Lack of differentiation between individuals Negative stereotyping Special position of students ‘Chinese’ Work-orientation and language skills It is important to note at this point that not all of the emerging themes related to a sense of threat about encounters with international students. Some were actively positive (e.g. cultural enhancement of the university community), but these were considerably less common and are beyond the scope of this paper. A. Realistic threats Realistic threats are most usually felt where there is competition for finite resources; a zero-sum game. While this is not generally the case in the example of university students, there is a degree of interdependence between home and international students in regards to their academic success. In some circumstances, this appears to operate as proxy for competition, with a significant proportion of home students reporting being fearful that their learning or marks would be compromised by the actions of their international peers. Firstly, some reported that they were required to learn partly through peer presentations, where individual students or groups would lead on a particular topic. They reported incidents where they felt that they had not adequately learned the subject matter due to the quality of the presentation given by international students, particularly in terms of the spoken English and depth of content matter. For example, this module] we are sort of reliant on people to give a presentation. And is one “[In group, I mean they try really hard and they are all Chinese and it did get… it was very hard
Negative stereotyping Lack of differentiation between individuals Special position of ‘Chinese’ students Work-orientation and language skills It is important to note at this point that not all of the emerging themes related to a sense of threat about encounters with international students. Some were actively positive (e.g. cultural enhancement of the university community), but these were considerably less common and are beyond the scope of this paper. A. Realistic threats Realistic threats are most usually felt where there is competition for finite resources; a zero-sum game. While this is not generally the case in the example of university students, there is a degree of interdependence between home and international students in regards to their academic success. In some circumstances, this appears to operate as proxy for competition, with a significant proportion of home students reporting being fearful that their learning or marks would be compromised by the actions of their international peers. Firstly, some reported that they were required to learn partly through peer presentations, where individual students or groups would lead on a particular topic. They reported incidents where they felt that they had not adequately learned the subject matter due to the quality of the presentation given by international students, particularly in terms of the spoken English and depth of content matter. For example, “[In this module] we are sort of reliant on people to give a presentation. And is one group, I mean they try really hard and they are all Chinese and it did get… it was very hard