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Perspectives of Chinese Undergraduates in the US towards Advanced Placement High School Curriculum in China

Yaxuan Chen and Liying Xiao
Shenzhen Art High School, Shenzhen, China

Abstract—The Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum program is a rapidly growing university preparation program that is being adopted by high schools in China. Despite the fast growth of AP high school curriculum programs, and high expectations from students and parents in China, empirical studies exploring the Chinese AP learners' perceptions of their university preparation are limited. This study aims at exploring the AP learners' perspectives on the AP high school curriculum program in equipping them for universities when they are studying in the US. Students’ responses to the Chinese AP program were collected through a questionnaire and individual semi-structured interviews. The findings show that students generally felt positive about the AP academic courses, which prepared them for their transition to universities. They also expressed that the English learning environment in the AP program developed English competence. However, they felt disappointed about the lack of teaching of paraphrasing skills, and were frustrated about not gaining much intercultural communicative competence in casual communication. This result sheds light on the under-researched area of the Chinese AP high school curriculum for the AP administrator and curriculum designers.
 
Index Terms—Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum, Chinese AP program, Chinese Undergraduates, perspective, the US universities

Cite: Yaxuan Chen and Liying Xiao, "Perspectives of Chinese Undergraduates in the US towards Advanced Placement High School Curriculum in China," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 152-159, September 2022. doi: 10.18178/ijlt.8.3.152-159

Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.