How an increased awareness of the Chinese education system can improve online student engagement when teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP)

The COVID-19 outbreak initiated a dramatic shift in both the business structure and teaching methods of universities worldwide. In order to survive, tertiary education institutions embraced online learning in order to reach international students separated by closed national borders (Gillis & Krull, 2020). An acceptance of this online learning method has continued into the post-COVID-19 education era with many courses now offered in face-to-face format, a combined hybrid form, or purely via online learning. When teaching online, teachers cannot rely on subtle body language signals to gauge student engagement (Gherhes et al., 2021) therefore, understanding the background of students has become even more important (Day et al., 2021). This article aims to enhance EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teacher’s online engagement strategies by expanding their knowledge of the habitual learning methods of the world’s largest international student market, students from the Chinese mainland. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.