ABSTRACT
Over the last decades, many universities in Australia, as elsewhere, have seen a significant increase in the num ber of international and m igrant students from a non-English-speaking background (NESB). These students are faced with a double cultural shift as they are required to accommodate to a Western lifestyle and culture, and to the culture of the classroom, that is, the different teaching and learning styles (e.g. patterns of discourse and ways of relating to lecturers) used in an Australian university (Ballard and Clanchy, 1991; Cargill, 1996). For some years now there have been concerns am ong Australian academics about academic literacy (Bradley, 1984) and the appropriateness of the teaching styles used with international students (Burke, 1996; ZuberSkerritt, 1994).
