A Study on Teaching First-Year Writing to International Students

Abstract

This dissertation investigates similarities and differences between Chinese and U.S. English writing policy documents at the tertiary level, examines how these differences may contribute to the challenges that Chinese international students meet in first-year writing contexts, and further proposes pedagogical solutions. In this dissertation, I use a comparative thematic analysis of policy documents alongside longitudinal autoethnographic research on my teaching practices across Chinese and U.S. contexts. Specifically, it analyzes two key documents: the Guidelines to Teaching College English (2020) in China and the WPA Outcomes Statement 3.0 in the United States. This study finds that, while both frameworks aim to develop argumentation and audience awareness, they adopt distinct pedagogical approaches shaped by cultural and institutional contexts, each with its own strengths. Specifically, the China document is grounded in a traditional applied linguistics framework that emphasizes the development of language proficiency, attention to linguistic accuracy, and structured writing practices. In contrast, U.S. first-year writing, guided by rhetoric, emphasizes rhetorical awareness, critical thinking, and process-based writing. Building on these findings, this project introduces the non-violent transfer framework, which conceptualizes writing development as a gradual and context-sensitive process that treats differences across rhetorical situations as generative. It further proposes the rhetorical translation model, built on translingual and transfer pedagogy, which explains how meaning is reworked across rhetorical situations. Together, these frameworks make both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, they reconceptualize multilingual writing as a process of meaning reworking across contexts, where iteration emerges from moments of rhetorical breakdown, thus making this process visible and teachable. Practically, they offer writing instructors concrete approaches for supporting multilingual students in ways that are both responsive and effective.