‘Lack of familiarity with academic writing conventions is the main reason for international students’ difficulties with essay writing.’
Discuss the statement above in the light of the ideas and research reviewed by Linn (2009) and Harris (2010).

Wang Tianyu

Student Number: 149037543

Date: 08/08/2014

Project Tutor: Alice

NUMBER words: 840

Introduction
Undeniably, it is common that numerous international students are likely to study in UK. Whereas, the fact is that a mass of students cannot adapt to the academic circumstance in UK, especially academic writing style. When they start their academic life, it is vital and challenging for international students to writing an argumentative paper. Academic writing is not only the problem of grammars, but also involves familiarity with the conventions of UK. It is really true of essay writing in UK, with the long-term development and powerful position of it. So, the overseas students can hardly meet the readers’ expectations because of they come from cultures which are quite different from UK.

Firstly, this essay will cite the factors which would affect the essay writing of international students. Then, this essay will make a conclusion of the main reason which leads students to accommodate the new academic environment difficultly in terms of the way of writing. The final of this paper will predict the situation of international students’ academic writing and give some suggestion to improve the ability of essay writing.

The differences of linguistic and rhetorical tradition cause the problem that international students have more difficulties in academic writing than native students. When overseas students write a paper, the lack of vocabulary may result them in finishing it hardly. The errors of grammars also hinder the performance of their writing. They have to pay more time and attentions in reciting words and practicing grammars, in order to have a better score. Besides, text organization and different language constructions are also become a problem of international students’ writing. Sentence structural level is one of the mainly difference between domestic and international students (Harris, 2010). “Non-native speakers used non-standard sentence structures, while occurrences of this type were extremely rare in the English native speaker corpus”, which has been considered the most overseas students argumentative essays obscure in meaning and poor in development by supervisors and tutors, as pointed by Harris(2010). In term of the paragraph organization, for example, there is only one step in each paragraph in UK, which is flexible. The organization which includes only introduction, body and conclusion has its respectively distinct function. However, it is much more complicated in China with its circular rhetorical style. Too many things are mentioned in one paragraph that they may be commented that the article is indistinct and illogical.

The problem for international students is not only language-related errors. International students whose first language is not English have to face the different styles of new culture (Linn, 2009). Although international students have learnt English which includes not only grammas but also all other aspects for a real long time, the differences between academic writing in different countries still be “the barrier that overseas students have to cross” (Linn, 2009). It is a disadvantage that learners who come from other cultures practice different kinds of forms, or writing with a different purpose as they have not apprehended or accustomed the