From it to you: An autoethnographic journey with Chinese users of German in Germany

Abstract

There are currently several hundred thousand Chinese students studying abroad, yet knowledge about their experiences is mostly limited to anecdote and caricature. This autoethnography provides a more authentic account based on a year-long journey with 27 Chinese international students in four cohorts at a college preparatory institute in Germany. I discuss Chinese student mobility and describe how the fields of educational psychology, second language acquisition, and higher education have traditionally homogenized students from China. In chapters two and three, I explain why autoethnography is ideal for this inquiry and illustrate how engaging with Chinese students as individuals, rather than as a collective entity, deepened my perspective of three situations and events. I then describe the identities, motivations, and social behaviors of several learners, and conclude that the widespread notion that Chinese students are all the same propagates a tradition that frames the West as superior to the East.