the lectures, seminars and assignment tutorials of the course were relevant
to their essays. By 2018–2019, more than 44 per cent of the total references
cited by the students were Chinese knowledge sources. The large proportion
of Chinese references used in the English-medium assignments might reflect
the largely Chinese student cohort and their needs; citing knowledge sources
accessible to them linguistically and culturally, and relevant to their assign-
ment topics or contexts.
Table 1. Student assignments: Chinese knowledge sources
2016–2017 2017–2018 2018–2019
Number of student assignments 33 101 182
References in total 741 2,056 4,476
Average number of references per student 22 20 25
Chinese references 172 836 1,981
Average of Chinese references per student 5 8 11
Proportion of Chinese references (approx.) 23% 41% 44%

41
The relatively large proportion of Chinese knowledge sources used in
the student assignments consisted of different types of references. Chinese
knowledge sources were divided into the three main types (as discussed
above). The study investigated the number and the proportion of these types
of references in the total number of Chinese knowledge sources. As shown in
Table 2, the Chinese knowledge sources most cited were still the ones pub-
lished in English. Although the proportion of these English-medium, Chinese/
mixed-authored sources decreased from 95 to 57 per cent from 2016 to 2019,
it was still the largest proportion of Chinese knowledge sources cited by the
students in their English-medium assignments in the course.
The proportion of Chinese-medium knowledge sources increased in the
three years from 5 per cent to 43 per cent. This might be related to the
practice of providing positive replies when the students asked if they could
or were allowed to use Chinese literature for their assignments. Given the
internationalised profile of the teaching team, the students might have also
perceive that their use of Chinese knowledge sources would be recognised
and accepted in assessed work. These interpretations, however, were based
upon our experience and teaching notes with the students in the course unit.
Due to limited research resources (i.e. funding for research assistants), we
were unable to conduct a qualitative study to investigate the reasons why
students made these referencing choices. Future studies could use qualitative
interviews to explore why and how students choose to use Chinese literature
or not in their English-medium assignments.
The number of mixed-authored Chinese sources (mostly published in
English) also increased from 7 to 15 per cent in the student assignments.
However, this is consistent with the general growth (23 to 44 per cent) of
the Chinese references cited by the students (as shown in Table 1). Thus,
Table 2. Student assignments: the types of Chinese knowledge sources
2016–2017 2017–2018 2018–2019
Chinese knowledge sources published in
Chinese
8 131 856
5% 16% 43%
Chinese knowledge sources published in
English
164 705 1,125
95% 84% 57%
Chinese knowledge sources by mixed
Chinese and non-Chinese authors
12 102 300
7% 12% 15%

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the main finding is that international (Chinese) students increasingly cite
Chinese sources in their academic essays.
RQ2: What are the characteristics and patterns of the use of international
references by international students?
Ranking the mostly cited Chinese knowledge sources in the student assign-
ments showed that students tended to choose to use Chinese knowledge
sources for the following themes:
1. Policies and national statistics in China, for example from the Ministry
of Education of China.
2. Education inequalities in China (e.g. in regional, urban–rural contexts).
3. Mobility and ‘talent formation’ policies of China (these refer to labour
market policies to develop skilled workers both within China and to
entice those with international training to return).
4. Characteristics and issues of Chinese higher education (e.g. expansion,
reform, internationalisation, policy-borrowing, and unemployment).
Table 3. Student assignments: top cited Chinese knowledge sources (2016–19)
Rank References
Times cited
as references
1 Ministry of Education of China (2019). Documents of
laws, policies, reports, and statistics. Available at: http://
en.moe.gov.cn/documents/laws_policies/ (English); or
http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_sjzl/ (Chinese).
41
2 Tan, C. and C. S. Chua (2015). ‘Education policy borrow-
ing in China: Has the West wind overpowered the East
wind?’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and Interna-
tional Education 45, no. 5: 686–704.
19
3 Yang, J., X. Huangand, and X. Liu (2014). ‘An analysis of
education inequality in China’, International Journal of
Educational Development 37: 2–10.
18
4 Tan, C. (2015). ‘Education policy borrowing and cultural
scripts for teaching in China’, Comparative Education 51,
no. 2: 196–211.
17
5 Qian, X. and R. Smyth (2008) ‘Measuring regional
inequality of education in China: Widening coast–inland
gap or widening rural–urban gap?’, Journal of Interna-
tional Development 20, no. 2: 132–144.
15

43
These themes might mainly reflect the content of the course and the demand
for the students to cite the relevant policies, statistics and studies in various
Chinese contexts. The top-cited Chinese knowledge sources in 2016–2019 are
shown in Table 3.
A majority of these top-cited Chinese knowledge sources were published
in English-medium journals. A top cited English-medium Chinese knowledge
source would be seen around fifteen to twenty times across the students’
essays, whereas a top-cited Chinese medium one was only seen two to three
times across their essays. Thus, although 43 per cent (as shown in Table 2)
of the cited references were in Chinese in 2018–2019, the students tended
to cite English-medium references much more than Chinese-medium ones
across their essays.
In addition to the findings directly related to the two research questions,
other important patterns were observed. One of these was a variety of tech-
nical errors and anomalies when citing Chinese sources. These appear to
be the result of a lack of explicit advice and guidance about how to cite
non-English sources. Some illustrative examples are given below. The stu-
dents’ practice of referencing these Chinese-medium sources seemed to be
Table 4. Examples of common mistakes in students’ references of Chinese sources
Example 1 Shen, Y. (2006). Classroom Appraisal. Beijing: Beijing Normal
University Press.
Wu, G. (2007). “Why Be Confident about Curriculum Change?” In
Reflections on Education in China, edited by Q.-Q. Zhong and G.-P.
Qu, 164–166. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.
Example 2 Hongqi, Zhu. (2014) ‘Jiao yu zhi li: yi gong zhi qiu shan zhi’
[Education governance: participation and management], Education
Research, 417(10), pp. 4–11
Example 3 Fan, X. H. (2008). Reflections on “shadow education” : multiple per-
spectives. Tsinghua university education research, 29(6), 101–104.
(范晓慧. (2008). “影子教育” 的思考: 多种视角. 清華大學教育研究,
29(6), 101–104.)
Jin, S. (2007). “Curriculum Reform: A Major Project That Cannot
Be Accomplished in a Hurry [Kecheng Gaige: Yixiang Buneng Jiyu
Qiucheng De Panda Gongcheng].” In Reflections on Education in
China [Fansi Zhongguo Jiaoyu], edited by Qiquan Zhong and Wu
Guoping, 136–140. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press.
(The examples are quoted from the original assignments without editing, and thus
might have some grammar mistakes or reference style errors.)

t
/ 44
problematic. For instance, they sometimes tended to ‘pretend’ the reference
were in English by removing the original Chinese title and journal name
and omitting any sign of translation (see Example 1 in Table 4). Also, they
sometimes cited a Chinese-medium source by presenting the original title in
Pinyin – a Romanised representation of the standard pronunciation of the
Chinese language – in order to avoid any non-Latin alphabet appearing in
the assignment (see Example 2). This way of presenting Chinese-medium
references could be problematic, as it failed to respect and acknowledge the
epistemic existence of the original language (i.e. Chinese characters here) of
a non-English knowledge source, and instead transplanted it into the familiar,
easy-on-the-eyes, Latin or Roman alphabet. Furthermore, the Romanised way
of referencing Chinese-medium sources usually failed to serve the purpose
of enabling the readers to trace more information about the original source
(as they were not published in Pinyin, and also cannot be searched by using
Pinyin).
Another common mistake was related to the sequential format of present-
ing the Chinese–English translations in the references. In these kind of mis-
takes (see Example 3), the students tended to present the English translation
before the original texts, or to present the original and the English-translated
references separately without indicating the linked parts of translation.
Further discussion of the English-medium academic practice of referencing
non-English knowledge sources is provided in the next section.
After investigating the use of Chinese knowledge sources in student as-
signments, the study also examined the reading list of the course. In the
reading list, there were seventy-six references in total for five main topics
of the lectures. In these seventy-six references, two were from authors with
Chinese or mixed backgrounds, whilst another two were from an author3
with an Asian background. All references in the reading list are English-
medium, reflecting the largely English-medium discourse of teaching in the
UK higher education. Comparing the use of Chinese knowledge sources
in the student assignments and the course reading list in 2018–2019 (see
Table 5. Comparing the student assignments and the reading list (2018–2019)
Student assignments Reading list
Chinese knowledge sources 44% 2.6%
English-medium Chinese sources 25% 2.6%
Chinese-medium sources 19% 0%

45
Table 5), students appeared to use Chinese references in general up to twenty
times more than the reading list in the course. Their use of English-medium
Chinese knowledge sources was also approximately 10 times more than the
reading-list of the course.
Implications for lecturers and tutors
The study’s findings and observations lead to important implications for
lecturers of Chinese students, given their increasing preference for Chinese
references where these are permitted and their value is actively explained.
The trend that we observed for international students to cite sources related
to their own language and culture groups can lead lecturers to (1) consider
including more non-English sources in their reading lists. Lecturers could
consider, as a starting point, including sources that appear often in their
students’ essays or sources that are used as key contextual studies when
explaining, for instance, the Chinese educational system. Lecturers should
also consider (2) offering more specific support for students with respect
to choosing, using and referencing Chinese sources. Lecturers can be more
explicit in their guidance as to what constitutes an acceptable and reliable
Chinese or non-English knowledge source and also how to cite this according
to the relevant citation convention. This will signal to students that these are
not only acceptable but may even be desirable depending on the focus and
nature of the essay.
Drawing upon reflections from our own practice, we notice that students
appeared not to have been provided sufficient explicit guidance as to how
to use and cite non-English literature in the essays, resulting in a number
of the technical citation errors. Even though the citation guidance for using
non-English literature might be available online,4
it could have been sign-
posted to students in a clearer and more consistent way in the course unit
and across the programme of study. Developing this clarity and consistency
could enhance students’ confidence when it comes to using non-English
sources. For instance, we think that some students might have chosen to
avoid using Chinese knowledge sources or portray them as English-medium
sources in their essays in order to fit into the largely English-medium norm
of UK higher education. This could mask a possibly even higher proportion
of Chinese literature used in the essays. However, we are aware of the chal-
lenges of including non-English language sources in English-medium higher
education. For instance, there could be concerns about academic integrity

t
/ 46
(e.g. plagiarism, falsified references, the quality of sources and translation
issues) in evaluating students’ selection and citation of non-English literature
sources.
Nonetheless, we believe that, in the increasingly internationalised higher
education system and world, the language skills of academic staff should
not determine the limit of knowledge sources that students can access and
engage with and the learning possibilities they can have. We are also con-
cerned that dissuading students from using diverse language sources could
risk signposting the legitimacy and value of a certain language medium
over others, and possibly reinforce the privileged status of English-medium
sources in knowledge production and dissemination. Therefore, a more lin-
guistically inclusive curriculum could be embraced in order to maximise
students’ opportunities and confidence for learning and development.
Universities that claim to be international or internationalised and particu-
larly those that have large numbers of international students have significant
opportunities to further introduce more inclusive reading lists and guidance
for assessment methods. This is because, we have found, students themselves
are able to identify a wider range of knowledge resources and make these
available to lecturers in the form of the reference sections of their academic
essays. Furthermore, faculty members can permit non-English sources and
encourage non-English sources when appropriate. They can enable the use
of non-English sources by teaching students how to cite non-English sources.
They can address specific technical challenges for students which include
whether they can use non-Roman characters and non-English words.
More generally, lecturers can consider whether they have a tendency
to use Western sources when referring to indigenous issues such as inter-
national development or even country- or culture-specific issues such as
the educational system of China. This results in the setting aside of sources
outside the dominant English or Anglophone academic literature or even
missing out completely on the intellectual provenance of a certain concept
or issue. When lecturers use indigenous ideas and knowledge (i.e. when
presenting issues and cases from other countries), non-English sources need
to be acknowledged.
Conclusions and future agenda
Students use a wide range of resources when writing their essays. Through
their choices of what knowledge sources to use in order to construct and

47
support their arguments in their essays, they demonstrate to some extent the
kinds of knowledge that they consider relevant and robust. The analysis of
these resources shows that Chinese students rely to a significant extent on
Chinese sources. This has potential implications for the design of courses
with large numbers of Chinese students or where students are free to write
about their own countries or specific contexts in their essays. The benefit
of inclusion and support for non-English resources needs to be better rec-
ognised. Lecturers and course designers with an international mindset and
awareness can incorporate various knowledge sources in a purposeful way.
Specifically for programmes with large numbers of Chinese students, lec-
turers can reflect on whether their (Chinese) students are allowed or even en-
couraged to use Chinese language resources. This step does not constitute an
accommodation that makes essay writing any ‘easier’ for Chinese students.
In fact, lecturers could consider that students who use Chinese language
sources need to introduce an extra step of translation, which could count as
a form of extra academic work for them. Chinese language sources need to
be translated before they can be used in essays for evaluation and will often
undergo a first level of analysis through this process of translation. More
generally, lecturers can consider whether they include non-English sources
in their reading lists and what the potential implications for excluding non-
English sources are. Are their students aware of how to reference and study
non-English resources?
Although the study analysed thousands of essay references, these nev-
ertheless constitute a particular and non-representative picture of the range
of resources being used by students. There are also specific design features
of the course unit analysed, which allowed students to choose their sources
without limiting them to using resources from a reading list; other course
units might be designed differently. Future studies could examine more
deeply how students actually used the sources that they referenced, taking
the analysis beyond the mere presence of Chinese references. Further studies
could also explore how many and why Chinese students choose to not use
Chinese references in their assignments. This could provide more insights
into students’ negotiation of their learning and assessment in UK higher
education.
There is an element of reflexivity in this study, as the lecturers’ practice
to acknowledge and embrace the value of non-English knowledge sources
appears to have increased the proportion of non-English sources over the
three years of the study. There are many challenges about writing about

t
/ 48
one’s own practices. Even though there are important limitations, including
the scale of our study, nevertheless our findings re-echo earlier work that
calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum, and it also raises important
points of principle. These include the need to allow students a wider ‘space’
to find the appropriate knowledge resources for their specific research and
to provide the specific tools (e.g. referencing formats) that they might need
to cite non-English (or host country) sources. Finally, this study serves to
confirm our convictions that actively involving students through an inclusive
and participatory approach is a fruitful way of contributing to the interna-
tionalisation of the curriculum.
Acknowledgements
The study was conducted with the research assistance of Qiong Wu and
Huan Liu. It benefitted from the feedback from the Higher Education Re-
search at Manchester (HERE@Manchester) reading group. The study was
supported by the University of Manchester School of Environment, Education
and Development (SEED) Impact Fund.
t
Miguel Antonio Lim is Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Institute
of Education and Co-convenor of the Higher Education Research
Network and the China and Higher Education Network at the Univer-
sity of Manchester. He also serves as Co-convenor of the International
Research and Researchers Network at the Society of Research into
Higher Education. Email: miguelantonio.lim@manchester.ac.uk
Zhuo Min Huang is Lecturer in Education at the Manchester Institute
of Education at the University of Manchester. Her research interests
involve intercultural education, intercultural ethics, intercultural per-
sonhood, mindfulness and arts methods.
Email: zhuomin.huang@manchester.ac.uk
t

49
Notes
1. There are a range of positions on the debate on native-speakerism. By focussing our
study on the challenges and responses of Chinese international students, it is not our
intention to devalue or dismiss the challenges faced by native speakers of English with
respect to academic writing.
2. In the United Kingdom, lecturers / course leaders almost always give a range of recom-
mended (and sometimes required) reading materials for their courses.
3. This author is also the lecturer of the course and one of the authors of this study.
4. We highlight two examples which we feel embody a positive framing of non-English ref-
erences. These include (1) the reference guide of the journal Pedagogy, Culture and Society,
with relevant material on page 7, which is available here: https://www.tandf.co.uk//
journals/authors/style/reference/tf_ChicagoAD.pdf; and (2) the Taylor & Francis Journals
Standard Reference Style Guide, which also offers a suggestion on referencing non-English
literature – see ‘Author-supplied translated titles’ on page 9. This document is available
at https://files.taylorandfrancis.com/tf_APA.pdf.
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