Cultures of Learning and Student Participation: Chinese Learners in a Multicultural English Class in Australia

Abstract

Chinese students coming to Australia for university studies usually undertake preliminary general and academic English classes in a private college of some kind. Such classes are multicultural, although they may have a larger proportion of one cultural group than others. For example, at the turn of the century Koreans were heavily predominant, whereas by 2009 this was rather less so and there were more Chinese and Indian students. This chapter is a case study of three Chinese students in one such multicultural pre-university English class. It focuses on their patterns of classroom participation, the factors they identified as significant in their participation and our analysis of these factors in terms of cultures of learning (Jin, 1992).