ABSTRACT
Much of this book addresses ways that students adapt to and learn in different academic cultures. This chapter focuses on the fact that a significant proportion of international students’ adaptation and learning in Western universities occurs in a new and perhaps unfamiliar language, English. In my own university, the 2003 statistics showed 40 countries had ‘sent’ 10 or more students. Looking down the list:
• 25 (62 per cent) were countries where students probably neither used English at home nor studied in the medium before enrolling in UK tertiary education
• 11 (27 per cent) were countries where students may have had some or all of their secondary schooling from teachers using English, either as a first or (more probably) as second language.
