My research interests revolve around the role of English in the increasingly internationalised academia and the role of technology in language learning, teaching, and research, and fall into four clusters, i.e., English academic writing (EAW), English medium instruction (EMI), English for research publication purposes (ERPP), and language learning and technology (LL&T). I have focused primarily on three research projects related to these topics over the past decade or so, including one investigating Chinese university students’ and lecturers’ understandings of plagiarism in English academic writing; another one examining the effectiveness and practices of EMI in Chinese higher education; and a third one exploring Chinese doctoral students’ scholarly publishing experiences and practices from an Activity Theory perspective. One of my ongoing projects centres on language learning and technology. What follows is a summary of the first three strands of my research along with a list of my publications in each strand.
Strand 1: Chinese University Students’ and Lecturers’ Understandings of Plagiarism
There is a widely-held perception that Chinese culture in particular and Asian culture in general are susceptible to plagiarism. In contrast to this culturally conditioned view, however, there is evidence showing that plagiarism is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon mediated by various factors, such as disciplinarity, enculturation, and language. To address this controversy, a quasi-experimental design was adopted to examine Chinese university students’ and lecturers’ understandings of plagiarism. The design was geared towards distinguishing knowledge of and attitudes towards plagiarism, a distinction that had often been neglected in previous research.
The project reveals that while Chinese university students and lecturers had different perceptions of what constituted plagiarism from Western academia, they held a clearly negative attitude towards what they regarded as plagiarism. In other words, Chinese students’ and lecturers’ seeming acceptance of plagiarism might have resulted from their differing perceptions of what is and is not plagiarism rather than their perceived lax attitudes towards plagiarism. These results cast doubt on culturally essentialising views on plagiarism and suggest the need for a nuanced approach to plagiarism. They point to the need for students to learn about and acquire an understanding of Anglo-American norms for appropriate source use. In the meantime, they also suggest a need for teachers to understand their students’ previous educational and literacy experiences and develop a cross-cultural sensitivity to different intertextual practices.
Strand 2: English-Medium Instruction in Chinese Higher Education
The last few decades have seen escalating internationalisation and marketisation of higher education across the world. Along with this trend is the increasing popularity of EMI at universities in English-an-additional-language (EAL) countries. As a result, as Brumfit (2004) observes, “for the first time in recorded history all the known world has a shared second language of advanced education” (p.166). Although EMI was not officially initiated in Chinese universities until 2001 through a mandate that aimed to enhance the quality of undergraduate education, the last two decades or so has seen its widespread adoption at universities across mainland China. Despite its popularity, however, its effectiveness and practices in Chinese higher education have remained largely unknown.
The second project I was involved in set out to fill the gap by examining the effectiveness and practices of an English-medium undergraduate programme at a university in mainland China. The project uncovers a misalignment between the rosy rhetoric on EMI and its reality on the ground and the programme’s ineffectiveness in improving the students’ English competence significantly. It also reveals that the students had difficulties understanding EMI, which led the students to resort to Chinese textbooks and the lecturers to water down content. These findings raise questions about the practical feasibility, allocative efficiency, and distributive justice of EMI in the focal English-medium programme. They also point to the need to provide pedagogical support to professors teaching English-medium courses.
Strand 3: Chinese Doctoral Students’ Scholarly Publishing Experiences and Practices
The ever-intensifying global competition for research excellence is placing researchers under increasing pressure to publish. This pressure has trickled down to doctoral students with the result that publishing is increasingly being institutionalised as a graduation requirement for them. Against this backdrop, the past two decades or so have seen growing pedagogical and research attention to doctoral publication. Although this body of literature has shed much light on various challenges and strategies in doctoral publication, we still know little about how they manage to publish amid competing demands from their busy studies.
In response, my third project strove to understand how a group of Chinese nursing doctoral students managed to fulfill the university’s publication requirements while juggling multiple, and often competing, demands of their doctoral studies. Drawing on Activity Theory and employing a multiple-case study design, it unveils that the product-oriented approach adopted by the university, the supervisor, and the students themselves undermined the students’ processes of learning to write for publication and of becoming fully-fledged researchers. These findings point to the need for a more balanced approach, which, while focusing on attaining outcome and product, also pays attention to doctoral students’ experience and process of scholarly publishing and doctoral study.
Publications (by topic)
English Academic Writing
Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2012). Investigating Chinese university students’ knowledge of and attitudes toward plagiarism from an integrated perspective. Language Learning, 62(3), 813-850. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00650.x [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2014). Chinese ESOL lecturers’ stance on plagiarism: Does knowledge matter? ELT Journal, 68(1), 41-51. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cct061 [SSCI]
Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Ethics & Behavior, 25(3), 233-255. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2014.923313 [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2015). Chinese university EFL teachers’ perceptions of plagiarism. Higher Education, 70(3), 551-565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9855-5 [SSCI]
Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2016). Plagiarism in English academic writing: A comparison of Chinese university teachers’ and students’ understandings and stances. System, 56(1), 107-118.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2015.12.003 [SSCI]
Yang, R., Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2022, in press). Understanding Chinese English-major students’ intertextual competence and contributing factors. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2022.2102137 [SSCI]
English Medium Instruction
Hu, G., & Lei, J. (2014). English-medium instruction in Chinese higher education: A case study. Higher Education, 67(5), 551-567. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-013-9661-5 [SSCI]
Hu, G., Li, L., & Lei, J. (2014). English-medium instruction at a Chinese university: Rhetoric and reality. Language Policy, 13(1),21-40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-013-9298-3 [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2014). Is English-medium instruction effective in improving Chinese undergraduate students’ English competence? IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 52(2), 99-126. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2014-0005 [SSCI]
Xu, L., Xie, C., & *Lei, J. (2021). Discursive marketisation through positive evaluation: A diachronic analysis of About Us texts of top-tier Chinese universities over the past two decades. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 789558. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.789558 [SSCI]
Lin, T., & *Lei, J. (2021). English-medium instruction and content learning in higher education: Effects of medium of instruction, English proficiency, and academic ability. Sage Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211061533 [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2022). Research on English-medium instruction in the Asia Pacific: Trends, foci, challenges, and strategies. In O. Lee, P. Brown, A. L. Goodwin, & A. Green (Eds.), International Handbook on Education Development in Asia-Pacific (pp. 1-23). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1_23-1
English for Research Publication Purposes
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2015). Apprenticeship in scholarly publishing: A student perspective on supervisors’ roles. Publications, 3, 27-42.https://doi.org/10.3390/publications3010027 (ESCI-Emerging Sources Citation Index)
Lei, J., & Jiang, T. (2019). Chinese university faculty’s motivation and language choice for scholarly publishing. Ibérica, Journal of the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes, 38, 51-73. [SSCI/A&HCI]
Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2019). Doctoral candidates’ dual role as student and expert scholarly writer: An Activity Theory perspective. English for Specific Purposes, 54, 62-74.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2018.12.003 [SSCI]
Lei, J. (2019). Publishing during doctoral candidature from an Activity Theory perspective: The case of four Chinese nursing doctoral students. TESOL Quarterly, 53(3), 655-684. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.501 [SSCI]
Lei, J. (2021). Neoliberal ideologies in a Chinese university’s requirements and rewards schemes for doctoral publication. Studies in Continuing Education, 43(1), 68-85. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2019.1672638[SSCI]
Language Learning & Technology
Jin, T., Su, Y., & Lei, J. (2020). Exploring the blended learning design for argumentative writing. Language Learning & Technology, 24(2),23-34. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/44720 [SSCI]
Jin, T., Liu, X., & Lei, J. (2020). Developing an effective three-stage teaching method for collaborative academic reading: Evidence from Chinese first-year college students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 45, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100853 [SSCI]
Guo, K., Chen, J., Lei, J., & Jin, T. (2021). Teacher engagement with technology-enhanced text adaptation for reading assessment: A case study. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching, 11(4), 100-112. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJCALLT.2021100107 (ESCI-Emerging Sources Citation Index)
Chen, J., Tan, J., & *Lei, J. (2022). Exploring learner identity in the blended learning context: A case study of collaborative writing. System, 108: 102841. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2022.102841 [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Lin, T. (2022). Emergency online learning: The effects of interactional, motivational, self-regulatory, and situational factors on learning outcomes and continuation intentions. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 23(3), 43-60. https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/6078/5748 [SSCI]
Wang, X., Liu, Q., Pang, H., Tan, S. C., Lei, J., Wallace, M. P., & Li, L. (2022). What matters in AI-supported learning: A study of human-AI interactions in language learning using cluster analysis and epistemic network analysis. Computers & Education, 104703. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104703 [SSCI]
Lei, J., & Zhang, Q. (2023). What matters to LMOOC learners: Content and sentiment analyses of learner course reviews. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2023.2264875 [SSCI]
Jun Lei (雷军) 