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This study explores cross-cultural integration of Chinese top-up students in a UK university from the perspective of loneliness. Existing research on integration has underplayed loneliness. This study used semi-structured interviews to collect data at three key transition points during the top-up year. The findings suggest that students experienced loneliness both within and beyond their group, notwithstanding a number of reasons why they might be expected to be less lonely than other international students. Loneliness seemed to have a significant impact on cross-cultural integration, and participants were also unable to form strong bonds within their cohort of Chinese top-up students, and unable to experience healthy solitude. There are implications for the pre-departure preparation of such students, for the institutions hosting such students, and for responses to the social and emotional challenges they experience.

Research on international students’ learning experiences pays much less attention to those studying semester and/or year-long programmes in a country that differs significantly from their home country with respect to culture and the education system. Adopting transformative learning theory as the theoretical framework, this paper explores the learning effectiveness of students on such programme in a Chinese and in a UK university. It analyses the narratives of 27 students in relation to their cognitive and behavioural activities and also their self-reflective and collaborative reflective activities. The findings indicate that these students only partially achieved transformative learning. The main reasons are: (1) the duration of this type of programme was not long enough to achieve a full transformation and (2) both host universities did not include reflection in the learning process properly. This paper makes a contribution to cross-border learning literature in the Chinese and the UK contexts.

Research on international students’ learning experiences pays much less attention to those studying semester and/or year-long programmes in a country that differs significantly from their home country with respect to culture and the education system. Adopting transformative learning theory as the theoretical framework, this paper explores the learning effectiveness of students on such programme in a Chinese and in a UK university. It analyses the narratives of 27 students in relation to their cognitive and behavioural activities and also their self-reflective and collaborative reflective activities. The findings indicate that these students only partially achieved transformative learning. The main reasons are: (1) the duration of this type of programme was not long enough to achieve a full transformation and (2) both host universities did not include reflection in the learning process properly. This paper makes a contribution to cross-border learning literature in the Chinese and the UK contexts.

This thesis seeks to gain a good understanding of the academic and social experiences of a group of Chinese top-up students when they are studying their\ud top-up programme in a UK institution. It adopts the U curve model and Bottery’s variation of portrait methodology as the theoretical foundations. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, which took place three times at\ud the key transition stages of these students during their one-year study period, namely the moving in stage (pre-departure and post arrival), the moving\ud through stage (the start of their top-up programme to the end of the first semester) and the moving out stage (the start of the second semester to the end of their top-up programme). After each interview, written portraits were\ud produced for the participants based on their interview transcripts.\ud \ud The findings of this thesis suggest that firstly this group of Chinese top-up students seemed to have had a really difficult time during their journey in this\ud UK institution. It appears that their perceptions and some aspects of their behaviour (academic) changed while they went through this one-year study abroad journey, however, other aspects of their behaviour (social) appeared to\ud remain largely the same. Additionally, the transition experiences of most Chinese top-up students in this group seemed to have only partially followed the U curve model. In other words, they experienced the honeymoon, the crisis\ud and the recovery stages, but not the readjustment stage.\ud This study makes a contribution to both the U curve and the portrait methodology literature by showing that when studying the transitional experiences of international students, attention needs to be paid to the factors\ud at the institutional and national levels, apart from those at the personal level. \ud In addition, the findings demonstrate that portrait methodology may produce very different insights when it is applied to different groups of people.

This article argues an urgent need to better understand\ud the personal experiences of Chinese top-up students studying in the UK since the number of Chinese students taking year-long top-up programmes in the UK has risen rapidly in recent years. This lack of knowledge could potentially have implications for the reputation of some UK institutions and also the attractiveness of the UK higher education sector to future international students. This longitudinal\ud study explored the academic and social experiences of 12 Chinese topup students in a UK institution in-depth and revealed that the students felt their experiences were influenced significantly by their surrounding contexts at the macro and meso levels, which, however, have been largely overlooked in existing research. This article suggests\ud the importance of improving the communications between the partner institutions in China and the UK, and also providing sufficient pre-departure and after arrival support to Chinese top-up students at the institutional level.

Purpose\ud The paper sets out a theoretical framework that has been developed to help understand the transitional experience of Chinese top up students at university. The framework has been developed from two psychosocial student development theories, Schlossberg’s transition theory (Schlossberg, 2005) and Chickering's identity development theory (Chickering & Reisser, 1993).\ud \ud Since 2000, Chinese students account for the largest proportion of all international students worldwide. As a result, the transition of Chinese students in Western universities has become a popular research topic in the higher education field. However, most of the published studies consider Chinese students as a single category and do not distinguish between traditional entry and direct entry. This work will look specifically at the transition experience of Chinese top up students.\ud \ud Nature of Research\ud The paper outlines the initial stages of a PhD study. It will present the development of the conceptual framework for the study and the literature review.\ud \ud Methodology\ud The study is a case study of Chinese students studying at UK universities. It will use the Portrait Methodology (Bottery et al, 2009). Individually written “portraits” will be used to show how each individual participant handles the issues students face in transition. The sample size will be approximately 15 students, they will be interviewed both prior to and after they have commenced studies at a uk university. It is intended to take samples from students at a university in north of England.\ud \ud Main arguments\ud The transition process is considered to be a “stress coping” process. In particular, it is a cultural adjustment issue and can be considered to comprise three factors: language anxiety, social anxiety and the academic anxiety (Zhou & Todman, 2008; Liu, & Jackson, 2008).\ud \ud Work on general student development considers a transition to be a developmental process consisting of moving in, moving through and moving out stages of each individual transition (Schlossberg, 2005). Chickering defines it as consisting of 7 vectors, which are stages of development of identity.\ud \ud The theoretical framework takes the work on general student development and applies it to the transitional process. It synthesizes the work of existing student identity development theories into a process that looks at both temporal and identity development and applies it to the transitional development of top up Chinese students.