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The internationalisation of higher education and current dominance of academic English has led to a significant growth in the number of international students studying in English medium universities. The University of Reading in the United Kingdom and the University of Auckland in New Zealand are two such universities, and they provide the settings for this study. While research to date has given us insights into the psychological and socio-cultural challenges faced by these students, their academic discourse socialisation difficulties have attracted less research attention. Drawing on data from narrative frames and interviews, this study explored aspects of the academic discourse socialisation of 31 incoming international graduate students from 20 countries. We found many commonalities in students' reports of their previous experience and the difficulties they were facing, including their unfamiliarity with aspects of source-based, critical, and writer-responsible writing, and self-perceived inadequacies regarding their knowledge of discipline-specific academic vocabulary, metadiscourse strategies, and the ability to compose concise, coherent texts. However, students also reported developing independent learning strategies and identifying useful sources of advice and support. Participants' reflections revealed a self-critical appreciation of and sense of responsibility for overcoming their difficulties, and a determination to achieve success in their studies.

Situated within a Systemic Functional Linguistics genre paradigm, this study adopted a function-based linguistic approach to examine the argument structures in English writing produced by Chinese university students of English as foreign language (EFL). Their English writing was contrasted with three other sets of argumentative essays in order to explore differences and similarities in the use of argument structures. The four sets of essays were produced by three groups of university students: native English- and Chinese-speaking university students and Chinese university EFL students. Participants’ interviews and questionnaire responses were also collected. The study found that most native English-speaking participants used an analytical arguing strategy, while most Chinese-speaking university participants preferred a hortatory argument structure both in their English and Chinese writing. It was also found that Chinese participants’ English writing was influenced by both English and Chinese.

The teaching of writing in EFL has seen dramatic changes in the last 20 years, strongly influenced by research insights from mother tongue (LI) contexts and resulting pedagogic shifts. This review will begin by looking at the background to EFL writing, and then consider four very different books for teachers and scholars which deal with the subject from a variety of angles. An influential writing teacher and researcher, Raimes (1991) divides writing instruction, according to its focus, into four approaches. These are: focus on form, i.e. 'the rhetorical and linguistic form of the text itself (ibid.: 408), on the writer and his/her cognitive processes, on content, and on the demands made by the reader. Let us look at each in turn. The reviewer Clare Furneaux works at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Reading. She provides input on the teaching of writing on MA courses and on short teacher-training programmes. She has run workshops on writing for teachers in many countries, is involved in research in this area, and teaches writing to international students at Reading. Her other interests include EAP, study skills, and teaching young learners.

Three methodological limitations in English‐Chinese contrastive rhetoric research have been identified in previous research, namely: the failure to control for the quality of L1 data; an inference approach to interpreting the relationship between L1 and L2 writing; and a focus on national cultural factors in interpreting rhetorical differences. Addressing these limitations, the current study examined the presence or absence and placement of thesis statement and topic sentences in four sets of argumentative texts produced by three groups of university students. We found that Chinese students tended to favour a direct/deductive approach in their English and Chinese writing, while native English writers typically adopted an indirect/inductive approach. This study argues for a dynamic and ecological interpretation of rhetorical practices in different languages and cultures.