A Discussion of the Deadlock Confronted by Chinese Writers of English Academic Articles

Abstract

As a consequence of receiving frequent complaints from students and colleagues about their difficulties in writing papers in English, I have to reconsider the deadlock confronted by Chinese writers of English academic articles. Obviously, these writers have similar difficulties in approaching academic writing, not because lack of professional knowledge, but because the ability of processing language is not handy enough, though the majority of them demonstrate good lexical and grammatical knowledge, or even discourse knowledge of the target language. Therefore, summary and exploitation of the deadlock confronted by them facilitates the improvements of language efficiency in expressing ideas. If they can build certain cultural awareness before constructing ideas, writing in English may not be so problematic as they anticipate. In this article, the deadlock confronted by Chinese writers based on a theoretical research about EAL or EFL academic writing and interview with carefully selected writers is concluded as three major difficulties: text borrowing, critical writing, as well as structural and ideological diversity between L1 and L2. They should be highlighted as the most conspicuous problems for Chinese writers. However, most of the difficulties originate from cultural difference and language obstacles posed by it, which needs to be realized by Chinese EFL writers. To solve the problems, I recommend teachers and learners to adopt comparative approach and text-based approach which emphasize cultural awareness in training writing skills.