Critically Evaluate Linn, 2009. Is It True That an International Student Must Learn a New Way of Thinking and Writing When They Come to Study in a Uk-Type Academic Environment?

There are huge distinctions between international students and UK students, especially in thinking and writing. Thus, UK students frequently cannot understand and confuse by what overseas students write, because they use different styles to write and think.

The native writers in UK use their own style in thinking and writing, but the non-native writers also have their own style. Moreover, there is a significant different between two styles. Therefore, it is common to see that an overseas student may have an enormous vocabulary, listen well, read fast, but he/she failed in writing test or not communicate well with other UK students.

This essay suggests that is true for international students to learn a new thinking and writing way when they studying in a UK-type academic environment. It can help non-UK writers and UK writers to comprehend and associate with each other more from academic writing.

Anglo Saxon, Romance/Russian, Semitic and Oriental are four cultural patterns of rhetorical expression by Kaplan (1966, cited in Linn 2009). According to this, it is easy to discover that foreign students will write with digressive, parallel or circular type (Kaplan, 1966:p81, cited in Linn 2009). On the contrary, UK students always use linear type to write and directly point out the topic (Kaplan, 1966:p81, cited in Linn 2009). Based on this, Linn (2009) considered that is one of the distinctions between students. In addition, Linn (2009) believed that the types were shaped by writers’ cultural backgrounds. If the rhetorical expression between writers and readers are different, they cannot understand the academic texts. That is a serious problem in study abroad. For example, a native UK teacher will confuse by what his/her foreign students write and cannot comprehend the students which will block the teaching and studying. However, this argument of Linn (2009) just pursuant to the information of Kaplan (1966) identified and does not offer suggestion to non-native...