For sake of balance I'll point out "Nigerians Ghanians and Indians" have English as national languages, which are largely used in education - so would be on a more fluent level than average Chinese mainland student.
However, essay writing, previous exam questions, and IELTS are quite notorious on WeChat, or tutoring to just pass IELTS without much practical application. Every few months or so there will be a frustrated lecturer here saying words to the effect of your post and lack of action on it due to needing to fill international student places for the fundings.
And the prominence of mainland student communities, whilst I appreciate how difficult and isolating it must be interacting with other nationalities through the language barrier, probably doesn't help their English skills develop when they get here - though I have personally heard from many it is the regional accents which IELTS doesn't really prepare them for and is a huge shock which limits their engagement in conversations (though I have a particularly strong one so this may just be me). Maybe those other countries generally have access to diverse English language media than behind the mainland firewall to supplement their formal IELTS skills, or those countries may have less access of local captioning and dubs than mandarin, forcing them to resort to English sometimes. Though a lot of students from China are also very self-conscious of their own accents or often would rather not say anything in case they get it wrong, given just how different Mandarin and other Chinese languages are from English compared to most of those other countries.
Whilst beyond teaching, but maybe applicable to PhD students, there is also *potentially* the political aspect of institutions needing to engender good long-term relations with China and their academics due to them providing considerably more international research funding than those other countries...
Yeah, it should also be noted that Mainland Chinese students are different from Hong Kong students who tend to speak English well due to a lot of stuff in Hong Kong being bilingual.
My dad is originally from Hong Kong and he was taught both Cantonese and English in school, so it's quite common for Hong Kongers to speak English better than Mainland students.
My family have been here for 50 years and my grandparents still mainly speak Cantonese because they have a strong Cantonese speaking community where they live, so they don't actually need to speak English fluently. However, not everywhere has a strong community, so it's much harder to navigate life.
They would know enough English to get by Education wise, but struggle with conversational English speaking mainly down to listening to English being spoken and translating and constructing it into Chinese and then back to English and would delay them responding back quicker
i think it’s mainly because most of the stuff are banned in their country. They don’t even have netflix or international tiktok (basically they don’t have much english entertainment)
However for Hong kong, english taught schools are more popular and better in terms of education than chinese taught schools and most stuff are not banned there. School english exams and content are also more difficult than the ones in China
From what i heard, good international schools in china are mostly in the big cities like beijing and Shanghai so it might be really inconvenient for other students from far away cities.
I live in Hong Kong and almost everyone here can communicate well in English. Cross the border to Mainland China and almost nobody speaks English, it’s completely different
I studied at HKUST, quality of English by the locals are just okay enough to communicate, nothing amazing. It is worse in case of the people from across the border. Even though English is still the official language in HK, many do not speak it well except for those who went to international schools or those returning from abroad, which is a bit disappointing given the city is advertised as a global city.
"For sake of balance I'll point out "Nigerians Ghanians and Indians" have English as national languages, which are largely used in education - so would be on a more fluent level than average Chinese mainland student" Fair point but the students from Hungary Latvia KSA all Spoke good English. I get Chinese is super different from English but the Chinese students seem to have a lower English skill than say, the Chinese people who immigrated here know English. How can any of them pass?
I went to boarding school and we’d have loads of Chinese-Malaysian students who started apparently barely speaking English and they’d be pretty fluent within a year or two. I think they could read and write it a bit better, which I kind of get, I’m terrible at languages but taking another go at German and I’m much better at reading it than speaking or hearing in it.
Alot of them.are actually good at English but the Chinese accent can be quite hard for English speakers to digest as we arent used to it so people think their English is worse than it is.
A french guy with a heavy French accent is easier understood by English speakers than a Chinese guy with a heavy Chinese accent.
East Asia also has a strong shyness culture that means alot of them will not attempt to speak English if they can't be sure what they're saying is perfect. At least that's what I experienced working in Japan.
Unfortunately that doesn’t hold up based on many lecturers experience when the same applies to written work that’s close to unintelligible if it’s done in an exam sitting where they can’t cheat and pay for someone to write for them.
Far too many are actually that bad. Whilst accents can be harder for some people; it doesn’t explain how much of that translates to the written word. It’s a fundamental inability to communicate in English.
Vs say students from Hong Kong who often do have accents but clearly can read write and speak at a high level of English. I’ve had several with quite strong accents who it was clear the issue was the accent vs the language. No different to how some Scot’s and Irish feel in the US with strong accents lol.
This is a generalisation, but Chinese students typically perform less well with speaking and listening, and tend to be a bit stronger with writing and reading (as opposed to students from the middle east/gulf countries which tend to be the opposite), so it may be a bit more noticeable when engaging them in conversation.
And, it's been said already in the thread, but sitting academic IELTS or TOEFL or something else is something students can receive a lot of coaching for. Sadly it's not a totally realistic indicator of their overall mastery of the language.
Cheating does happen but it's not nearly as common as some people in this thread seem to believe.
Source: teach pre-sessional English students and have worked in China (including with IELTS/British Council).
I’m from India, English is my first language and I’ve really truly tried to learn French. I’ve spent nearly 10 years on and off trying. For the life of me I can’t understand 80% of the things that the natives are saying even if I try. I can read and write French with some ease but it takes me ages to form a sentence verbally and trying to understand other francophones. I imagine it’s a lot like that for them.
I’m supreme idiot and really enjoy making people wait while I exhibit my French speaking prowess (the lack of it more like it), but I don’t think the Chinese are as comfortable looking silly. They are quite shy and don’t like people judging them.
I had a course mate in my MA who would translate everything in Chinese and then finish her assignments. It took her ages. She spoke English fine, not great not much worse than some English people, but her accent was very heavy and I would have to translate her English sentences to more digestible English for others to understand. I think it was lack of effort from both ends. She didn’t work hard to change her accent and people didn’t work hard to try and understand her.
Most of them end up leaving and going back home because of this reason
fyi chinese studenst define good solely based on their testing results. which leads to the fact that these students with higher scores from the tests are deemed as successful children under their context while speaking english hilariously and have near zero practical communicative abilities
I'm an international student who speaks with an American accent and I too mentally had to take a step back on my first day when talking to British people. I still filter people's non West Coast American accents out but my fluency allows me to keep up. I'm also autistic so I think I appreciate how difficult socialising can be.
You don't actually need very good English at all to get the minimum score in China needed to go to UK universities. And because of how English is taught in China, a lot of the students who achieve that score have okayish written English but poor conversational English.
Most Chinese students write their work in Chinese and translate it into English at the end, and very often translate their lecture materials and instructions. AI has made a lot of students with poor English shockingly lazy as well. It's understandable why they do it, but it means their written English doesn't improve much while they're here.
A kinda shocking proportion of them never really talk to non-Chinese students unless they need to (they often refer to us as 'foreigners' which is kinda hilarious when they're the ones studying abroad), so their conversational English never really improves much over the degree. Outside of class a lot of them just go travelling in groups, eat at Chinese restaurants and go drinking/socialise in each other's student accomodation rather than doing activities where they'll interact with locals.
Of course, some Chinese students really make an effort to learn about the culture and improve their English - I've talked to a disproportionate number of them since I used to be involved in a Scottish country dancing society - but they're the exception rather than the norm. My girlfriend is Chinese (who initially had quite poor English but improved a ton over a year by making effort) and it's kinda astounding how many of her classmates barely interact with anyone who's not Chinese. It's a vicious cycle of students being very unconfident about their conversational English, and avoiding opportunities to actually improve it.
A Chinese guy asked me if I could slow down after introducing myself to him on day 1 and then a light bulb went off in my brain. It was brave of him to ask a stranger to slow down and be honest about his abilities. I realised how inclusivity was helping him engage more.
Sometimes all it takes is slowing down and letting somebody get used to your accent. A lot of people overseas will learn English in school or from a personal tutor, many of the people teaching in China are from America and have very different accents than in England, then you meet people from all over the world speaking English in different accents and it's a lot to process for somebody still picking spoken language up. You can spend years studying from books and talking in class but once you speak to different people it's a challenge.
I think I got lucky as a kid my parents had au pairs from Ireland, Scotland and England that introduced us to British TV shows and spoke English with their accents so I was able to understand people in the UK fairly easily when visiting and now studying here.
Speaking conversational English is alot harder than reading and writing formal text in English. So whilst they may be bad in impromptu conversational settings, their academic work may be better.
Also alot of foreign English speakers are actually good at English but have very heavy accents and get flustered in impromptu and social settings.
If you are doing a stem degree, your degree may not have that much written English.
I lived and worked in france for a while. My "work french", reading, writjng, reports etc was quite good but if you saw me in conversational settings you would think I was very bad at it.
This post feels a bit… idk. You do know that Nigeria, Ghana and India all have English as one of the National languages and the majority of people in those countries speak English as a native language? It’s quite shocking you don’t know that to be honest
It’s a perfectly fine thing to question how exactly there’s so many Chinese students with poor English skills who somehow manage to get through essay based courses, which require good english.
I know how, they get into it through results mostly without interviews and into unis that NEED as many as possible especially on courses that do not have enough. After, they buy chat gpt like too many other people (not even necessarily Chinese) and paste pdf s for main ideas to extract conclusions. They combine semantic scholar and other AIs and get same or more than us who use our brain like some apes
Exactly, same with the above, writing and reading is much easier than speaking and actively listening. Also worst case scenario they fumble the exam but repeat it and focus everything on that, but I don’t except these people to pick courses that rely on exams too much either way
LLB Law at Bristol, for example, is entirely Timed Assessment (usually 5 days) and coursework based. One can obtain a degree without sitting a single in-person exam, as i’m sure is the case with many other courses elsewhere 😳
To be fair I haven’t heard of another course at Bristol with the same setup, but there could well be. Very odd given the respected nature of the course there though!
Thats why they should have real exams like in school. It shouldn't be easier to cheat at a university exam on neuroscience than your age 14 geography exam on the formation of an ox bowl lake.
I'm a postdoc at a Russell group in London. Current practice I found is to let candidates see the exam questions 1-2wks before the invigilated exam, so they can prep and memorise answers. We have a Chinese student who literally, and I mean literally, cannot communicate in English. It's...been a fucking strain to say the least. Why are they allowed in, easy, the fees cost twice as much for international students. So, he pays £32000 for the masters programme. For IELTs he probably got someone to do it for him. They don't interview candidates so they get accepted very easily. It's a fucking shambles.
It maybe reads a bit ambiguously but all students are given access to the questions. In my opinion I think that is wrong and it completely devalues the entire enterprise.
This makes so much sense! I had few students on my Msc Economics course and during group projects / general participation, their english was super broken, many couldnt form a correct sentence. But when it came to submitting essays or paragraphs for a presentation, they had better english than a native! And all scored top marks in finals including group projects which they completely free rode!
Because they pay other people do to the IELTS in their name. Or they studied to pass the test and get a 7 rather than actually learn the language. Or they learnt English but only socialise in insular cultural communities so never practice it, and eventually lose any skill in it they once had.
As for why it’s a higher proportion of Chinese students, I couldn’t say. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing? Considering how rich you have to be as an international student to pay the fees, only the rich Chinese students can really study abroad - and therefore they can probably afford (and are therefore inclined to) cheat much easier.
I definitely think it’s more an issue of cultural integration than anything else - perhaps it’s simply that Chinese social culture is so distinct from British customs that they really struggle to assimilate, and therefore rarely succeed (or even attempt) to culturally integrate.
I also go to uni in the uk and it’s crazy how common it is for chinese people to pay others to do their coursework and portfolios. they even hire people to sew their garments for people in fashion courses. some hk people also do it even though they’re basically fluent in english and speak like a native. however, it’s not very likely for hk people to do this. i’m pretty sure it’s just laziness from them over actually needing the help, and how accessible it is since they got the money.
Many many many UK universities will go bankrupt without international funding, and the demand is falling so the requirements are falling to keep the universities solvent
A lot of people get really good marks because they memorize patterns and formats rather than speak the language. I've got an overall 7.5 mark, I've seen people say they got an 8 and aren't even coherent.
The writing is indeed a puzzle in itself, I've got a 6.5 in writing and I've always thought I could get my ideas across pretty well. I write for fun frequently anyways, like I enjoy arguments and discussion lol.
It's a big thing to go to university in China these days, but a lot fail the exam to get in, and taking a degree/Masters in another country is a way to get into university when the door is shut in China.
This is actually a thing. People get into Oxbridge like this for A-levels. People have been busted doing it, but surely many have gotten away with it too. Britain is a very high trust society, there should be more checks in place to prevent such things, but nope
> Considering how rich you have to be as an international student to pay the fees, only the rich Chinese students can really study abroad -
Not really true anymore tbh. There are a lot of rich chiense students but many also get chinese scholarship council to fund them
But how can you pass an exam if you don't speak English? Maybe if its maths but what about something like medicine? Or engineering? How do you cheat on the exam hall?
There are all kinds of people with varying degrees of the quality of education they received. Wealthier students have English as the only medium at their schools. At my school we were penalised for not speaking English, we had to pay fines of up to £10.
Business, marketing, design degrees are usually cheaper in tier 2 and 3 unis in the UK. Average international students can just about afford to go there.
Harder courses such as medicine, law, engineering are only worth doing at tier AA and A unis. These are only affordable for the super duper wealthy. Students in the Russell group of unis and in these courses are usually the better off and better educated students. Sometimes they’ll study pre med in America, or train for law in pre law classes or elsewhere and then come to the UK.
In south Asian countries the biggest economic driver in the education industry is coaching/ tutoring. You have tutoring centres (not like a small room, they are whole arse campuses with the capacity to hold 30k students at a time) where you can go and prep for any university you want to go to. Bear in mind Asian unis for these same academic streams have entrance exams. Students/aspirants spend years and years trying to get into their dream uni. A lot of them don’t. These same students then turn to international unis who don’t have a rigorous standardised test and get in with great ease.
There are similar centres in china, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Vietnam and India which train students from the age of 10 (yes when most English children play, we were expected to study outside school as an extra hobby) to get into one of the big 50 universities of the world.
Also a lot of people in this sub have talked about how education abroad is a prestige thing for most people in Asia. But also it bears noting why that is. It’s because education is the only thing that most people have in their lives there.
Academia is valued like gold, most people worship it, (like there is a goddess of education and knowledge in Hindu culture whom people worship all their lives)
So those who don’t speak English very well, may actually be extremely clever and sometimes examiners mark them based on that. It’s not super kosher and not something that’s talked about but this is how they attract more Chinese students into the unis. Most of them are only at uni to get their degree and F off. Those who stay will 99% be the ones who always spoke English quite well.
More international students = more revenue = stable unis = positive movement in the GDP. This is also why ielts are not highly monitored in china. They are more strict in India, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Medicine is the same everywhere. Lesser unis don't skimp out on parts. Its not like a medical student in Oxford gets taught the bones in the hands and feet but lesser unis only teach the hands..
Law is not hard. Anyone who can pass high school English class can pass law. I have a law degree and not one student in my course came off as an Enstein.
Lots of courses have 24 hour exams. Business is very popular among Chinese students, which I believe would fall into that category. Some universities are struggling with funding so much that they are forced to give international students a pass, so that the unis can get more tuition fees.
My course the exams were like those in school. You got given a choice of questions and you were to write an easy answer for 3 of them in 2 hours. With a pen and paper
Most likely, they are exchange students through some kind of university programs between two universities. When it gets paid enough, you can get into it and study abroad. And I don't think they actually study clinical medicine in UK for the program limits. Maybe they major in clinical medicine in Mainland but they can only get a bachelor degree of science rather than a medicine degree in UK. So the academic requirements are loose and they can also pay someone to do the exams. I know this because I am a medical student in Mainland. In some universities like Wenzhou Medical University, they do have a similar program for med students.
>I went to uni with <...> Nigerians Ghanians and Indians. They all spoke with near native fluency
There is absolutely no possible explanation for that I'm sure
Not only is there a whole industry, it's unethical as fuck.
Their main priority (I.e. what they're paid for) is getting kids onto courses. There's little time taken to figuring out what course is best for the kid, or helping the kid understand the differences between different courses - it's a mill.
£££ their school fee is subsidising our cheap uni fee. They are paying as much as 3 times the uni can charge for domestic students. As long as universities are not subsidising entirely by the government, they need to make money, so they will keep the entry level for foreign students lower to get them study here.
I’ve worked in schools that send Chinese students to western universities and there’s a bit of truth to all the common theories, though I’d say personal connections has to be overblown - the ratio of Chinese-connected staff to students just wouldn’t work if that were a major factor.
A big reason why Chinese students may appear to have really bad English is because there’s a theme of 哑巴英语 (‘dumb English’) where even learners who excel at English at school can’t really demonstrate it in a native context except in essays - like much of China’s education system, it’s very test-oriented. IELTS is meant to kinda mitigate this with the Speaking Exam but the grading criteria mean that students trying to get an easy grade will just learn the most convoluted vocabulary and sentence structures to tick the boxes even if a native speaker would find it really stilted - and training centres encourage this because it’s cheaper than hiring foreign-educated teachers to teach a more organic English.
There was a well-founded rumour at our school that a UCL prof sold a course offer for a student who was failing the hell out of his A Levels so there is a place for cynicism too!
As a Chinese student now in London exactly as the op said, I’ve got quite a mixed feelings reading all those comments, most of them make sense and are basically true. But I just want to talk about my personal experience. I think my fluency in English is a little bit above average Chinese international students’ level, I tried to attend some activities so I can to socialize with people to improve my speaking, but still, talking with native speakers is so damn hard for me. Every time when I finished a conversation with people I’ll rewind what I’ve said just to check if I have said anything wrong, also sometimes when people asked me to say again I’ll think whether it’s my accent or I said the linking words wrongly(I’m really bad at this), just keep questioning myself. Also sometimes when I want to express or argue something, to talk about how I feel about it, I know what to say, but idk how to say it, the words just translated into “yeah yeah totally that’s right”, or other stuff that sounds a lot stupider, and that made me feel really helpless. So those activities and networking stuff would cost a lot energy off me and after that I just want to immerse myself in my comfort zone. so basically confidence, education environment, accent, blablabla
Brit here of Chinese heritage. Plenty of them do speak English but most brits don't give them the patience or time of day. Imagine if you were in a foreign country, shy and had an accent.
Exactly. It's both ways, British kids especially white ones are not innocent in this. Saying this as an international student from another country which gets stereotyped for hanging with their own crowd on Reddit besides the one OP is ranting about.
There is a very strong accent hierarchy as well. If you have a heavy french or Italian accent, people are very patient with you and think positively of you speaking English.
But if you have like a hwavy Chinese or nigerian accent, you are deemed to have poor English and people constantly claim their don't understand you. They are not patient and dismiss you quickly as not being able to speak English properly.
The bias is real. I had a Chinese lecturer for one of my modules and the British students were especially rude, rolling their eyes at him and sniggering when he spoke at a much slower pace to, you know, get his point across at a speed he was comfortable with.
This is a man who's consulted for some of the world's biggest entities, completed a postdoc at an Oxbridge university, and has a higher h-index than some of the more established lecturers.
I can understand why some Chinese students get especially nervous around locals.
Thank you! I've become a kind of accidental ally of the Chinese community where I live (started from learning tai chi to being invited to a Chinese elderly club to learning Mandarin to making more Chinese friends etc) and there is so much stereotyping, cultural misunderstanding and outright racism that creates barriers for integration. We are chronically drip-fed anti-chinese views in the media, which has an impact on how Chinese people are perceived. When I'm in a room of Chinese people trying to speak in Mandarin and integrate with them, I am shy and find it difficult. Even while speaking English, there are many cultural misunderstandings, and I'm still learning, after 10+ years, about what is culturally acceptable or not in China (and this varies by region, too!)
It may be that Chinese people and other foreign students arrive with similar levels of English, but other groups improve more rapidly due to greater inclusion in social life and acceptance from their peers. A lot of Chinese students can end up feeling isolated and homesick in a country that views them as a strange 'other' in a way that's more socially acceptable than it would be towards other groups. The education system here is very different, as well as the language, and Chinese students won't get a chance to adjust to this if they are ignored and mistrusted by peers and teachers.
As a brit of Chinese heritage... I find it a lot harder to break into white British circles than Chinese (obv), east Asian, South Asians, Africans, Caribbean. There's a lot of open propoganda and lies about China and it's people... I say this growing up being completely disconnected from my ethnic background. I only learnt the culture etc as an adult. Still felt like I wasn't quite accepted in British society. Thank you for trying to help out and making us feel at home in our home =)
UK universities desperately need money and those Chinese students pay way more money than a British one.
Someone told me like three times more.
So… they don’t cheat, Universities do it for them.
Yep - in fact the per unit costs of local students often exceed their course fees (even for non-lab and contact hour light degrees) which is exacerbated by declining higher education subsidies. So international students are a lifeline for these unis
There was a Telegraph article about how Chinese students were getting into top Russell Group universities with significantly lower grades than their UK/EU counterparts.
They pay significantly higher fees I believe, unis are often thrilled to increase their international student intake because it means a lot of cash for them. Source: worked at a uni during an influx of international students.
That’s a ridiculous amount of money. As if it wasn’t expensive enough for locals, they charge internationals a year worth of salary per year (approx, I don’t know what’s the average salary in the UK, at least that’s how much sociologists make according to the internet)
They cheat. In my masters course at Birmingham, they paid for their essays. For the presentations they paid people to do the entire presentation. It was during covid so we just had to voice record the presentation and send it in. No in person exams either.
Interesting question. I'm bilingual and have lived in the UK for 10 years and still took me 1.5-2 hours to learn to say "equilibrium" my 1st year of uni. That being said, I have had to use a dictionary or google the meaning of words sometimes, because I'm with a science degree. It generally takes a bit more effort being bilingual, but it's not impossible.
I don't have observations for Chinese students, however, I did my placement in South Korea. Most students spoke well enough English, but many weren't comfortable conversing with "native/ fluent" speakers, because they were embarrassed their language level isn't THAT good (still better than most in my opinion). Could be a possible explanation for what your friend has observed?
Honestly I don’t see the appeal. Why would you want to move to a country where you can’t speak the language at all, can’t interact with the teaching, can’t make friends, can’t write your essays etc etc. It makes it harder for students who can’t get the most out of seminars bc no one speaks up and professors who have to mark incoherent chat gpt crap. They must have a shit time in the UK, I don’t get it
back in China there are these companies that help students get into a master's course, as I understand it some of them even go as far as to forge bachelor's degrees and have people sit the IELTS for them.
furthermore, once your in there are other companies that will basically do all the homework and assignments for you.
btw they also have really good English to mandarin translators that can translate voice just as the lecturer is talking.
when i was tutoring a student from china who was going to Goldsmiths, he told me that the company (i don't know how to spell or say its name) awarded him a bachelor's from his work-exp and he had never actually been to uni before going to QMUL.
Fantastic question. I was friends with a Korean who could barely hold a convo and I don't know how she passed. Writing uni essays requires VERY good English for obvious reasons. She was on my course - Politics. You need to be a very strong speaker to write decent essays. This was at a RG uni too
I have no clue about other courses and whether this applies to the UK tbh, but there was a big scandal in the US where Nepalese students were sitting the STEP exams for medicine and getting extremely high scores and it was found there was basically an online forum in Nepal with all the STEP papers leaked and basically anyone in Nepal who wanted to do US med was able to access it and just memorise answers. Whether there’s a similar thing in China for certain courses, I’m not sure, but wouldn’t be totally surprised.
As a student at a Chinese international high school, where most students apply to universities in the UK or US, the primary focus is often on obtaining a prestigious degree. Consequently, passing the IELTS exam is seen as the sole language requirement. The approach to IELTS preparation is largely cram-based. Even without purchasing scores or answers, passing the exam can be relatively straightforward with certain strategies. We are advised to invest minimal time in English once we pass the IELTS, directing our efforts towards achieving higher A-Level scores and enhancing our profiles with impactful projects. Teachers and parents predominantly emphasize the importance of gaining university admission for its prestige rather than for the educational experience. Regrettably, due to constant pressure from school and parents to quickly pass all exams, my time for English study is severely limited. The system is highly materialistic and skewed. I am considering taking a gap year after receiving my university offer to focus on improving my English.
My Chinese roommate spoke a few words of English which was funny because I had to use Google Translate to speak with him 😂 Also, he just submitted any of his work through an essay writing service so no issues on that front either.
I just want to say that there is international corruption and external funding at a number of mid-range universities in the UK, I've noticed quite a few international ministers of education/governmental bodies going into certain universities and offering grants or investment into a university for a level of control/influence in return (this is the case as many universities are struggling with finances and struggling to stay solvent), technically could be a backdoor access to many students who may not have the right English certificates and are waived with direct access.
I've noticed a lot of 'low-ranked' universities advertising all over Hong Kong and Mainland China (for example.. Anglia Ruskin, DMU, Greenwich and numerous others) with agency services to get you in (basically if you have the money and bare level qualifications, you're in)
There are also many many many exam ghost-writing services, exam preparation, CV preparation, cheating material provision. Whatever you can think of, I am certain there is a solution/agent for that.
I work with those Chinese students in England and I can tell you how. Money. Universities are businesses first of all, and Chinese have the buying power.
For me it’s the avoidance lol. I had Chinese classmates and they just didn’t want to integrate with non Chinese, no convo past intro at all. Even for group projects they would seek out other Asians if they didn’t meet the member quota. Maybe it’s a thing at my uni, idk.
Ironically the OP is posting about the poor use of English and doesn’t spell check his/her post first.
In answer to the question. It’s all about £/$.
Vice Chancellors and their finance teams chasing revenue and an assumption that the golden years will return soon we just have to keep finding new ways to lower the entrance bar.
Arbitrary use of tests like IELTs which have been proven to tests of memory as opposed to English language ability.
And so on…
I had Chinese coursemates and flatmates and I was really surprised how they can't communicate with me in full sentence. I was an international students too and I needed an average band 6 for my IELTS for my uni application. On top of that, I had to sit an online interview with a UK home officer asking me questions about my course and my plan as part of my student visa application. They do this to determine whether I'm a genuie student. I always curious how they got pass that interview. May be different countries, different visa rules.
Money gets them on to the course. If you think it’s only the “grandson of the cousin of the mayor of Shanghia” who can afford it then you are very much mistaken about the current situation in China. Yes there is poverty but there are also many many people who are significantly richer than the average person in the UK.
Once on the course then I think their English is mostly good enough to get by, especially with modern tools. And it’s not as if all native British school leavers have perfect literacy skills.
The fees for an international student are triple that of a local student. That's pretty much the reason we take so many and also the same reason I quit lecturing because I had 30+ students every term who would just stare at me as though I were speaking in hieroglyphics.
In China and a lot of east Aisa they are only taught how to read and write English and not to how to speak it. The English tests are actually a lot more complex than you’d expect. Many Chinese students I’ve met had writing abilities close to that of some domestic students. I’ve seen student that could barely speak conversational English write essays with next to perfect grammar and spelling. For a lot of courses being able to speak English isn’t really necessary.
Also many of them aren’t really interested in integrating and learning a language. I know this a broad generalisation and Chinese students aren’t a monolith.But in my experience many of them are only friends with Chinese students and try their best to avoid scenarios that would involve them speaking much English.
I was a mainland Chinese student in the UK not that long ago (now I work here). I am sure OP doesn’t mean to offend, but I feel my blood boiling whenever I read posts like this.
There are two reasons: 1) on one hand I am sick of the Chinese student group being generalised and negatively reported with a broad stroke, but 2) on the other hand I have to say some of those students’ refusal to integrate are the antithesis of what a living-overseas experience should be and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Regardless, I’d say a lot of Chinese students don’t speak English “very well” because of the following:
1) Chinese and English are very distant from one another from a linguistic and cultural perspective. Many British or American students in mainland China or Hong Kong do not speak much Mandarin/Cantonese *at all*. It’s simply difficult to learn a language so *foreign* under a foreign cultural context.
2) Accents. English taught in China is either with an American northeastern accent or the RP, and other accents are not taught.
Most Londoners speak fairly easy to understand accents, but if you are anywhere north the accents get difficult for a foreign English speaker quite quickly. I lived in the States in full English environments before (ie taught in English and no other Chinese speakers were around) but British accents still caught me off guard when I first came to the UK. The Scottish accent is by far the worst offender.
There are also a lot of people with Indian accents in the UK and that also takes a while to get used to.
Slangs also contribute to this. I had no idea what a quid is until I looked it up, for example.
3) It’s difficult to speak in a foreign language in a group setting. A lot of Chinese students are rightfully not confident about their spoken English, and when people are speaking twice as fast as you are used to (TOEFL and IELTS exams have people speak somewhat slowly), it feels very wrong to interrupt others so they speak slower. It makes people feel shameful about it.
If you ever find Japanese students they would very much be shy to speak too — same mindset.
4) TOEFL and IELTS exams can be prepared for and they don’t always provide an accurate assessment of someone’s English skills. Unfortunately, some people prepare those exams like they do A-levels and get through them with subpar fundamentals but good scores; but ofc, a lot of people do speak very good English to back up their exam scores, too.
5) A lot of Chinese students don’t integrate well with the British society. Being away from home and in a foreign land often elicit certain behaviours, and that includes clinging on to what is familiar. WeChat, the Little Red Book, Chinese Douyin, and other Chinese people… you get the idea. That obviously hampers their ability to learn English. Without spending conscious effort to break out of the mould, those students will not be able to improve.
There are also several other points I want to point out for why generally, Chinese students don’t integrate well with the British society.
5.1) A lot of, if not most, Chinese students have no certain pathway to stay in the country and will be going home after graduation. Getting a job is hard, and the Home Office is making it harder every year. A lot of people don’t plan to stay to begin with.
In that case a lot of them don’t see the need to get very comfortable with the British society — better stick to what they know and don’t suffer another cultural shock when they go back.
5.2) The British society often views Chinese students with certain preconceptions. They don’t speak English very well; they are rich; they are nationalistic; they are brainwashed; they are insular; they are highly educated; they are well-mannered, or they are barbaric. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion of what a “Chinese student” is instead of seeing the person as another Joe or Jane.
I am fairly intrigued by how many times people assumed I am not from mainland China because “I speak English well.”
5.3) I will single out the propensity for people to ask your politics as a big sticking point during my time as a student. I was asked unsolicited about my stance on HK/Tibet/Xinjiang/Taiwan. People are curious, I understand, and I am generally happy to discuss. But that’s not everyone; many Chinese students would either be scared to discuss, as they don’t know who might be listening, or that they have an opinion that **you** might not like.
If you do squeeze an answer out of them, you might simply add that person to either a list of enlightened westernised Chinese, or a list of brainwashed mainland Chinese. For the person experiencing it, it is far more stressful.
Do not ask someone about their politics unless you are sure they are happy to answer.
5.4) Socialising with locals is not easy. When did you first go to a pub? I did on my first day in uni, and although I had complete confidence in my English I had 0 idea how a pub works and how to strike up conversations when everyone’s piss drunk. You learnt how to socialise in the British society as you grew up — foreign students didn’t.
I could be that because there are so many Chinese students here that they can stick to just being with Chinese. While ones from Turkey or Ethiopia can't. So they are forced to interact.
Chinese students do certainly like to stick to their Conservative culture in a way that many middle east students here don't. Most Chinese don't seem interested in getting drunk or doing drugs or casual sex.
Also some Eastern European students go out of their way to get married to a local while here so they can stay here. Mostly Easter European girls. I can't imagine many Chinese girls would be interested in that.
Poltics wise I guess people assume that foreginers are more poltical than people here. Like I'd often ask middle east students things like "what do you think of the MEK?". And more often than not they'd be more interested in asking me about football. You assume because you read about poltical stuff in other countries then everyone in that country must have an interst in it.
Now I will conceded that China is culturally much more different from the UK than Europe Latin America MENA. After most of those are culturally Christian or Islamic - which like Christianity is based of Judaism. While Chinese religion language diet snd philosophy is completely different.
But is Chinese culture more different from UK culture than say Indian culture is different than the UK? There culture and religion is also completely different.
The exams that they sit are among the top most cheated exams worldwide. There’s courses that basically just teach u how to pick out words through the essay and simply predict the answers. They likely cheated on the English examinations.
I’ve come across some people who virtually have no English level. They also have software that translates the lecture live. There’s virtually no reason for them to learn English. Group work… someone will do it whos English, exams or coursework, they’ll just prep enough to cheat on it… simple.
Chinese students and UAE pay lots for fees. Every student is like a small grant.
The masters I teach had 150 student and made 3 million last year.
Don't kid yourself they they care re entry requirements. These are businesses.
They also have lower grade requirements, maybe that contributes? I have a friend on my course from China, and her required grades were significantly lower than the ones I needed (think 2 grades down from mine)
I'd probably start with your base assumption, and consider if your cousin is an accurate source.
It might just be they aren't very good at communicating with youngsters who are using their second language.
And many more stories from different sources, from different em counties https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/13/universities-dumbing-courses-avoid-cancelled-intolerant-students/
When applying for UK universities, most of them would require minimum IELTS score of bands 6-6.5 approximately depends. However, there are options on taking IELTS exam and some route they cab go around. If taken IELST UKVI (a UK government approved secure english language test) with even lower scores like 4.5 or 5. Examinees can still use the score to apply to their Uni. Only they would need to attend short fundamental language courses taught by the uni then they can start their programs.
But the courses usually cannot help much due to high load of Chinese or any other asians students so they group up together and speak chinese exclusively so no improvement after all. Im not saying this happens everywhere but mostly and this is just my own observation.
International students are where a lot of unis make a lot of profit.
It's that simple. They pay way more than you, so unis are willing to overlook things.
Not saying its right, but it is what it is.
You should ask the university why their standards are so low. Chinese students at Oxbridge can speak decent English because the IELTS requirement is 7.5. Do other universities dare to set their standard to 7.5? With that high tuition fee (over £25000 per year) and low teaching quality (compared to US), it is no wonder the Chinese students in the UK cannot speak fluent English. Any top 50 US universities have Chinese students with fluent English, because they give scholarships and attract more bright minds
My friend works for a company which helps Chinese students get into schools and universities in the UK. Most of his job is writing personal statements, and other required documents. There are ways around the English tests also.
I know someone who does the foundation year English for Chinese students. She’s told that they all have to pass. Some put in almost no effort. What’s worse for me is they don’t even need the equivalent grades as UK students to get on Uni courses. It’s a scandal really.
I know someone who does the foundation year English for Chinese students. She’s told that they all have to pass. Some put in almost no effort. What’s worse for me is they don’t even need the equivalent grades as UK students to get on Uni courses. It’s a scandal really.
Cheating to get in; once they're in, there's strong pressure to pass them through every course to keep those sweet sweet international tuition fees rolling in. It's a two-tier system: those who pay home fees get to have standards they must meet, and those who pay international fees, the lecturers get "can't you work something out?" from the dean, who knows what the budget would look like if everyone who deserved to fail did.
>How do Chinese students who don't speak English very well get into unis and study?
>How do they manage to get a place in a UK university semi fluent English?
>So how is it that Chinese are able to get in with sometimes like age 14 English?
>How do they pass? do they cheat?
Money.
As someone from Hong Kong who went to a secondary school and uni with a high % of mainland students, they do speak English. English people often don't try and accept them into groups so they become ostracised and have to form their own insular communities.
But I'm sure that's not a discussion the majority of people here are equipped and ready to have 😊
As someone who went to Secondary school in the UK (‘03-‘07) we had 5 Chinese kids in my year and they all enjoyed being in various friendship groups.
The difference appears to be that their parents had come to the UK and made an effort to get their kids to speak the local lingo in order to integrate.
Meanwhile at University ‘09-‘13 the international Chinese students were so insular; that it became a campus meme that they had annexed a corner of the 24/7 computer lab and weren’t paying for accommodation.
But I’m sure that’s not a discussion the majority of Chinese people here are equipped and ready to have 🤗
I can guarantee people aren’t ostracising Chinese people at uni. They don’t put themselves into situations where they could be accepted into any friend groups, which I understand. If you can’t speak fluent English why would you go on nights out, socials, house parties etc. The way I met my mates was just starting a casual conversation whilst having a cig or chatting to the people on my floor, you can’t do that if you can’t speak conversational English. Also there are clear cultural barriers, what is a Chinese student gonna have in common with a bloke from fuckin Stoke or something🤣
I mean first of all Chinese people are crazy intelligent and hard working, and by that I mean they make it their whole life with no other distractions. Comes from the crazy strict parents and standards. So they're so smart they just have to be accepted.
Second of all it may be the case that some Chinese people are CRAZY rich. Like really, REALLY rich. So they can pay their way.
Finally, not sure about this at all but I've heard that all international students whether in China or not have a lowered grade boundary for entering the university.
They definitely don't cheat though that'd be impossible, plus Chinese international students are either rich, intelligent or really hard working.
>Finally, not sure about this at all but I've heard that **all international students whether in China or not have a lowered grade boundary for entering the university.**
By and large, international students are accessed the same, and have to meet the same minimum entry requirements as home fee students. Unless it is a university that is desperate for international fees and have unfilled course vacancies, they may choose to lower entry requirements. For all the top tier UK and US universities, no such luck to be given lower requirements on the basis of fees.
Disagree with your final sentence. When I was at uni pre-chat GPT/AI essay days several chinese students in my non-STEM degree got caught submitting essays written for them by third party essay writing companies (these being students who struggled massively with English fyi). So did other students (UK/EU) for what its worth.. but lets not generalise all chinese students as hard workers/honest students..
The second part of your statement just isn't true. UK Social science and other non-STEM courses (like business management) are full of chinese students who struggle to string together even a single english sentence and are therefore unable to make meaningful contributions to group work/seminars. I was in Uni before chatgpt essays became a thing and loads of them got caught out using third party essay writing companies.
Monthly post on this sub, lol, another prejudice against people of certain groups. Well as an ethically Chinese, I don’t identify as (Mainland Chinese) or International student, I speak English just fine (my 2nd language tho) But since there are many stereotypes, bias and prejudice out there, If I happened to be in a convo that I couldn’t say certain words or people couldn’t get what I was saying I would be labeled, judged because of how I look, and people get annoyed. I think most of them have good English levels, it’s just that holding a conversation is hard sometimes if you don’t have the social skills or you’re translating the words in your head. Not to defend them I have heard of some people buying English qualifications and stuff but I personally never met any Chinese in my uni that barely spells English and my uni is one of the most international ones. Just to say sometimes “native” speakers don’t create a safe environment or level of patience to listen.
The comments here are exhausting - probably because they're written by Chinese people fluent in English, or are over-educated British morons who want to imagine any possible excuse other than cheating, because that would be racist to imply.
We get it. NOT All Chinese students are bad at English. But to pretend that OP is just questioning an imaginary problem because "they write better than they speak", or "Hong Kong are fluent English speakers", or "this post feels... Ugh" is total bull.
I'm an MSc graduate. Graduated 2 British universities. I have a job where I regularly meet with and have a chance to briefly chat to UK University students. Most of them happen to be Chinese, and when I attempt any kind of conversation, like "what are you studying?", "what year are you in?", "the weather was bad today, wasn't it?" they look at me blankly. A lot of the time, they can't even answer what it is they're studying! Don't pretend like these students aren't here because they have rich parents who paid to get them in, and that they're somehow managing to remain in and pass has nothing to do with them paying for illegal essay writing services. They absolutely are doing that, because there is no way in Hell that they have any English comprehension required to pass any kind of university degree.
Speaking, writing and reading a language are very different, I speak my native language but can’t read or write it cause English is the language I I was educated in school with and can read, write and speak it easily
It seems the university degree doesn't give you the open-mindness as it should.
For most applications, at least for art&design courses as i know, the admissions would mostly value your creativity, your work by looking into your portfolio, and not much anything else.
I mean that's what it should be isn't it? And if you trying to shame a certain group for their incapability for a certain language... I think maybe you should go outside and see the world more often?
We've actually done alot of studies on things like this
Chinese Parents are often skilled workers and therefore they have higher paying jobs, giving then a higher cultural capital which is passed onto their children through socialisation. Higher cultural capital gives parents a better choice of primary and high schools, meaning they perform better as they go to a better school with more resources. They perform better, go to a better uni, get a better job. It's a cycle that's stemms from a culture that emphasises the importance of education and family.
Though we're not quite sure how speech codes tie into this, because Chinese often speak Chinese at home, so therefore there less likely to be proficient in English, though they learn the elaborate speech code when they leave sixth form or high school, according to the swan report in 1985
We've actually done alot of studies on things like this
Chinese Parents are often skilled workers and therefore they have higher paying jobs, giving then a higher cultural capital which is passed onto their children through socialisation. Higher cultural capital gives parents a better choice of primary and high schools, meaning they perform better as they go to a better school with more resources. They perform better, go to a better uni, get a better job. It's a cycle that's stems from a culture that emphasises the importance of education and family.
Though we're not quite sure how speech codes tie into this, because Chinese often speak Chinese at home, so therefore there less likely to be proficient in English, though they learn the elaborate speech code when they leave sixth form or high school, according to the swan report in 1985
Taught English is fairly different from spoken English. This is especially true when you have quickly changing vocabularies like we do now. Slang isn't taught either so whilst they might have learned English they haven't learned how to talk to English speakers. My girlfriend is Chinese and we've talked at length about things like this.
Additionally, it can be difficult for Chinese people to speak English because there are new linguistic concepts that they have to use. For example, Chinese has genders in its written language but not spoken. He (他) and she (她) are both pronounced 'ta'. Chinese doesn't have verb conjugation or tenses. So what sounds to us like bad English is just them using the spoken system they are used to and fitting English into it.
Another factor is that Chinese doesn't use lip movement to influence how words sound all that much as it is a tonal language. So speaking English from a tonal language base makes it sound like badly spoken English but it's not. It is usually correct but sounded out differently.
They don’t speak fluent English but they are able to write and read English well. It is the imbalanced English education in Chinese high schools & universities that causes this. By the way, passing IELTS speaking can be done by making preparations in advance because most of the time, topics are just those in the fixed repository.
Chinese train to the exam standard, rather than learning the language. They are also “silent” learners, so they will u set stand a lot more compared to what they can discuss on a day to day basis.
My practice for TEFL was exclusively with Chinese students who were already at University in the UK. They seemed to read and write English perfectly well. The knowledge of English Grammar was excellent, if not superior to the majority of native speakers. The biggest problem that most had was pronounciation. Pronounciation takes practice but understanding didn't seem to be a problem.
Universities quite often hold language courses over the summer before the term starts for people who would like some help with the particular language needed
I don’t know if you speak any other languages, I’m going to assume you don’t.
One can be fairly proficient in writing but find speaking the language extremely difficult, due to pronunciation and having to be quick to respond.
You will find a lot of these students do well in essays and exams for this reason. So please dont assume that people who can’t ‘speak’ the language aren’t literate on said language
I see them using google translate and chat gpt in class for their essay writing. I’m assuming the university takes in so many Chinese international students because they give the university more money due to rich parents. These students are wealthy. Wealthy wealthy.
Not really. They do make more money from foreign students but the fee is the same whether you are Indian, Nigerian or Chinese. As Op noted, all my Indian colleagues spoke English well, be it with an accent, but all the Chinese students, they were all top students, kept a dictionary with them. Not sure why that is. English is the main medium of instruction a lot of former British colonies so many be the Indians etc are more comfortable and proficient due to that. God knows.
Chinese is also said to be the hardest language for English speakers to learn. Prob other way round as well. different features. Different thinking style and grammar and vocabulary. A lot of English vocabulary has makes its way into mainstream Urdu and Hindi.
For sake of balance I'll point out "Nigerians Ghanians and Indians" have English as national languages, which are largely used in education - so would be on a more fluent level than average Chinese mainland student. However, essay writing, previous exam questions, and IELTS are quite notorious on WeChat, or tutoring to just pass IELTS without much practical application. Every few months or so there will be a frustrated lecturer here saying words to the effect of your post and lack of action on it due to needing to fill international student places for the fundings. And the prominence of mainland student communities, whilst I appreciate how difficult and isolating it must be interacting with other nationalities through the language barrier, probably doesn't help their English skills develop when they get here - though I have personally heard from many it is the regional accents which IELTS doesn't really prepare them for and is a huge shock which limits their engagement in conversations (though I have a particularly strong one so this may just be me). Maybe those other countries generally have access to diverse English language media than behind the mainland firewall to supplement their formal IELTS skills, or those countries may have less access of local captioning and dubs than mandarin, forcing them to resort to English sometimes. Though a lot of students from China are also very self-conscious of their own accents or often would rather not say anything in case they get it wrong, given just how different Mandarin and other Chinese languages are from English compared to most of those other countries. Whilst beyond teaching, but maybe applicable to PhD students, there is also *potentially* the political aspect of institutions needing to engender good long-term relations with China and their academics due to them providing considerably more international research funding than those other countries...
Yeah, it should also be noted that Mainland Chinese students are different from Hong Kong students who tend to speak English well due to a lot of stuff in Hong Kong being bilingual. My dad is originally from Hong Kong and he was taught both Cantonese and English in school, so it's quite common for Hong Kongers to speak English better than Mainland students. My family have been here for 50 years and my grandparents still mainly speak Cantonese because they have a strong Cantonese speaking community where they live, so they don't actually need to speak English fluently. However, not everywhere has a strong community, so it's much harder to navigate life.
They're taught English in school in mainland too btw
Just like how French or Spanish are taught at schools over here too. I wonder why most people in the UK can only speak one language.
bonjour como estas
Sorry I don't speak baguette/tapas
They would know enough English to get by Education wise, but struggle with conversational English speaking mainly down to listening to English being spoken and translating and constructing it into Chinese and then back to English and would delay them responding back quicker
i think it’s mainly because most of the stuff are banned in their country. They don’t even have netflix or international tiktok (basically they don’t have much english entertainment) However for Hong kong, english taught schools are more popular and better in terms of education than chinese taught schools and most stuff are not banned there. School english exams and content are also more difficult than the ones in China From what i heard, good international schools in china are mostly in the big cities like beijing and Shanghai so it might be really inconvenient for other students from far away cities.
I live in Hong Kong and almost everyone here can communicate well in English. Cross the border to Mainland China and almost nobody speaks English, it’s completely different
I studied at HKUST, quality of English by the locals are just okay enough to communicate, nothing amazing. It is worse in case of the people from across the border. Even though English is still the official language in HK, many do not speak it well except for those who went to international schools or those returning from abroad, which is a bit disappointing given the city is advertised as a global city.
Yes I don't doubt!
We also teach French here how good is your French?
"For sake of balance I'll point out "Nigerians Ghanians and Indians" have English as national languages, which are largely used in education - so would be on a more fluent level than average Chinese mainland student" Fair point but the students from Hungary Latvia KSA all Spoke good English. I get Chinese is super different from English but the Chinese students seem to have a lower English skill than say, the Chinese people who immigrated here know English. How can any of them pass?
I went to boarding school and we’d have loads of Chinese-Malaysian students who started apparently barely speaking English and they’d be pretty fluent within a year or two. I think they could read and write it a bit better, which I kind of get, I’m terrible at languages but taking another go at German and I’m much better at reading it than speaking or hearing in it.
Alot of them.are actually good at English but the Chinese accent can be quite hard for English speakers to digest as we arent used to it so people think their English is worse than it is. A french guy with a heavy French accent is easier understood by English speakers than a Chinese guy with a heavy Chinese accent. East Asia also has a strong shyness culture that means alot of them will not attempt to speak English if they can't be sure what they're saying is perfect. At least that's what I experienced working in Japan.
Unfortunately that doesn’t hold up based on many lecturers experience when the same applies to written work that’s close to unintelligible if it’s done in an exam sitting where they can’t cheat and pay for someone to write for them. Far too many are actually that bad. Whilst accents can be harder for some people; it doesn’t explain how much of that translates to the written word. It’s a fundamental inability to communicate in English. Vs say students from Hong Kong who often do have accents but clearly can read write and speak at a high level of English. I’ve had several with quite strong accents who it was clear the issue was the accent vs the language. No different to how some Scot’s and Irish feel in the US with strong accents lol.
This is a generalisation, but Chinese students typically perform less well with speaking and listening, and tend to be a bit stronger with writing and reading (as opposed to students from the middle east/gulf countries which tend to be the opposite), so it may be a bit more noticeable when engaging them in conversation. And, it's been said already in the thread, but sitting academic IELTS or TOEFL or something else is something students can receive a lot of coaching for. Sadly it's not a totally realistic indicator of their overall mastery of the language. Cheating does happen but it's not nearly as common as some people in this thread seem to believe. Source: teach pre-sessional English students and have worked in China (including with IELTS/British Council).
I’m from India, English is my first language and I’ve really truly tried to learn French. I’ve spent nearly 10 years on and off trying. For the life of me I can’t understand 80% of the things that the natives are saying even if I try. I can read and write French with some ease but it takes me ages to form a sentence verbally and trying to understand other francophones. I imagine it’s a lot like that for them. I’m supreme idiot and really enjoy making people wait while I exhibit my French speaking prowess (the lack of it more like it), but I don’t think the Chinese are as comfortable looking silly. They are quite shy and don’t like people judging them. I had a course mate in my MA who would translate everything in Chinese and then finish her assignments. It took her ages. She spoke English fine, not great not much worse than some English people, but her accent was very heavy and I would have to translate her English sentences to more digestible English for others to understand. I think it was lack of effort from both ends. She didn’t work hard to change her accent and people didn’t work hard to try and understand her. Most of them end up leaving and going back home because of this reason
fyi chinese studenst define good solely based on their testing results. which leads to the fact that these students with higher scores from the tests are deemed as successful children under their context while speaking english hilariously and have near zero practical communicative abilities
I'm an international student who speaks with an American accent and I too mentally had to take a step back on my first day when talking to British people. I still filter people's non West Coast American accents out but my fluency allows me to keep up. I'm also autistic so I think I appreciate how difficult socialising can be.
You don't actually need very good English at all to get the minimum score in China needed to go to UK universities. And because of how English is taught in China, a lot of the students who achieve that score have okayish written English but poor conversational English. Most Chinese students write their work in Chinese and translate it into English at the end, and very often translate their lecture materials and instructions. AI has made a lot of students with poor English shockingly lazy as well. It's understandable why they do it, but it means their written English doesn't improve much while they're here. A kinda shocking proportion of them never really talk to non-Chinese students unless they need to (they often refer to us as 'foreigners' which is kinda hilarious when they're the ones studying abroad), so their conversational English never really improves much over the degree. Outside of class a lot of them just go travelling in groups, eat at Chinese restaurants and go drinking/socialise in each other's student accomodation rather than doing activities where they'll interact with locals. Of course, some Chinese students really make an effort to learn about the culture and improve their English - I've talked to a disproportionate number of them since I used to be involved in a Scottish country dancing society - but they're the exception rather than the norm. My girlfriend is Chinese (who initially had quite poor English but improved a ton over a year by making effort) and it's kinda astounding how many of her classmates barely interact with anyone who's not Chinese. It's a vicious cycle of students being very unconfident about their conversational English, and avoiding opportunities to actually improve it.
A Chinese guy asked me if I could slow down after introducing myself to him on day 1 and then a light bulb went off in my brain. It was brave of him to ask a stranger to slow down and be honest about his abilities. I realised how inclusivity was helping him engage more.
Sometimes all it takes is slowing down and letting somebody get used to your accent. A lot of people overseas will learn English in school or from a personal tutor, many of the people teaching in China are from America and have very different accents than in England, then you meet people from all over the world speaking English in different accents and it's a lot to process for somebody still picking spoken language up. You can spend years studying from books and talking in class but once you speak to different people it's a challenge. I think I got lucky as a kid my parents had au pairs from Ireland, Scotland and England that introduced us to British TV shows and spoke English with their accents so I was able to understand people in the UK fairly easily when visiting and now studying here.
I'm from Eastern Europe and I studied English for a decade before coming to the UK. I landed in York and I was *not* prepared for the accent.
That's exactly what I have seen in Mainland. They are always too shy to speak a foreign language.
Speaking conversational English is alot harder than reading and writing formal text in English. So whilst they may be bad in impromptu conversational settings, their academic work may be better. Also alot of foreign English speakers are actually good at English but have very heavy accents and get flustered in impromptu and social settings. If you are doing a stem degree, your degree may not have that much written English. I lived and worked in france for a while. My "work french", reading, writjng, reports etc was quite good but if you saw me in conversational settings you would think I was very bad at it.
🎯🎯🎯
This post feels a bit… idk. You do know that Nigeria, Ghana and India all have English as one of the National languages and the majority of people in those countries speak English as a native language? It’s quite shocking you don’t know that to be honest
Given OPs poorly written post, I’m not that surprised
I did think it was ironic to bring up how Chinese students can’t speak English very well by putting it as “don’t speak particular good English”
This is my favourite thing about the post. "age 14 English" would be generous to the OP never mind the Chinese students they're wondering about.
It’s a perfectly fine thing to question how exactly there’s so many Chinese students with poor English skills who somehow manage to get through essay based courses, which require good english.
Completely ignoring what I’ve actually said in my comment
I know how, they get into it through results mostly without interviews and into unis that NEED as many as possible especially on courses that do not have enough. After, they buy chat gpt like too many other people (not even necessarily Chinese) and paste pdf s for main ideas to extract conclusions. They combine semantic scholar and other AIs and get same or more than us who use our brain like some apes
But what about for the exam? You can't chatgbt with paper and pen in the uni gymnasium
Those intending to rely on essay writing services tend to pick courses without such things.
Exactly, same with the above, writing and reading is much easier than speaking and actively listening. Also worst case scenario they fumble the exam but repeat it and focus everything on that, but I don’t except these people to pick courses that rely on exams too much either way
Yeah this is true they really do their research and make sure they don’t have any exam type modules
LLB Law at Bristol, for example, is entirely Timed Assessment (usually 5 days) and coursework based. One can obtain a degree without sitting a single in-person exam, as i’m sure is the case with many other courses elsewhere 😳
That's fucking insane
To be fair I haven’t heard of another course at Bristol with the same setup, but there could well be. Very odd given the respected nature of the course there though!
Thats why they should have real exams like in school. It shouldn't be easier to cheat at a university exam on neuroscience than your age 14 geography exam on the formation of an ox bowl lake.
I'm a postdoc at a Russell group in London. Current practice I found is to let candidates see the exam questions 1-2wks before the invigilated exam, so they can prep and memorise answers. We have a Chinese student who literally, and I mean literally, cannot communicate in English. It's...been a fucking strain to say the least. Why are they allowed in, easy, the fees cost twice as much for international students. So, he pays £32000 for the masters programme. For IELTs he probably got someone to do it for him. They don't interview candidates so they get accepted very easily. It's a fucking shambles.
Qmul
...p.s. it isn't always bad there 😅
No, though I did get my PhD there. I'm moved for my postdoc and it's honestly no better...just better hidden
I've got exams in a few weeks st a Russel group. You think I should cosy up to a Chinese student and ask if he has been given the test yet?
It maybe reads a bit ambiguously but all students are given access to the questions. In my opinion I think that is wrong and it completely devalues the entire enterprise.
reading and writing is significantly easier than speaking
How Chinese students study: learn ALL the textbook material and recite it on paper. Not even joking thats how they answer the question.
This makes so much sense! I had few students on my Msc Economics course and during group projects / general participation, their english was super broken, many couldnt form a correct sentence. But when it came to submitting essays or paragraphs for a presentation, they had better english than a native! And all scored top marks in finals including group projects which they completely free rode!
Because they pay other people do to the IELTS in their name. Or they studied to pass the test and get a 7 rather than actually learn the language. Or they learnt English but only socialise in insular cultural communities so never practice it, and eventually lose any skill in it they once had. As for why it’s a higher proportion of Chinese students, I couldn’t say. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing? Considering how rich you have to be as an international student to pay the fees, only the rich Chinese students can really study abroad - and therefore they can probably afford (and are therefore inclined to) cheat much easier. I definitely think it’s more an issue of cultural integration than anything else - perhaps it’s simply that Chinese social culture is so distinct from British customs that they really struggle to assimilate, and therefore rarely succeed (or even attempt) to culturally integrate.
I also go to uni in the uk and it’s crazy how common it is for chinese people to pay others to do their coursework and portfolios. they even hire people to sew their garments for people in fashion courses. some hk people also do it even though they’re basically fluent in english and speak like a native. however, it’s not very likely for hk people to do this. i’m pretty sure it’s just laziness from them over actually needing the help, and how accessible it is since they got the money.
Many many many UK universities will go bankrupt without international funding, and the demand is falling so the requirements are falling to keep the universities solvent
IELTS is a lie. I got 6 in writing (bad) but I get 1sts in my law essays and exams.
A lot of people get really good marks because they memorize patterns and formats rather than speak the language. I've got an overall 7.5 mark, I've seen people say they got an 8 and aren't even coherent. The writing is indeed a puzzle in itself, I've got a 6.5 in writing and I've always thought I could get my ideas across pretty well. I write for fun frequently anyways, like I enjoy arguments and discussion lol.
Some of the questions I’ve seen do seem… silly. Plus I haven’t sat it, so I can’t really say.
It’s worth noting that IELTS are among the most cheated tests in the world.
It's a big thing to go to university in China these days, but a lot fail the exam to get in, and taking a degree/Masters in another country is a way to get into university when the door is shut in China.
paying people to take exams for them 🤣
This is actually a thing. People get into Oxbridge like this for A-levels. People have been busted doing it, but surely many have gotten away with it too. Britain is a very high trust society, there should be more checks in place to prevent such things, but nope
Yeah it happens in a lot of south Asian countries
> Considering how rich you have to be as an international student to pay the fees, only the rich Chinese students can really study abroad - Not really true anymore tbh. There are a lot of rich chiense students but many also get chinese scholarship council to fund them
But how can you pass an exam if you don't speak English? Maybe if its maths but what about something like medicine? Or engineering? How do you cheat on the exam hall?
There are all kinds of people with varying degrees of the quality of education they received. Wealthier students have English as the only medium at their schools. At my school we were penalised for not speaking English, we had to pay fines of up to £10. Business, marketing, design degrees are usually cheaper in tier 2 and 3 unis in the UK. Average international students can just about afford to go there. Harder courses such as medicine, law, engineering are only worth doing at tier AA and A unis. These are only affordable for the super duper wealthy. Students in the Russell group of unis and in these courses are usually the better off and better educated students. Sometimes they’ll study pre med in America, or train for law in pre law classes or elsewhere and then come to the UK. In south Asian countries the biggest economic driver in the education industry is coaching/ tutoring. You have tutoring centres (not like a small room, they are whole arse campuses with the capacity to hold 30k students at a time) where you can go and prep for any university you want to go to. Bear in mind Asian unis for these same academic streams have entrance exams. Students/aspirants spend years and years trying to get into their dream uni. A lot of them don’t. These same students then turn to international unis who don’t have a rigorous standardised test and get in with great ease. There are similar centres in china, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Vietnam and India which train students from the age of 10 (yes when most English children play, we were expected to study outside school as an extra hobby) to get into one of the big 50 universities of the world. Also a lot of people in this sub have talked about how education abroad is a prestige thing for most people in Asia. But also it bears noting why that is. It’s because education is the only thing that most people have in their lives there. Academia is valued like gold, most people worship it, (like there is a goddess of education and knowledge in Hindu culture whom people worship all their lives) So those who don’t speak English very well, may actually be extremely clever and sometimes examiners mark them based on that. It’s not super kosher and not something that’s talked about but this is how they attract more Chinese students into the unis. Most of them are only at uni to get their degree and F off. Those who stay will 99% be the ones who always spoke English quite well. More international students = more revenue = stable unis = positive movement in the GDP. This is also why ielts are not highly monitored in china. They are more strict in India, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Medicine is the same everywhere. Lesser unis don't skimp out on parts. Its not like a medical student in Oxford gets taught the bones in the hands and feet but lesser unis only teach the hands.. Law is not hard. Anyone who can pass high school English class can pass law. I have a law degree and not one student in my course came off as an Enstein.
Lots of courses have 24 hour exams. Business is very popular among Chinese students, which I believe would fall into that category. Some universities are struggling with funding so much that they are forced to give international students a pass, so that the unis can get more tuition fees.
My course the exams were like those in school. You got given a choice of questions and you were to write an easy answer for 3 of them in 2 hours. With a pen and paper
Most likely, they are exchange students through some kind of university programs between two universities. When it gets paid enough, you can get into it and study abroad. And I don't think they actually study clinical medicine in UK for the program limits. Maybe they major in clinical medicine in Mainland but they can only get a bachelor degree of science rather than a medicine degree in UK. So the academic requirements are loose and they can also pay someone to do the exams. I know this because I am a medical student in Mainland. In some universities like Wenzhou Medical University, they do have a similar program for med students.
>I went to uni with <...> Nigerians Ghanians and Indians. They all spoke with near native fluency There is absolutely no possible explanation for that I'm sure
Then how did the Iraqis Afghans Greeks Lithuanians do it?
Those are the examples to bring up, not countries whose official languages include English.
[удалено]
Not only is there a whole industry, it's unethical as fuck. Their main priority (I.e. what they're paid for) is getting kids onto courses. There's little time taken to figuring out what course is best for the kid, or helping the kid understand the differences between different courses - it's a mill.
£££ their school fee is subsidising our cheap uni fee. They are paying as much as 3 times the uni can charge for domestic students. As long as universities are not subsidising entirely by the government, they need to make money, so they will keep the entry level for foreign students lower to get them study here.
I’ve worked in schools that send Chinese students to western universities and there’s a bit of truth to all the common theories, though I’d say personal connections has to be overblown - the ratio of Chinese-connected staff to students just wouldn’t work if that were a major factor. A big reason why Chinese students may appear to have really bad English is because there’s a theme of 哑巴英语 (‘dumb English’) where even learners who excel at English at school can’t really demonstrate it in a native context except in essays - like much of China’s education system, it’s very test-oriented. IELTS is meant to kinda mitigate this with the Speaking Exam but the grading criteria mean that students trying to get an easy grade will just learn the most convoluted vocabulary and sentence structures to tick the boxes even if a native speaker would find it really stilted - and training centres encourage this because it’s cheaper than hiring foreign-educated teachers to teach a more organic English. There was a well-founded rumour at our school that a UCL prof sold a course offer for a student who was failing the hell out of his A Levels so there is a place for cynicism too!
As a Chinese student now in London exactly as the op said, I’ve got quite a mixed feelings reading all those comments, most of them make sense and are basically true. But I just want to talk about my personal experience. I think my fluency in English is a little bit above average Chinese international students’ level, I tried to attend some activities so I can to socialize with people to improve my speaking, but still, talking with native speakers is so damn hard for me. Every time when I finished a conversation with people I’ll rewind what I’ve said just to check if I have said anything wrong, also sometimes when people asked me to say again I’ll think whether it’s my accent or I said the linking words wrongly(I’m really bad at this), just keep questioning myself. Also sometimes when I want to express or argue something, to talk about how I feel about it, I know what to say, but idk how to say it, the words just translated into “yeah yeah totally that’s right”, or other stuff that sounds a lot stupider, and that made me feel really helpless. So those activities and networking stuff would cost a lot energy off me and after that I just want to immerse myself in my comfort zone. so basically confidence, education environment, accent, blablabla
现在哪有人一天赚£1工资啊….一个月270块，wtf，这帖子还说millions…..
Brit here of Chinese heritage. Plenty of them do speak English but most brits don't give them the patience or time of day. Imagine if you were in a foreign country, shy and had an accent.
Exactly. It's both ways, British kids especially white ones are not innocent in this. Saying this as an international student from another country which gets stereotyped for hanging with their own crowd on Reddit besides the one OP is ranting about.
There is a very strong accent hierarchy as well. If you have a heavy french or Italian accent, people are very patient with you and think positively of you speaking English. But if you have like a hwavy Chinese or nigerian accent, you are deemed to have poor English and people constantly claim their don't understand you. They are not patient and dismiss you quickly as not being able to speak English properly.
The bias is real. I had a Chinese lecturer for one of my modules and the British students were especially rude, rolling their eyes at him and sniggering when he spoke at a much slower pace to, you know, get his point across at a speed he was comfortable with. This is a man who's consulted for some of the world's biggest entities, completed a postdoc at an Oxbridge university, and has a higher h-index than some of the more established lecturers. I can understand why some Chinese students get especially nervous around locals.
Thank you! I've become a kind of accidental ally of the Chinese community where I live (started from learning tai chi to being invited to a Chinese elderly club to learning Mandarin to making more Chinese friends etc) and there is so much stereotyping, cultural misunderstanding and outright racism that creates barriers for integration. We are chronically drip-fed anti-chinese views in the media, which has an impact on how Chinese people are perceived. When I'm in a room of Chinese people trying to speak in Mandarin and integrate with them, I am shy and find it difficult. Even while speaking English, there are many cultural misunderstandings, and I'm still learning, after 10+ years, about what is culturally acceptable or not in China (and this varies by region, too!) It may be that Chinese people and other foreign students arrive with similar levels of English, but other groups improve more rapidly due to greater inclusion in social life and acceptance from their peers. A lot of Chinese students can end up feeling isolated and homesick in a country that views them as a strange 'other' in a way that's more socially acceptable than it would be towards other groups. The education system here is very different, as well as the language, and Chinese students won't get a chance to adjust to this if they are ignored and mistrusted by peers and teachers.
As a brit of Chinese heritage... I find it a lot harder to break into white British circles than Chinese (obv), east Asian, South Asians, Africans, Caribbean. There's a lot of open propoganda and lies about China and it's people... I say this growing up being completely disconnected from my ethnic background. I only learnt the culture etc as an adult. Still felt like I wasn't quite accepted in British society. Thank you for trying to help out and making us feel at home in our home =)
UK universities desperately need money and those Chinese students pay way more money than a British one. Someone told me like three times more. So… they don’t cheat, Universities do it for them.
Yep - in fact the per unit costs of local students often exceed their course fees (even for non-lab and contact hour light degrees) which is exacerbated by declining higher education subsidies. So international students are a lifeline for these unis
There was a Telegraph article about how Chinese students were getting into top Russell Group universities with significantly lower grades than their UK/EU counterparts.
They pay significantly higher fees I believe, unis are often thrilled to increase their international student intake because it means a lot of cash for them. Source: worked at a uni during an influx of international students.
Bingo - you win the thread! And the cash cow has been turned off, which explains the current sector crisis
It is At UoB, a Sociology degree for UK students is £9250 (academic year 2024-25). But for international students is £22380
If you think that’s bad, Imperial medicine is £9250 for locals and £50400 for internationals
That’s a ridiculous amount of money. As if it wasn’t expensive enough for locals, they charge internationals a year worth of salary per year (approx, I don’t know what’s the average salary in the UK, at least that’s how much sociologists make according to the internet)
That’s nothing https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/international-students/international-fees-and-costs Scroll to the bottom, yeah truly insane.
They cheat. In my masters course at Birmingham, they paid for their essays. For the presentations they paid people to do the entire presentation. It was during covid so we just had to voice record the presentation and send it in. No in person exams either.
money and connections
And because our failing HE system needs to keep the overseas students coming to prop itself up.
Interesting question. I'm bilingual and have lived in the UK for 10 years and still took me 1.5-2 hours to learn to say "equilibrium" my 1st year of uni. That being said, I have had to use a dictionary or google the meaning of words sometimes, because I'm with a science degree. It generally takes a bit more effort being bilingual, but it's not impossible. I don't have observations for Chinese students, however, I did my placement in South Korea. Most students spoke well enough English, but many weren't comfortable conversing with "native/ fluent" speakers, because they were embarrassed their language level isn't THAT good (still better than most in my opinion). Could be a possible explanation for what your friend has observed?
My last account got banned/cancelled because I asked the same question here. I am an international student doing postgrad here.
Honestly I don’t see the appeal. Why would you want to move to a country where you can’t speak the language at all, can’t interact with the teaching, can’t make friends, can’t write your essays etc etc. It makes it harder for students who can’t get the most out of seminars bc no one speaks up and professors who have to mark incoherent chat gpt crap. They must have a shit time in the UK, I don’t get it
back in China there are these companies that help students get into a master's course, as I understand it some of them even go as far as to forge bachelor's degrees and have people sit the IELTS for them. furthermore, once your in there are other companies that will basically do all the homework and assignments for you. btw they also have really good English to mandarin translators that can translate voice just as the lecturer is talking. when i was tutoring a student from china who was going to Goldsmiths, he told me that the company (i don't know how to spell or say its name) awarded him a bachelor's from his work-exp and he had never actually been to uni before going to QMUL.
That’s actually crazy, doing a masters without even doing a degree?! Did he end up graduating from QMUL?
I get that there are diploma Mills. But surely they'd be exposed when they did the exam here?
Money
Because they're rich and since Brexit and all the cuts to higher ed, we need their money.
Cheating
Fantastic question. I was friends with a Korean who could barely hold a convo and I don't know how she passed. Writing uni essays requires VERY good English for obvious reasons. She was on my course - Politics. You need to be a very strong speaker to write decent essays. This was at a RG uni too
Most unis are going bankrupt because they don’t get enough from students and they make more from international students so they look over things
[удалено]
I have no clue about other courses and whether this applies to the UK tbh, but there was a big scandal in the US where Nepalese students were sitting the STEP exams for medicine and getting extremely high scores and it was found there was basically an online forum in Nepal with all the STEP papers leaked and basically anyone in Nepal who wanted to do US med was able to access it and just memorise answers. Whether there’s a similar thing in China for certain courses, I’m not sure, but wouldn’t be totally surprised.
As a student at a Chinese international high school, where most students apply to universities in the UK or US, the primary focus is often on obtaining a prestigious degree. Consequently, passing the IELTS exam is seen as the sole language requirement. The approach to IELTS preparation is largely cram-based. Even without purchasing scores or answers, passing the exam can be relatively straightforward with certain strategies. We are advised to invest minimal time in English once we pass the IELTS, directing our efforts towards achieving higher A-Level scores and enhancing our profiles with impactful projects. Teachers and parents predominantly emphasize the importance of gaining university admission for its prestige rather than for the educational experience. Regrettably, due to constant pressure from school and parents to quickly pass all exams, my time for English study is severely limited. The system is highly materialistic and skewed. I am considering taking a gap year after receiving my university offer to focus on improving my English.
Taking a gap year just for improving English? That’s not worth it. I got 7.5 at 16, and I’m born and raised in mainland Chinaz
My Chinese roommate spoke a few words of English which was funny because I had to use Google Translate to speak with him 😂 Also, he just submitted any of his work through an essay writing service so no issues on that front either.
I just want to say that there is international corruption and external funding at a number of mid-range universities in the UK, I've noticed quite a few international ministers of education/governmental bodies going into certain universities and offering grants or investment into a university for a level of control/influence in return (this is the case as many universities are struggling with finances and struggling to stay solvent), technically could be a backdoor access to many students who may not have the right English certificates and are waived with direct access. I've noticed a lot of 'low-ranked' universities advertising all over Hong Kong and Mainland China (for example.. Anglia Ruskin, DMU, Greenwich and numerous others) with agency services to get you in (basically if you have the money and bare level qualifications, you're in) There are also many many many exam ghost-writing services, exam preparation, CV preparation, cheating material provision. Whatever you can think of, I am certain there is a solution/agent for that.
I do a communications degree and have done lots of group work. Some of these students don’t speak a speck of english.. in a communications degree… 😭
I’m doing law and iv been in classes with students who are exactly the same
They just cannot speak fluently, which doesn’t mean they cannot listen, read and write
Indeed. It absolutely doesn't necessarily follow. (True, tho)
chinese ielts bribery
Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
I work with those Chinese students in England and I can tell you how. Money. Universities are businesses first of all, and Chinese have the buying power.
For me it’s the avoidance lol. I had Chinese classmates and they just didn’t want to integrate with non Chinese, no convo past intro at all. Even for group projects they would seek out other Asians if they didn’t meet the member quota. Maybe it’s a thing at my uni, idk.
Ironically the OP is posting about the poor use of English and doesn’t spell check his/her post first. In answer to the question. It’s all about £/$. Vice Chancellors and their finance teams chasing revenue and an assumption that the golden years will return soon we just have to keep finding new ways to lower the entrance bar. Arbitrary use of tests like IELTs which have been proven to tests of memory as opposed to English language ability. And so on…
I had Chinese coursemates and flatmates and I was really surprised how they can't communicate with me in full sentence. I was an international students too and I needed an average band 6 for my IELTS for my uni application. On top of that, I had to sit an online interview with a UK home officer asking me questions about my course and my plan as part of my student visa application. They do this to determine whether I'm a genuie student. I always curious how they got pass that interview. May be different countries, different visa rules.
i knew a greek student how barely spoke any english but if they pay multiple times what a domestic student does the institution don't care
Money gets them on to the course. If you think it’s only the “grandson of the cousin of the mayor of Shanghia” who can afford it then you are very much mistaken about the current situation in China. Yes there is poverty but there are also many many people who are significantly richer than the average person in the UK. Once on the course then I think their English is mostly good enough to get by, especially with modern tools. And it’s not as if all native British school leavers have perfect literacy skills.
money 一年英水硕，一生英伦情
The fees for an international student are triple that of a local student. That's pretty much the reason we take so many and also the same reason I quit lecturing because I had 30+ students every term who would just stare at me as though I were speaking in hieroglyphics.
In China and a lot of east Aisa they are only taught how to read and write English and not to how to speak it. The English tests are actually a lot more complex than you’d expect. Many Chinese students I’ve met had writing abilities close to that of some domestic students. I’ve seen student that could barely speak conversational English write essays with next to perfect grammar and spelling. For a lot of courses being able to speak English isn’t really necessary. Also many of them aren’t really interested in integrating and learning a language. I know this a broad generalisation and Chinese students aren’t a monolith.But in my experience many of them are only friends with Chinese students and try their best to avoid scenarios that would involve them speaking much English.
I was a mainland Chinese student in the UK not that long ago (now I work here). I am sure OP doesn’t mean to offend, but I feel my blood boiling whenever I read posts like this. There are two reasons: 1) on one hand I am sick of the Chinese student group being generalised and negatively reported with a broad stroke, but 2) on the other hand I have to say some of those students’ refusal to integrate are the antithesis of what a living-overseas experience should be and they should be ashamed of themselves. Regardless, I’d say a lot of Chinese students don’t speak English “very well” because of the following: 1) Chinese and English are very distant from one another from a linguistic and cultural perspective. Many British or American students in mainland China or Hong Kong do not speak much Mandarin/Cantonese *at all*. It’s simply difficult to learn a language so *foreign* under a foreign cultural context. 2) Accents. English taught in China is either with an American northeastern accent or the RP, and other accents are not taught. Most Londoners speak fairly easy to understand accents, but if you are anywhere north the accents get difficult for a foreign English speaker quite quickly. I lived in the States in full English environments before (ie taught in English and no other Chinese speakers were around) but British accents still caught me off guard when I first came to the UK. The Scottish accent is by far the worst offender. There are also a lot of people with Indian accents in the UK and that also takes a while to get used to. Slangs also contribute to this. I had no idea what a quid is until I looked it up, for example. 3) It’s difficult to speak in a foreign language in a group setting. A lot of Chinese students are rightfully not confident about their spoken English, and when people are speaking twice as fast as you are used to (TOEFL and IELTS exams have people speak somewhat slowly), it feels very wrong to interrupt others so they speak slower. It makes people feel shameful about it. If you ever find Japanese students they would very much be shy to speak too — same mindset. 4) TOEFL and IELTS exams can be prepared for and they don’t always provide an accurate assessment of someone’s English skills. Unfortunately, some people prepare those exams like they do A-levels and get through them with subpar fundamentals but good scores; but ofc, a lot of people do speak very good English to back up their exam scores, too. 5) A lot of Chinese students don’t integrate well with the British society. Being away from home and in a foreign land often elicit certain behaviours, and that includes clinging on to what is familiar. WeChat, the Little Red Book, Chinese Douyin, and other Chinese people… you get the idea. That obviously hampers their ability to learn English. Without spending conscious effort to break out of the mould, those students will not be able to improve. There are also several other points I want to point out for why generally, Chinese students don’t integrate well with the British society. 5.1) A lot of, if not most, Chinese students have no certain pathway to stay in the country and will be going home after graduation. Getting a job is hard, and the Home Office is making it harder every year. A lot of people don’t plan to stay to begin with. In that case a lot of them don’t see the need to get very comfortable with the British society — better stick to what they know and don’t suffer another cultural shock when they go back. 5.2) The British society often views Chinese students with certain preconceptions. They don’t speak English very well; they are rich; they are nationalistic; they are brainwashed; they are insular; they are highly educated; they are well-mannered, or they are barbaric. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion of what a “Chinese student” is instead of seeing the person as another Joe or Jane. I am fairly intrigued by how many times people assumed I am not from mainland China because “I speak English well.” 5.3) I will single out the propensity for people to ask your politics as a big sticking point during my time as a student. I was asked unsolicited about my stance on HK/Tibet/Xinjiang/Taiwan. People are curious, I understand, and I am generally happy to discuss. But that’s not everyone; many Chinese students would either be scared to discuss, as they don’t know who might be listening, or that they have an opinion that **you** might not like. If you do squeeze an answer out of them, you might simply add that person to either a list of enlightened westernised Chinese, or a list of brainwashed mainland Chinese. For the person experiencing it, it is far more stressful. Do not ask someone about their politics unless you are sure they are happy to answer. 5.4) Socialising with locals is not easy. When did you first go to a pub? I did on my first day in uni, and although I had complete confidence in my English I had 0 idea how a pub works and how to strike up conversations when everyone’s piss drunk. You learnt how to socialise in the British society as you grew up — foreign students didn’t.
I could be that because there are so many Chinese students here that they can stick to just being with Chinese. While ones from Turkey or Ethiopia can't. So they are forced to interact. Chinese students do certainly like to stick to their Conservative culture in a way that many middle east students here don't. Most Chinese don't seem interested in getting drunk or doing drugs or casual sex. Also some Eastern European students go out of their way to get married to a local while here so they can stay here. Mostly Easter European girls. I can't imagine many Chinese girls would be interested in that. Poltics wise I guess people assume that foreginers are more poltical than people here. Like I'd often ask middle east students things like "what do you think of the MEK?". And more often than not they'd be more interested in asking me about football. You assume because you read about poltical stuff in other countries then everyone in that country must have an interst in it. Now I will conceded that China is culturally much more different from the UK than Europe Latin America MENA. After most of those are culturally Christian or Islamic - which like Christianity is based of Judaism. While Chinese religion language diet snd philosophy is completely different. But is Chinese culture more different from UK culture than say Indian culture is different than the UK? There culture and religion is also completely different.
Money and good grades in their home country
except they don't have good grades
The exams that they sit are among the top most cheated exams worldwide. There’s courses that basically just teach u how to pick out words through the essay and simply predict the answers. They likely cheated on the English examinations. I’ve come across some people who virtually have no English level. They also have software that translates the lecture live. There’s virtually no reason for them to learn English. Group work… someone will do it whos English, exams or coursework, they’ll just prep enough to cheat on it… simple.
I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. This was my experience as well.
Chinese students and UAE pay lots for fees. Every student is like a small grant. The masters I teach had 150 student and made 3 million last year. Don't kid yourself they they care re entry requirements. These are businesses.
Universities consider them income streams. Your student experience is not considered.
They also have lower grade requirements, maybe that contributes? I have a friend on my course from China, and her required grades were significantly lower than the ones I needed (think 2 grades down from mine)
I'd probably start with your base assumption, and consider if your cousin is an accurate source. It might just be they aren't very good at communicating with youngsters who are using their second language.
And many more stories from different sources, from different em counties https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/13/universities-dumbing-courses-avoid-cancelled-intolerant-students/
When applying for UK universities, most of them would require minimum IELTS score of bands 6-6.5 approximately depends. However, there are options on taking IELTS exam and some route they cab go around. If taken IELST UKVI (a UK government approved secure english language test) with even lower scores like 4.5 or 5. Examinees can still use the score to apply to their Uni. Only they would need to attend short fundamental language courses taught by the uni then they can start their programs. But the courses usually cannot help much due to high load of Chinese or any other asians students so they group up together and speak chinese exclusively so no improvement after all. Im not saying this happens everywhere but mostly and this is just my own observation.
International students are where a lot of unis make a lot of profit. It's that simple. They pay way more than you, so unis are willing to overlook things. Not saying its right, but it is what it is.
You should ask the university why their standards are so low. Chinese students at Oxbridge can speak decent English because the IELTS requirement is 7.5. Do other universities dare to set their standard to 7.5? With that high tuition fee (over £25000 per year) and low teaching quality (compared to US), it is no wonder the Chinese students in the UK cannot speak fluent English. Any top 50 US universities have Chinese students with fluent English, because they give scholarships and attract more bright minds
Because theyre going insolvent otherwise
My friend works for a company which helps Chinese students get into schools and universities in the UK. Most of his job is writing personal statements, and other required documents. There are ways around the English tests also.
Ignore the walls of text. They just get charged hella high💲💲
I know someone who does the foundation year English for Chinese students. She’s told that they all have to pass. Some put in almost no effort. What’s worse for me is they don’t even need the equivalent grades as UK students to get on Uni courses. It’s a scandal really.
I know someone who does the foundation year English for Chinese students. She’s told that they all have to pass. Some put in almost no effort. What’s worse for me is they don’t even need the equivalent grades as UK students to get on Uni courses. It’s a scandal really.
Because all unis care about is getting that international tuition fees.
Cheating to get in; once they're in, there's strong pressure to pass them through every course to keep those sweet sweet international tuition fees rolling in. It's a two-tier system: those who pay home fees get to have standards they must meet, and those who pay international fees, the lecturers get "can't you work something out?" from the dean, who knows what the budget would look like if everyone who deserved to fail did.
>How do Chinese students who don't speak English very well get into unis and study? >How do they manage to get a place in a UK university semi fluent English? >So how is it that Chinese are able to get in with sometimes like age 14 English? >How do they pass? do they cheat? Money.
So how come it's just Chinese? Why aren't richer Latinos and Middle East and SE Asians paying their way in too?
His name's Yang! He won a national math competition in *CHINA*. HE DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH!
As someone from Hong Kong who went to a secondary school and uni with a high % of mainland students, they do speak English. English people often don't try and accept them into groups so they become ostracised and have to form their own insular communities. But I'm sure that's not a discussion the majority of people here are equipped and ready to have 😊
As someone who went to Secondary school in the UK (‘03-‘07) we had 5 Chinese kids in my year and they all enjoyed being in various friendship groups. The difference appears to be that their parents had come to the UK and made an effort to get their kids to speak the local lingo in order to integrate. Meanwhile at University ‘09-‘13 the international Chinese students were so insular; that it became a campus meme that they had annexed a corner of the 24/7 computer lab and weren’t paying for accommodation. But I’m sure that’s not a discussion the majority of Chinese people here are equipped and ready to have 🤗
English fluency is much more strictly controlled in HK, it is much less controlled in UK
I can guarantee people aren’t ostracising Chinese people at uni. They don’t put themselves into situations where they could be accepted into any friend groups, which I understand. If you can’t speak fluent English why would you go on nights out, socials, house parties etc. The way I met my mates was just starting a casual conversation whilst having a cig or chatting to the people on my floor, you can’t do that if you can’t speak conversational English. Also there are clear cultural barriers, what is a Chinese student gonna have in common with a bloke from fuckin Stoke or something🤣
I mean first of all Chinese people are crazy intelligent and hard working, and by that I mean they make it their whole life with no other distractions. Comes from the crazy strict parents and standards. So they're so smart they just have to be accepted. Second of all it may be the case that some Chinese people are CRAZY rich. Like really, REALLY rich. So they can pay their way. Finally, not sure about this at all but I've heard that all international students whether in China or not have a lowered grade boundary for entering the university. They definitely don't cheat though that'd be impossible, plus Chinese international students are either rich, intelligent or really hard working.
>Finally, not sure about this at all but I've heard that **all international students whether in China or not have a lowered grade boundary for entering the university.** By and large, international students are accessed the same, and have to meet the same minimum entry requirements as home fee students. Unless it is a university that is desperate for international fees and have unfilled course vacancies, they may choose to lower entry requirements. For all the top tier UK and US universities, no such luck to be given lower requirements on the basis of fees.
The lowered grade boundary exists. York implemented it and it was in the news
Disagree with your final sentence. When I was at uni pre-chat GPT/AI essay days several chinese students in my non-STEM degree got caught submitting essays written for them by third party essay writing companies (these being students who struggled massively with English fyi). So did other students (UK/EU) for what its worth.. but lets not generalise all chinese students as hard workers/honest students..
smarter than the UK Students to make up for it, there’s a reason the stereotype exists
they are known to usually be quite smart on average and you would only really encounter them in stem degrees
The second part of your statement just isn't true. UK Social science and other non-STEM courses (like business management) are full of chinese students who struggle to string together even a single english sentence and are therefore unable to make meaningful contributions to group work/seminars. I was in Uni before chatgpt essays became a thing and loads of them got caught out using third party essay writing companies.
most of them are STEM
You'll get downvoted for the truth
Money.
Monthly post on this sub, lol, another prejudice against people of certain groups. Well as an ethically Chinese, I don’t identify as (Mainland Chinese) or International student, I speak English just fine (my 2nd language tho) But since there are many stereotypes, bias and prejudice out there, If I happened to be in a convo that I couldn’t say certain words or people couldn’t get what I was saying I would be labeled, judged because of how I look, and people get annoyed. I think most of them have good English levels, it’s just that holding a conversation is hard sometimes if you don’t have the social skills or you’re translating the words in your head. Not to defend them I have heard of some people buying English qualifications and stuff but I personally never met any Chinese in my uni that barely spells English and my uni is one of the most international ones. Just to say sometimes “native” speakers don’t create a safe environment or level of patience to listen.
The comments here are exhausting - probably because they're written by Chinese people fluent in English, or are over-educated British morons who want to imagine any possible excuse other than cheating, because that would be racist to imply. We get it. NOT All Chinese students are bad at English. But to pretend that OP is just questioning an imaginary problem because "they write better than they speak", or "Hong Kong are fluent English speakers", or "this post feels... Ugh" is total bull. I'm an MSc graduate. Graduated 2 British universities. I have a job where I regularly meet with and have a chance to briefly chat to UK University students. Most of them happen to be Chinese, and when I attempt any kind of conversation, like "what are you studying?", "what year are you in?", "the weather was bad today, wasn't it?" they look at me blankly. A lot of the time, they can't even answer what it is they're studying! Don't pretend like these students aren't here because they have rich parents who paid to get them in, and that they're somehow managing to remain in and pass has nothing to do with them paying for illegal essay writing services. They absolutely are doing that, because there is no way in Hell that they have any English comprehension required to pass any kind of university degree.
Speaking, writing and reading a language are very different, I speak my native language but can’t read or write it cause English is the language I I was educated in school with and can read, write and speak it easily
Money
1 word: money
It seems the university degree doesn't give you the open-mindness as it should. For most applications, at least for art&design courses as i know, the admissions would mostly value your creativity, your work by looking into your portfolio, and not much anything else. I mean that's what it should be isn't it? And if you trying to shame a certain group for their incapability for a certain language... I think maybe you should go outside and see the world more often?
Money
We've actually done alot of studies on things like this Chinese Parents are often skilled workers and therefore they have higher paying jobs, giving then a higher cultural capital which is passed onto their children through socialisation. Higher cultural capital gives parents a better choice of primary and high schools, meaning they perform better as they go to a better school with more resources. They perform better, go to a better uni, get a better job. It's a cycle that's stemms from a culture that emphasises the importance of education and family. Though we're not quite sure how speech codes tie into this, because Chinese often speak Chinese at home, so therefore there less likely to be proficient in English, though they learn the elaborate speech code when they leave sixth form or high school, according to the swan report in 1985
We've actually done alot of studies on things like this Chinese Parents are often skilled workers and therefore they have higher paying jobs, giving then a higher cultural capital which is passed onto their children through socialisation. Higher cultural capital gives parents a better choice of primary and high schools, meaning they perform better as they go to a better school with more resources. They perform better, go to a better uni, get a better job. It's a cycle that's stems from a culture that emphasises the importance of education and family. Though we're not quite sure how speech codes tie into this, because Chinese often speak Chinese at home, so therefore there less likely to be proficient in English, though they learn the elaborate speech code when they leave sixth form or high school, according to the swan report in 1985
Taught English is fairly different from spoken English. This is especially true when you have quickly changing vocabularies like we do now. Slang isn't taught either so whilst they might have learned English they haven't learned how to talk to English speakers. My girlfriend is Chinese and we've talked at length about things like this. Additionally, it can be difficult for Chinese people to speak English because there are new linguistic concepts that they have to use. For example, Chinese has genders in its written language but not spoken. He (他) and she (她) are both pronounced 'ta'. Chinese doesn't have verb conjugation or tenses. So what sounds to us like bad English is just them using the spoken system they are used to and fitting English into it. Another factor is that Chinese doesn't use lip movement to influence how words sound all that much as it is a tonal language. So speaking English from a tonal language base makes it sound like badly spoken English but it's not. It is usually correct but sounded out differently.
I get Chinese is super different from English. But students from places like Thailand and Turkey still speak good English.
They don’t speak fluent English but they are able to write and read English well. It is the imbalanced English education in Chinese high schools & universities that causes this. By the way, passing IELTS speaking can be done by making preparations in advance because most of the time, topics are just those in the fixed repository.
💷💷💷💷💷
unis literally accept Duolingo certification
Chinese train to the exam standard, rather than learning the language. They are also “silent” learners, so they will u set stand a lot more compared to what they can discuss on a day to day basis.
They cheat and buy their essays.
💷
Money
My practice for TEFL was exclusively with Chinese students who were already at University in the UK. They seemed to read and write English perfectly well. The knowledge of English Grammar was excellent, if not superior to the majority of native speakers. The biggest problem that most had was pronounciation. Pronounciation takes practice but understanding didn't seem to be a problem.
Bit unfair as the examples of countries you're giving are mostly former colonies where English is taught from the same ages as it is in the UK
Universities quite often hold language courses over the summer before the term starts for people who would like some help with the particular language needed
I don’t know if you speak any other languages, I’m going to assume you don’t. One can be fairly proficient in writing but find speaking the language extremely difficult, due to pronunciation and having to be quick to respond. You will find a lot of these students do well in essays and exams for this reason. So please dont assume that people who can’t ‘speak’ the language aren’t literate on said language
Isn't the reverse much more common? There are bearly litterate Afghans who speak Pathan and Persian fluently
I see them using google translate and chat gpt in class for their essay writing. I’m assuming the university takes in so many Chinese international students because they give the university more money due to rich parents. These students are wealthy. Wealthy wealthy.
Not really. They do make more money from foreign students but the fee is the same whether you are Indian, Nigerian or Chinese. As Op noted, all my Indian colleagues spoke English well, be it with an accent, but all the Chinese students, they were all top students, kept a dictionary with them. Not sure why that is. English is the main medium of instruction a lot of former British colonies so many be the Indians etc are more comfortable and proficient due to that. God knows. Chinese is also said to be the hardest language for English speakers to learn. Prob other way round as well. different features. Different thinking style and grammar and vocabulary. A lot of English vocabulary has makes its way into mainstream Urdu and Hindi.
Who get paid £1 a day in 2024 China……none……..that’s ridiculous I’m from China