Studying Chinese, studying in Chinese and studying with the Chinese: international students’ experiences and identity construction in Chinese-medium instruction (CMI) programs

ABSTRACT

While extensive studies have been devoted to English-medium instruction (EMI) in the internationalisation of higher education, only a few studies have investigated the language-related experiences and perceptions of international students in non-Anglophone contexts where the local/national language(s) serve as a medium of instruction for academic purposes. Given that Chinese universities have adopted a strong Chinese-medium instruction (CMI) initiative for international students in the past decade, this article makes a critical analysis of interviews with 48 African students to uncover CMI implementation in Chinese universities. The findings reveal that the students generally held positive attitudes towards the top-down CMI policy being implemented, despite the challenges encountered. However, the uncritical curriculum ‘Sinicisation’ also raised concerns about Chinese-only practices, the absence of appropriate learning materials and testing regimes, a lack of institutional support for using Chinese as an academic lingua franca, epistemic and social marginalisation of international students. As such, the article presents a complex interplay of language attitudes, language practices and identity construction in CMI programs, highlighting a hiatus between policy intentions and actual practices in classrooms. I conclude the article with recommendations for policymakers and future research on CMI policies and practices in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Medium of instruction
• international students
• higher education
• language practice
• identity
• CMI policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China – Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Foundation [grant number: 23YJC740078] and Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program [grant number: 23PJC067].