English, Education, and Life: A Narrative Inquiry into the English-using Experience of Chinese Graduate Students in the U.S.

Abstract

Using narrative inquiry, this article investigates the English-using experience of three Chinese students in American graduate school. Exploring and addressing the communicative difficulties they encountered in the U.S., this narrative inquiry presents how inadequate command of English skills especially communicative competence has affected the participants’ academic learning and non-academic aspects of life. It depicts vividly how the participants have been prevented from achieving a greater academic success and integrating into American life, due to the lack of English communicative competence. While gaining valuable insights into the criticalness of enacting the Communicative Language Teaching approach in China’s EFL classrooms, this narrative inquiry also provides important implications for the educational institutions in the host countries in their endeavor to help international students improve their study abroad experience.