NEGOTIATING ACADEMIC LANGUAGE AND METHODOLOGICAL LEARNING: AGENCY AMONG CHINESE DOCTORAL STUDENTS AT A MALAYSIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJMOE.831041Keywords:
Academic Language, Chinese Doctoral Students, Doctoral Learning, Malaysia, Methodological Learning, Student AgencyAbstract
Academic language and methodological learning are central to doctoral research, yet how they intersect in international students’ everyday research practice and how students respond to related uncertainties remain underexplored. Drawing on Emirbayer and Mische’s temporal-relational conceptualisation of agency, this study presents a focused secondary analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with Chinese doctoral students at a Malaysian public university. Mandarin transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings show that academic language became particularly consequential when students needed to understand supervisory reasoning, explain methodological choices, and translate feedback into research decisions. Methodological learning involved reassessing prior research practices and developing clearer connections among research questions, theory, methods, data, and analysis. Students responded to linguistic and methodological uncertainty by adjusting supervisory interactions and selectively mobilising peers, specialists, prior academic contacts, and technological resources. Agency was most evident in the reinterpretation of prior experience and practical judgments about present research demands, while future-oriented considerations appeared more selectively. The study shows how academic language and methodological learning become connected through research reasoning and conceptualises doctoral agency as temporally and relationally situated. The China–Malaysia case further highlights doctoral learning within an English-mediated South-South mobility context where host-university support may coexist with continuing academic relationships in China.
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