An investigation of teachers’ EAP writing and international publishing skills in China’s higher vocational schools

The growth of English as the dominant language for the dissemination of academic knowledge has influenced scholars in every corner of the world, especially those coming from non-English countries. When faced with the increasing pressure to publish their research in English, Chinese higher vocational school teachers experience huge constraints in their current contexts and suffer great difficulties. This article examines three Chinese higher vocational schoolteachers’ perceptions, motivations, and the challenges encountered in conducting English academic writing and international publishing. It aims to explore the targeted teachers’ agency in surmounting difficulties when acquiring English academic literacy in order to meet the discipline-specific expectations of high-profile international journals and further analyse their creative use of resources to help them fulfil this demanding task. The findings indicate both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the targeted teachers’ EAP writing and international publishing endeavours. Their practices in presenting research on a global stage could provide suggestions to future researchers exploring scholars’ English academic writing for international publication purpose. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.