Great Expectations: A Qualitative Study of How Chinese Graduate Students Navigate Academic Writing Expectations in U.S. Higher Education

Chinese graduate students make great contributions to receiving universities in the United States financially and academically. The increasing number of Chinese graduate students makes it necessary to study their experience of negotiating the unfamiliar expectations of academic writing in the United States. However, little research has explored their academic writing experience. This dissertation aims to explore how Chinese graduate students understand and navigate academic writing expectations in the United States.;I draw on two theoretical domains to inform my study --- writing as a social practice as my primary theoretical lens and Bourdieu's theory of social, linguistic and cultural capital as the complementary theory. This study begins with two rounds of semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight Chinese graduate students across disciplines and then document review of students' writing samples with their instructors' feedback, followed by a focus- group interview with three faculty members who have experience teaching or advising Chinese graduate students. Furthermore, open and focused coding was used to analyze the qualitative data. This study provides insights about the complex writing experiences of Chinese EAL international graduate students around three major themes 1) navigating academic culture shock at graduate-level writing, 2) navigating social relations in writing, and 3) mobilizing resources and strategies available to make sense of and meet writing expectations.;This dissertation study provides a rich and nuanced understanding of how Chinese EAL graduate students understand, make sense of and navigate writing expectations. It has suggested the mismatch in writing expectations between Chinese and U.S. academic cultures in many ways, as well as the lack of adequate preparation and international student-friendly support to EAL graduate students. Chinese graduate students had to conceptualize and negotiate academic culture shock and social relationships to transition into graduate level writing in the United States. Future EAL writing research should expand and explore further toward understanding EAL international students' writing as a social construct.;Keywords: academic writing, writing expectations, Chinese graduate students, academic cultural shock, social relationships.