(Image credit: Australian Government, Study Australia)

In her 2007 ethnographic study of eight US law schools, Elizabeth Mertz traces the process through which law students learn to “think like a lawyer” in order to become one. She shows how this process is essentially about language: learning to think like a lawyer means adopting new ways of reading, writing and talking.

Crucially, Mertz demonstrates that underlying these processes is a set of linguistic ideologies – assumptions we make about language and how it should manifest in particular social contexts. For example, she identifies a practice in legal analysis and reasoning, as taught in these classrooms: the social characteristics and personal perspectives of people who appear in legal cases and problem questions are rendered irrelevant and made invisible, in favour of the legally relevant facts. Issues of morality and emotion are likewise pushed aside as unimportant.

As students undergo this transformative process of learning to think and speak like a lawyer, Mertz questions the effects this may have on how law students see the world, their ability to see social diversity and inequality and to identify and challenge issues of injustice in their future work.

But what about how students think about themselves? What if they personally face marginalization? And what of their diverse language repertoires? If thinking like a lawyer depends on speaking like one, what is this speech expected to sound like? And what impact does sounding differently have on one’s sense of professional identity and self-worth?

These were just some of the questions raised in my recent digital ethnographic research with students enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice (GDMLP). This one-year university program is required for people who do not have an Australian legal qualification to become Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) and offer professional assistance to people applying for a visa in Australia. Unlike law degrees, which remain difficult to access for many, it has been estimated that at least half of the GDMLP cohort has English as a second language (L2), and perhaps even more are first generation migrants.

I attended online workshops during which students practiced their client interviewing skills through role-plays, observing this practical work and debriefing with them. I also conducted research interviews with students at various points during their study and after graduating, over a period of three years. To have immediate impact, I also offered my interdisciplinary expertise to enhance learning, presenting on various aspects of communication, and helping the teaching team to develop and refine learning materials (see Smith-Khan & Giles 2025).

In a new article, I share some of the ways students talk and think about their study, their future professional goals, their existing strengths, and the skills they wish to improve and how. The discussions brought up beliefs about language, closely tied to ideas about proficiency, professionalism and identity.

Bilingualism: optional benefit, real risk

While every participant who speaks multiple languages planned to use them in their future job, with at least some of their clients, there was a clear hierarchy in how different languages were valued, with English appearing at the apex as non-negotiable, and other languages more as optional extras (see also Piller & Gerber 2021).

Paolo*  The English level, I think it’s very very important too.

Laura   Yeah.

Paolo    I’m Italian, as I said before, I work with a lot of Italians, and they don’t speak English. And will have, a hundred percent sure that I will have a lot of consultations within Italian community. I will go to Italy to do seminars, and that will be in Italian.

Laura   Yeah.

Paolo    So in that way, if you think in that, in that way, you don’t need English, okay?

Laura   Yes.

Paolo    I mean, ‘I don’t need to have a very high English level, because my-, ‘I’m Chinese, I just talk in Mandarin, my consultation in Mandarin, my clients are in Mandarin.’ Okay. And it makes sense. But then you have to do applications in English, you have to study the uh legislation in English. So if the legislation, if you don’t understand properly the legislation, if you mixed up a word, all your translation in Chinese, or in Italian, or in any other language, won’t be, won’t be correct.

Okay? So it’s very, very important that they understand, the people that they want to become a migration agent, that they understand everything. [Paolo, interview 1/2, 2020]

On one level, this makes perfect sense: the work does indeed require close engagement with legal and institutional texts that are only available in English, and application forms required to be submitted to the Immigration Department only are allowed in English. However, this type of discourse also assumes bilingualism is a potential risk to English language proficiency: rather than acknowledging the crucial skills bilingual and multilingual people bring to this work, the fact that they speak more than one language is regarded as a threat to their English. This resembles political and institutional discourses in which the ‘monolingual mindset’ is evident, including in the language proficiency rules around becoming an RMA, and in other areas like skilled migration and university admission, where proficiency is assumed for some, but not for others (Smith-Khan 2021a; Piller & Bodis, 2023). Such discourses are also evident in public political debates about migration and registered migration agents (Smith-Khan 2021b).

‘Australian’ native speakers and language choice

Perceptions about identity are also closely connected with these types of ideologies. As L2 English speakers discuss their experiences and efforts to develop speaking skills in class and connect these evaluations with their future language practices and career plans.

Gemma: If you have poor communication you give them the impression you’re not professional. You probably have lots of knowledge in your mind but you just can’t express yourself properly, or too slow, or I don’t know. You’ve got to give them, the client the impression that oh no, you are professional. I can trust you. You can do the job for me. So I try to, the reason why I said um, um, the native English speaker is better, probably that’s just one side about um, they easily use language um, uh, like more vocabulary than us. We can’t use like beautiful words or whatever it is to express myself uh, precisely. So uh, that will give client the impression like, you not professional like I can’t trust you…. So, yes. So that’s why I said if I speak to Chinese, probably I’ll be more confident. They, they will, will feel less, um, less suspicious. I don’t know. Um, less, how will I say? Um, more trust on you than English-speaking people. [Gemma, interview 1/1, 2020]

Evaluations like these compare L2 English speakers’ skills vis-à-vis what they consider the ideal student and future RMA, an L1 English speaker, with implications for professional identity and future work plans. They also link general professional competence with language proficiency and oral fluency, something that again also comes up in the broader discourse (see Smith-Khan 2021b).

However, these ideologies extend even further, to national identity and moral worth.

Gemma: Yes, with my, one of my classmates… Uh, at the beginning it wasn’t very good. Oh, he’s local. He’s Australian. And he’s very, I feel he pick up very quickly and easily and then he has to put up with me because I have to think. And, you know, thinking probably slower than, than him and then speak slowly. Uh, yes so I find the difference and I try to, I just want to try to improve that by talking more [Gemma, interview 1/1, 2020].

In this encounter, Gemma evaluates herself in relation to an “Australian”, “local” L1-speaking classmate. Here, speaking and thinking are closely connected, and she comes out positioned as a burden in the interaction – something her classmate must “put up with” because of her slower thinking and speaking.

While such discourse is not surprising in this particular social and political context, it sits uneasily against the facts we have about Gemma’s personal and professional background, along with the direct linguistic data collected in the project. She came to Australia as a skilled migrant and was granted a permanent visa because of her professional qualifications. She has been an Australian citizen for over a decade, working as a civil servant in a professional role, in a regional Australian city, in a highly monolingual English office environment. Her English language proficiency is indisputably high. Yet her evaluation demonstrates the power of native-speaker and monolingual mindset ideologies about languages: her capability, her professionalism, and even her nationality become inferior and vulnerable to the point that she imagines herself as at best a burden, and at worst incapable of being trusted, for an L1 English speaking audience in this context (see Piller et al 2024).

Hard work, pushback and pragmatism

However, all is not lost for this group of aspiring migration practitioners. Both L1 and L2 English speakers heavily stressed the need to practice speaking and to study hard to continue to improve their professional skills. While this emphasises individual responsibility and creates an additional burden for L2 speakers, it still allows for a degree of agency and a sense of opportunity: developing professional skills and identity are not regarded as impossible.

At the same time, students also demonstrated a critical awareness of the broader social and political contexts, and what these mean for how people are (sometimes unfairly) evaluated. For example, one student pointed to the broader political context of migration and perceptions of migrants to make sense of how RMAs are perceived: if the government is “very anti-immigration”, it follows that RMAs would be seen as “unnecessary” or a “pain to deal with”, and it would be made difficult for them to enter the profession.

Another student pushed back against the apparent need for people to speak standard Australian English. Nitin explained how whether someone comes across as rude can be a matter of the listener’s perception. He was thus able to turn the spotlight onto the interlocutor, who may misjudge L2 speakers who “don’t have those little, nice touches” in their speech, rather than the “deficient” speaker, and at the same time claim an advantage over L1 interlocutors, as more compassionate and knowledgeable in interactions involving speakers of diverse language varieties or proficiency. However, Nitin still ends on a pragmatic note, related to his own lived reality:

Nitin: People, when I talked to the native speakers here, sometimes they’d think I’m talking rude. My colleagues said that on a few occasions, and I started thinking, what was rude in that? … So I adapted it over a period of about nine years. Now I know what to speak and what not to speak. [Nitin, interview 1/2, 2020]

Therefore, while it is clear that students may come to internalize linguistic ideologies that frame their language practices and repertoires as inferior or in need of ongoing improvement, there is still space to reclaim and challenge these ideologies. However, even while doing so, they must still navigate the very real and enduring practical effects such ideologies have within their social and professional contexts.

Note

*Participant names are pseudonyms.

References

Mertz, E. (2007). The language of law school: Learning to “think like a lawyer”. Oxford University Press.

Piller, I. & Bodis, A. (2024). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 53(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689

Piller, I. & Gerber, L. (2021). Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, (24)5, 622-635. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227

Piller, I. et al. (2024). Life in a New Language. Oxford University Press.

Smith-Khan, L. (2025, AOP). Language, culture and professional communication in migration law education, Language, Culture and Curriculum, https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2025.2481051

Smith-Khan, L. (2021). ‘Common language’ and proficiency tests: a critical examination of registration requirements for Australian registered migration agents. Griffith Law Review, 30(1), 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/10383441.2021.1900031

Smith-Khan, L. (2021b). Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation. Discourse & Society, 32(5), 598-621. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265211013113

Smith-Khan, L., & Giles, C. (2025, AOP). Improving client communication skills in migration law and practice education. Alternative Law Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/1037969X251314205

Group of international students at Macquarie University (Image credit: Ingrid Piller)

Dr Bodis is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University as well as the Course Director of the Applied Linguistics and TESOL program. Dr Fang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie as well as a NAATI-certified translator and interpreter between English and Chinese. She also serves as a panel interpreter/translator for Multicultural NSW and as a NAATI examiner.

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

Transcript (coming soon)

Master of Applied Linguistics and TESOL students at Macquarie University (Image credit: Jung Ung Hwang)

As pre-pandemic levels of migration have been restored or exceeded, international students are once again in the spotlight.

Canada is planning to cap international student visas and Australia plans to raise English language proficiency requirements for student visas. The stated rationale is to “improve the quality of students’ educational experience and reduce workplace exploitation” and to “support international students to realise their potential.”

I argue that raising the English proficiency requirements for university admission is not a good way to achieve the stated rationale. International students’ educational experience and their successful integration into the workforce can be improved in a different way.

Why are language proficiency tests used for university admission?

A certain level of language proficiency is undoubtedly required to be able to study in a degree program.

However, standardized language proficiency tests that are designed to be used on a large scale, are, in fact, not good predictors of academic success, and are not viewed as such by university teaching staff and other stakeholders. After all, language proficiency is just one aspect of the many facets that contribute to students’ academic achievement.

Furthermore, language testing is administered selectively and not every applicant’s  language proficiency gets tested, entrenching inequality between different student groups from the outset.

Why is language proficiency testing not enough?

Successful communication depends on many factors, including the communication skills and supportiveness of the interlocutor. In standardized English language proficiency test situations, the interlocutors are trained assessors, who focus on language skills, fluency, and accuracy in a controlled test environment. In real life, however, interlocutors are not trained language experts and not necessarily supportive either, as adult language learners experience all too often.

Here’s an example from Yumiko, a Japanese international student featured in the forthcoming book Life in a New Language. In the first few months of her time in Australia, Yumiko only ordered orange juice because hospitality staff could not understand her Japanese accent when she said ‘apple juice’ (probably sounding like “apuru juice”). Not only did she not achieve the desired result but interlocutors often responded to her in an unkind way. This is an example of a social situation that isn’t academic in nature; however, unfortunately, international students do get judged as competent or incompetent in such situations, which of course, has very real consequences for them.

While language proficiency tests give an indication of general language proficiency, it would be unrealistic to expect them to replicate all the potential language use situations in a university student’s life. Therefore, raising the language test score requirements for university study is unlikely to significantly improve students’ educational experience.

How do we improve student experience then?

Instead of having a higher score on a standardized language proficiency test, what truly helps improve the students’ educational experience is language support and experiential learning that enable them to function in their future workplaces. Language support should be provided to all students with a dual purpose: on the one hand, to assist with their studies – as a more immediate need – and on the other, to gain effective communication skills for employability.

Besides the generic university-wide academic language support that most universities provide, discipline-embedded language support can be provided to all students and not just international students. This is to avoid the ‘sink-or-swim’ approach that they experience in higher education.

At the same time, valuing and building on the multilingual repertoires of students can provide a superior learning experience for all. An inclusive environment clearly benefits all. Engaging with languages in their studies and classes opens up new ways of knowledge production for students. For instance, in a recent seminar activity on the topic of wellbeing for language teachers, my class explored two Japanese concepts as part of the seminar activity. This led to an interesting discussion on what other wellbeing concepts there are in other languages and what we can learn from them.

Preparing students for the workplace

Furthermore, students need to be prepared for workplace requirements both linguistically and by building skills and connections through work-integrated learning (WIL). Learning activities that require students to research and engage with professional bodies are a good start to build awareness and language skills. This can then lead to learning activities and assessment practices that require industry project participation. For instance, Applied Linguistics and TESOL students at Macquarie University design language testing activities for English language schools as part of a unit I teach on language assessment.

In conclusion, setting up additional barriers to admission does not support students. What does support students is creating safe spaces with supportive interlocutors where they can simultaneously grow their linguistic repertoires, their disciplinary knowledge, and their workplace skills.

References

Bodis, A. (2017). International students and language: opportunity or threat? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/international-students-and-language-opportunity-or-threat/
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development, 1-15. doi:10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Bodis, A. (2023). Studying abroad is amazing, or is it? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/studying-abroad-is-amazing-or-is-it/
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2023). English Language Proficiency for Australian University Admission. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUSqSSploSE
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2024). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 53(1), 1-23. doi:10.1017/S0047404522000689
Piller, I., Bodis, A., Butorac, D., Cho, J., Cramer, R., Farrell, E., . . . Quick, B. (2023). Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration Inquiry into ‘Migration, Pathway to Nation Building’. Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=8c0d9316-2281-4594-9c7b-079652683f54&subId=735264

Image from a university website

“An amazing student experience awaits you!” – “a multicultural vibrant experience” in a “stunning landscape” covered by “year-round sunshine.”

These phrases do not come from a tourist brochure, but the websites of Australian universities. They are accompanied by stunning images of urban or natural landscapes and aim to attract international students.

International education is often hailed as a way to keep economies growing as higher education has shifted towards a commercialized model. However, the efforts to increase enrolment numbers are also accompanied by worries that in the haste to attract more students, the admission requirements – in particular that of English language proficiency – are lowered.

Gatekeeping

Countries built on immigration are looking to recover the immigration loss caused by the pandemic years and the ensuing border restrictions. A new proposal to overhaul the Australian visa system has attracted attention as the country is forecast to grow by 715,000 from 2022 to 2024.

International students are affected, of course, as student visas and possible immigration pathways attached to students visas are discussed in the report. In particular, the English language requirements for admission into university courses are recommended to be raised from a “low base” of Band 5.5 on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to be able to meet the language demands of the labour market after graduation.

We have addressed this deficit approach to international students before. Recent research by Ingrid Piller and I on university admission requirements found that English language proficiency requirements maintain exclusionary practices of international students by setting up the binary categories of tested and ‘inherent’ English language proficiency (read more about it here).

But how do universities reconcile these two opposing forces of, on the one hand, needing to attract international students for commercial reasons, and on the other, setting up linguistic requirements as a gatekeeping mechanism?

An idealized lifestyle

To answer this question, in my recently published paper at Higher Education Research & Development, I turned to university websites. I wanted to explore what role language plays in the admission process caught between these two opposing forces. And how does it affect the communication of English language proficiency requirements to prospective international applicants. The analysis went beyond looking at content and text and included the multimodal features of the websites: naming and positioning of webpages, the visuals accompanying the texts and, of course, the language use of the English language proficiency requirement webpages.

Image from a university website

I found that the language use, which ranged from highly formal to conversational, references the authority of the law, thus adds objectivity and authority to the requirements. The paper provides an analysis of how the generic features of legal language use are applied to the educational context and interact with marketing discourses.

The visuals on these webpages create a different effect, though.

They serve to depict an idealized student lifestyle to which English language proficiency is a vehicle. The pictures and videos on the websites analysed depict students engaging in various social situations and leisure activities such as shopping, eating out or engaging in activities at the beach. The participants in these activities are depicted in engaging in intercultural situations (indexed by looks of various ethnicities) and enjoying each other’s company, communicating with ease.

In reality, these are activities international students report to struggle with because of social isolation or the difficulty to use English in everyday situations. These visuals of ‘success’ legitimize the English language proficiency requirements, where participants become role models or protagonists in a video footage.

What effect does this representation have on the concept of English language proficiency used as an admission requirement?

A simplified English language proficiency and an accessible student experience

Firstly, English language proficiency gets simplified through the objectivity of simple numerical scores and the authority of legal discourse. After all, if the university policy states that an IELTS Band 6 is  adequate to study in English and the students have this level, they should have no problem with their studies or socialization – a view commonly held.

At the same time, the website visuals communicate a desirable student experience. This is both a misrepresentation of the language proficiency needed for further studies, which in fact all students need to develop, not just internationals, and the realities of the international student experience.

As much as we would appreciate “year-round sunshine”, we need to acknowledge that the weather in Australia is more nuanced than that.

Likewise, university admission requirement communication should indicate that English language proficiency is not a fixed ‘product’ described by the applicant’s IELTS score but rather a process, and acknowledge that discipline-specific language proficiency may need to be developed by all students during their studies.

References

Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689

(Image credit: Mana Akbarzadegan via Unsplash)

Have you noticed the persistent divide between domestic and international students at Australian universities? Do you worry how the English-monolingual habitus of our highly linguistically diverse institutions of higher learning affects student learning? Would you like to discuss the recent Language in Society article “Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission” with the authors?

Here’s your chance: The Linguistics Department at Macquarie University will host a free webinar devoted to “Rethinking English Language Proficiency and Academic Achievement in Australian Higher Education” this Friday.

When: Friday, March 31, 2023, 4-5pm AEDT (Sydney time)
Where: via Zoom (Pwd: 798325)
Who: Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller and Dr Agnes Bodis

Abstract: English language proficiency (ELP) is central to the academic achievement of the 1.5 million students enrolled in Australian universities each year. Yet, students are highly linguistically diverse, with a mix of domestic students from English- and non-English-speaking backgrounds and international students from national contexts where English may be the main language, an official language in a multilingual context, or a foreign language with limited communicative functions.

How do universities manage students’ linguistic diversity through their admission requirements and set students up for success?

In this seminar, we examine ELP requirements for university admission in Go8 universities to answer this question. Our language ideological analysis found two categorically different constructs of ELP: inherent ELP based on citizenship, linguistic heritage, and prior education, and tested ELP. We show how these two different conceptualizations of ELP map onto two dichotomous student groups. One of these is deemed to naturally speak English while the other is constructed as deficient and subject to perpetual scrutiny.

These language ideological constructs frame ELP as a matter of individual responsibility rather part of embedded in learning processes. Conversely, they obscure the need for continuous language development of all students and the need for pedagogical innovation in linguistically diverse educational institutions. We close with implications for policy and practice.

Further reading

Bodis, A. (2023). Gatekeeping v. marketing: English language proficiency as a university admission requirement in Australia. Higher Education Research & Development, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2174082
Piller, I. (2023). How do universities decide whose English needs to be tested for admission? Language on the Move. https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/
Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404522000689 [open access] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/event-multilingual-students-in-monolingual-universities/feed/ 9 24679 https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/ https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2023 21:25:26 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=24633

(Image credit: Mana Akbarzadegan via Unsplash)

When Muhammad* applied for admission to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university, he was asked to show evidence of his English language proficiency. Acceptable evidence included achieving a specific score on a commercial language test such as IELTS or TOEFL. Muhammad was upset to discover that none of the following counted as acceptable evidence of his English language proficiency: that all his prior education had been through the medium of English, that he was employed as university lecturer in the English department of a university in Bangladesh, and that he had published fictional and non-fictional writing in English.

Marlene* from Germany also applied to a postgraduate degree at an Australian university. She hardly noticed that English language proficiency constituted an admission criterion. The fact that she had studied English as a Foreign Language at higher level for her high school certificate meant that proof of her English language requirement was waived. English had never been the medium of education in her prior education. Outside her English language classroom, she has no experience with public speaking in English, nor with academic writing in English.

By most counts, Muhammad would be considered a more proficient speaker of English than Marlene. Yet the English language proficiency requirements of the university they applied to constructed Muhammad’s English as problematic and Marlene’s English as above board.

How are such decisions made? Why do some applicants need to take a test while others do not?

How do universities decide whose English needs to be tested for admission?

In new research just published in Language in Society, Agnes Bodis and I examine the English language proficiency requirements of Australian universities to answer these questions.

Language testing is often assumed to be only relevant for language learners. But who is a learner and who is not? The stories of Muhammad and Marlene show that this is not a trivial question. What made Muhammad a learner and Marlene a speaker according to university regulations?

Everyone agrees that the old concepts of “native” and “non-native” speakers are no longer valid. Yet, implicitly, a distinction that is very similar to this binary is made every time someone is required to sit a language test.

(Image credit: Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu via Unsplash)

The language of those who are required to sit a test is subjected to scrutiny. Those who have the requirement waived get a free pass.

Inherent English versus tested English

English language requirements for university admission create a language binary between “inherent English” and “tested English.”

Inherent English is the language of those who are exempt from testing.

Australian universities grant exemptions based on a mélange of criteria related to citizenship, education, and heritage. For example, to be recognized as having an “English-speaking background” and hence not having to sit a test, one policy requires two pieces of evidence from two different sets: one needs to be a citizenship document (“birth certificate, passport, arrival documents to establish residency”) and the other a portfolio of documents providing evidence of schooling, work, and residency. Curiously, the latter may include utility bills, tax notices, and medical records, as well as a letter of reference from “a person with standing in the community.” Examples of such persons include “a school principal or teacher, doctor or pharmacist, a local manager, community leader, social worker or sporting coach who know the person’s family.” (quoted from Piller&Bodis, 2022)

How does any of this establish evidence of English language proficiency you might ask? Well, it doesn’t; but it shows that language proficiency assessments are never about language alone. Language assessments are always also about identity.

The deficient English of those who are required to have their English tested

Inherent English is about having the right citizenship, the right education, or the right heritage. Anyone who falls short on these criteria, is required to sit an English language test.

Whether English language proficiency will need to be evidenced by a score on a language test is determined through a process of elimination. Those who do not meet the specific citizenship, education, and heritage criteria are relegated to the left-over basket of those who need to be tested. This engulfs them in a deficit perspective, expressed in “not”-rules: “if you are not […], then “you will be required to demonstrate English language proficiency in the form of an English test.”

Tested English is completely different from inherent English: it is reduced to the pseudo-objectivity of a numerical score, and even comes with an expiry date.

My TOEFL test scores expired. I can no longer speak, write, or understand English.

— Hamza (@hamza_azhar) July 31, 2020

Binary Englishes map onto binary identities

These two types of English – inherent English and tested English – map onto two different speaker groups.

Inherent English is accorded to most domestic applicants, applicants with passports from some Anglophone countries, applicants with certain educational credentials (mostly IB graduates, but also some specific high school certificates, as in Marlene’s case), and a medley of heritage criteria.

Inherent English maps most closely on the identity of the white native-speaker citizen construct. But not quite: it becomes blurred by the inclusion of citizens from Black majority states in the Caribbean (who, in actual fact, rarely apply to study at Australian universities) or those with certain educational credentials from outside the Anglosphere.

While the identity of those who are deemed to inherently speak English becomes blurred, its Other is cast into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen.

Objective language proficiency without identity?

Language proficiency constructs are always both about language and identity. The field of language assessment has been striving for objectivity by rejecting the identity component and focusing solely on language.

Whose English should be tested before admission? (Image credit: Dom Fou via Unsplash)

University admission requirements share this pretense to objectivity. The objectification of tested language is achieved through a convoluted set of regulations that can be expected to stand up to any legal challenges as long as they are applied consistently. However, this objectification of language proficiency has not made the identity component disappear. On the contrary, identity remains baked into universities’ constructs of English language proficiency through citizenship, education, and heritage criteria.

Implications for inclusion

Universities regularly deplore individuals’ lived experiences of exclusion and divisions within their student body. A major division in Australian universities is between domestic and international students. Yet our research suggests that admission requirements contribute to maintaining the ways of seeing that undergird these exclusions. Universities could contribute to dismantling these binaries, first, by uncoupling citizenship and heritage criteria from the language proficiency construct, and, second, by conceptualizing academic language and communication as a gradient which requires ongoing development for all students.

To succeed after admission both Muhammad and Marlene, as all their peers, will need ongoing support to develop their academic literacies.

*These names are pseudonyms.

Reference

Piller, I., & Bodis, A. (2022). Marking and unmarking the (non)native speaker through English language proficiency requirements for university admission. Language in Society, 1-23. doi:10.1017/S0047404522000689 [open access]

Also relevant

Bodis, A. (2017). International students and language: opportunity or threat? Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://languageonthemove.com/international-students-and-language-opportunity-or-threat/
Bodis, A. (2021). The discursive (mis) representation of English language proficiency: International students in the Australian media. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(1), 37-64.
Bodis, A. (2021). ‘Double deficit’ and exclusion: Mediated language ideologies and international students’ multilingualism. Multilingua, 40(3), 367-392. doi:doi:10.1515/multi-2019-0106
Piller, I. (2001). Who, if anyone, is a native speaker? Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten, 12(2), 109-121.
Piller, I. (2002). Passing for a native speaker: identity and success in second language learning. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(2), 179-206. [full access] ]]> https://languageonthemove.com/how-do-universities-decide-whose-english-needs-to-be-tested-for-admission/feed/ 46 24633 https://languageonthemove.com/international-education-in-rcep-the-worlds-largest-free-trade-zone/ https://languageonthemove.com/international-education-in-rcep-the-worlds-largest-free-trade-zone/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:14:00 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=23388

Diversity of international students is celebrated through images that map students onto nations represented by their flags

International education is often touted as a golden road to fluency in another language and the development of a global vision. However, ethnographic research into the language learning and settlement experiences of international students in a variety of national contexts has painted a less rosy picture, as the Language-on-Move archives devoted to international education show.

Such research has found many discontinuities between the promises of international education and students’ actual experiences.

One of the problems in the existing system of international education is the nation-based categorization of seeing international students of diverse backgrounds as a homogeneous group (Piller, 2017).

This categorization is further complicated when international students return to their ancestral homelands for their international education. Such “return migrants” may be positioned in often conflicting ways on the continuum of local and migrant, native and foreigner, as our recent research explores (Li & Han, 2020).

Ethnic Chinese students migrating to China for their international education

As one of the largest diasporas, ethnic Chinese constitute a population of over 50 million. The great majority of them live in Southeast Asia. Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia have been perceived as a powerful nexus between China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, mostly due to their remarkable economic performance and their historical contribution to China’s nationalist movement in the early twentieth century. As China is emerging as one of the largest receiving countries for international education, ethnic Chinese may get the first admission ticket to higher education institutions in China.

However, the prioritization of ethnic Chinese migrating to China for their international education is not without problems. These students are confronted with several linguistic and cultural challenges.

Some of these challenges are similar to what has been reported in previous studies, and others are specific to this group and have to date mostly been overlooked in the existing literature on international education.

One big challenge relates to a conflict between students’ self-perceptions of their identities and the ways in which others perceive them. An ethnic Chinese student from Myanmar, for instance, expressed her shock and confusion since coming to China: “我以为我的根在中国，来中国我发现我没根了！” (“I used to think that my roots are in China. However, coming to China has made me rootless.”)

Like this female student, ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar used to be oriented towards China. Learning Putonghua in Myanmar was a top priority for their transnational empowerment (Li, 2017; Li, 2020; Li, Ai, & Zhang, 2020). However, once they move to China for their studies, their trajectories gradually gear them to identify Myanmar as their true homeland and as their land of opportunity. How is this possible?

Linguistic and cultural essentialism

To find out, we (Li & Han 2020) examined the learning experiences of 14 ethnic Chinese from Myanmar who were enrolled in Putonghua-medium degree programs at a Chinese university. We found that the language ideologies of speaking standard Putonghua and writing simplified Chinese characters challenged these students’ sense of being authentically Chinese. In the process, they were turned from proficient Chinese speakers in Myanmar to deficient Putonghua speakers in China.

Ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar are often made to feel weird for engaging in practices that are considered “Burmese”, such as putting on thanaka, a protective white-paste face mask

National essentialism was another ideological force that challenged their Chinese identity. In their classrooms and everyday interactions, the students found themselves positioned not as ethnic Chinese but as Burmese nationals. This “one nation, one culture, one language” mindset not only erased our participants’ Chinese identity but also reinforced an essentialist view of Myanmar as the country of the Burmese, the dominant ethnic group in that highly diverse country.

Neo-essentialist curriculum

Most research into international education is based in Anglophone countries, where a monolingual mindset prevails and exclusive use of English is promoted while languages other than English are devalued.

This is not the case in China. China’s promotion of Putonghua as an international language follows a reciprocal approach that also values the languages international students bring. Their bilingualism is regarded as an asset. In our case, both Burmese and Putonghua constitute desired linguistic capital to achieve mutual cooperation and promote the regional economy and integration between China and ASEAN.

However, this promotion of bilingualism is not unproblematic, either. Linguistic diversity is not unconditionally valued but rests on its convertibility in an international communication market – between the Chinese and Burmese state in this context.

This orientation to the nation as a market applauds bilingualism in Burmese and Putonghua but marginalizes bilingualism in non-standard Chinese varieties and languages that are not official to a nation.

In short, our research demonstrates that the neoliberal valorization of bilingualism is not in and of itself better than the monolingual mindset: it only reproduces the cultural superiority of essentialized linguistic icons while devaluing and erasing non-privileged cultural forms and identities.

The future of Chinese international education

While the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the language challenges confronting diverse populations worldwide (Piller, 2020; Piller, Zhang, & Li, 2020), it has also reconfigured the global economic and political order.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 early last year, China has shifted its global strategy by strengthening its regional connectivity with Asian countries. In 2020, ASEAN replaced the USA and EU to become China’s largest trading partner. A recent trade agreement, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has reinforced the regional integration between China and its region. As the largest free trading zone covering 30% of the global populations and 30% of global GDP, RCEP will mark a new era for Asia-Pacific cooperation in various social dimensions.

Will the free movement of goods and people in this vast zone also lead us to a greater valorization of linguistic and cultural diversity? Will it open a space for embracing diversity and bringing greater equity and social justice?

Our research suggests that, as long as the ideological foundations of linguistic and cultural essentialism stay in place, the international education in RCEP may just be old wine in a new bottle.

References

Li, J. (2017). Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD). Macquarie University.
Li, J. (2020). Transnational migrant students between inclusive discourses and exclusionary practices. Multilingua, 39(2), 193-212. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2019-0125
Li, J., Ai, B., & Zhang, J. (2020). Negotiating language ideologies in learning Putonghua: Myanmar ethnic minority students’ perspectives on multilingual practices in a borderland school. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41(7), 633-646. doi:10.1080/01434632.2019.1678628
Li, J., & Han, H. (2020). Learning to orient toward Myanmar: ethnic Chinese students from Myanmar at a university in China. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 1-19. doi:10.1080/07908318.2020.1858095
Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication. Edinburgh University Press.
Piller, I. (Ed.) (2020). Language-on-the-Move COVID-19 Archives.
Piller, I., Zhang, J., & Li, J. (2020). Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis: Language challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multilingua, 39(5), 503-515. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/multi-2020-0136/html

Do we see international students as opportunity or threat? (Screenshot from ‘Degrees of Deception’)

With recent news on the number of international students in Australia reaching a new high and the 19.4 billion-dollar revenue student fees generate for the Australian economy, these students’ experience in Australia has become an important issue. Two different points of view can be distinguished: while one perspective sees international students as enriching Australian society through their diversity, another one frames them as problematic Other. Their imputed low English language proficiency is often seen as the root cause of the latter. While there have been attempts at representing international students in the media through the first perspective, I argue below that these attempts can only work if language proficiency is addressed in a constructive way, that goes beyond the monolingual mindset.

In their study, Paltridge, Mayson and Schappler (2014) analysed news articles covering international students from The Australian newspaper published between 2009 and 2011. The researchers found that media discourses result in the dual phenomenon of ‘welcome and exclusion […] by constructing them as “economic units” wanted and welcomed by the nation, as well as unwanted “exploiters of the immigration system” and excluded “victims” of violence and racism’ (p. 108). These media articles obviously frame students as a problematic out-group.

“Degrees of Deception”

The issue of English language proficiency also featured strongly in an episode of an ABC program, 4 Corners, entitled ‘Degrees of deception’ in April 2015, which focused on declining academic standards. According to the introduction, declining academic standards were evident in the rising ‘tide of academic misconduct’ and the pressure for academics to pass weak students (so-called ‘soft marking’). According to the report, these are due to the combined effect of a decline in government funding for universities and the increasing reliance on international student fees. International students, so the show’s claim, are ‘desperate for a degree from an Australian university and the possibility of a job and permanent residency’. Consequently, entry requirements have supposedly been lowered and cheating and plagiarism have become widespread. The episode claims that academics are appalled but are afraid to speak up for fear of their jobs.

After airing the episode, the 4 Corners team stressed on their Facebook and Twitter accounts that the episode was not about ‘international students being worse than other students’. However, a corpus linguistic analysis of the episode transcript reveals that the the most frequent content words on the show – ‘student’ and ‘students’ – usually refer to ‘international students’. This group was referred to 88% of the time when using the word ‘student’; by contrast, local students are referenced in only 7% of occurrences. Moreover, the word ‘student’ most commonly collocates with or appears close to words with negative connotations, like ‘exploited’, ‘weak/weaker’, ‘targeting’, or ‘struggling’.

Secondly, the vast majority of social media comments on Facebook related to the show discussed international students as inadequate on the basis of some form of low English language competence.

Using Van Leeuwen’s (1996) social actor framework, I have also found that international students as social actors are often abstracted behind concepts such as ‘fall in standards’, ‘poor English’, ‘pressure on the system’, ‘plagiarism’ and ‘income’. The analysis shows that the 4 Corners episode did in fact imply that international students are worse than others; their low English language proficiency is constructed as the root cause of this problem.

What is more, the fact that the findings of Paltridge et al. (2014) focusing on a conservative newspaper, The Australian, are echoed in a data set coming from a more liberal media outlet and its supposedly more liberal audience, suggests that this stereotyping of international students is widespread in Australia.

The Othering of international students on the basis of language proficiency needs to be addressed. One way to do so is by reflectively engaging with linguistic diversity through addressing the monolingual mindset prevalent in Australia, which makes it difficult to move beyond defining international students as the perpetual Other in the ‘white Anglo space’ of the Australian university.

Related content

• Grace Chu-Lin Chang, Language learning challenges of international students
• Grace Chu-Lin Chang, What is “Competent English”?
• Grace Chu-Lin Chang, Losing voice in academic writing
• Ingrid Piller, Exclusion on campus
• Ingrid Piller, Sink or swim for international students
• Kimie Takahashi, Disenchanted in Bangkok

Language Lovers Blogging Competition 2017

If you liked this post, don’t forget to vote for Language on the Move in the 2017 Language Lovers blogging competition over at the ba.bla voting page! Voting closes on June 06.

References

Paltridge, T., Mayson, S., & Schapper, J. (2014). Welcome and exclusion: an analysis of The Australian newspaper’s coverage of international students Higher Education, 68 (1), 103-116 DOI: 10.1007/s10734-013-9689-6

Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). The representation of social actors. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Couthard (Eds.), Texts and practices: readings in critical discourse analysis. London, New York: Routledge.

“Learn Chinese, Double Your World”: Promotion of Chinese as a global language

Research seminar about the language learning experiences of Burmese high school students in China

Topic: Following the China Dream (中国梦): Burmese students in a Yunnan border high school

Where: Macquarie University, S2.6 (AHH) 1.620 Faculty Tute Rm (16UA),

When: Wednesday, 22 February, 13:00-14:00

Presenter: Li Jia

Host: Professor Ingrid Piller

Abstract: In the current era of globalization desired migration destinations are no longer confined to Anglophone and Western countries. Given the increasing prominence of China’s economy and soft power projection in the world, China has emerged as an increasingly attractive destination for international students. One of the first studies to systematically examine their educational experiences, this seminar shares findings from an ethnographic research project on Burmese students’ language learning experiences at a border high school in Yunnan in China’s south-west. The focus will be on the educational barriers experienced by Burmese migrant students, the educational policies and teaching practices affecting them, the agentive practices of migrant students and their interactions with the educational context in which they find themselves. The presentation will be of interest not only to those with a background in Educational Linguistics and Chinese Studies but to anyone wishing to understand how migrant education produces and reproduces the social order, particularly against the novel promotion of Chinese as a global language.

Li Jia (3rd from left) during field work

About the presenter: LI Jia is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages at Yunnan University. For the past three years, she has been a PhD student in the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University. Under the supervision of Ingrid Piller and as a member of the Language on the Move research group, she has conducted a critical sociolinguistic ethnography of the education experiences of Burmese migrant students in China. Her thesis is currently under examination. Her research interests are in the sociolinguistics of language learning and ASEAN students’ education in her native Yunnan, China.

2012 workshop on ‘Linguistic Diversity and Social Inclusion in Australia’ at Macquarie University

How does language intersect with social inclusion in contemporary Australia? Do social inclusion policies address linguistic diversity? What do we know about the relationship between linguistic diversity and inclusion in schools, workplaces and higher education? It is questions such as these that a special issue of the  Australian Review of Applied Linguistics devoted to Linguistic diversity and social inclusion in Australia addresses. Guest-edited by Ingrid Piller, the special issue brings together selected presentations from the 2012 Macquarie University workshop devoted to the same topic.

Please find abstracts of the articles in the collection below. All the contributions in the special issue are available for open access through the National Library of Australia.

Linguistic diversity and social inclusion in Australia

Ingrid Piller

This editorial introduction orients the reader to current public debates and the state of research with regard to the intersection of linguistic diversity and social inclusion in contemporary Australia. These are characterised by a persistent lack of attention to the consequences of linguistic diversity for our social organisation. The editorial introduction serves to frame the five original research articles that comprise this special issue and identifies the key challenges that linguistic diversity presents for a fair and just social order. These challenges run as red threads through all the articles in this issue and include the persistent monolingual mindset which results in a pervasive language blindness and an inability to even identify language as an obstacle to inclusion. Furthermore, where language is recognised as an obstacle to inclusion this usually takes the form of assuming that an individual suffers from a lack of English language proficiency. Improving English language proficiency is then prescribed as a panacea for inclusion. However, on close examination that belief in itself can constitute a form of exclusion with detrimental effects both on language learning and equal opportunity.

Language and social inclusion: Unexplored aspects of intercultural communication

Simon Musgrave, Julie Bradshaw

Social inclusion policy in Australia has largely ignored key issues of communication for linguistic minorities, across communities and with the mainstream community. In the (now disbanded) Social Inclusion Board’s reports (e.g., Social Inclusion Unit, 2009), the emphasis is on the economic aspects of inclusion, while little attention has been paid to questions of language and culture. Assimilatory aspects of policy are foregrounded, and language is mainly mentioned in relation to the provision of classes in English as a Second Language. There is some recognition of linguistic diversity but the implications of this for inclusion and intercultural communication are not developed. Australian society can now be characterised as super-diverse, containing numerous ethnic groups each with multiple and different affiliations. We argue that a social inclusion policy that supports such linguistic and cultural diversity needs an evidence-based approach to the role of language and we evaluate existing policy approaches to linguistic and cultural diversity in Australia to assess whether inclusion is construed primarily in terms of enhancing intercultural communication, or of assimilation to the mainstream.

Dodgy data, language invisibility and the implications for social inclusion: A critical analysis of indigenous student language data in Queensland schools

Sally Dixon, Denise Angelo

As part of the ‘Bridging the Language Gap’ project undertaken with 86 State and Catholic schools across Queensland, the language competencies of Indigenous students have been found to be ‘invisible’ in several key and self-reinforcing ways in school system data. A proliferation of inaccurate, illogical and incomplete data exists about students’ home languages and their status as English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) learners in schools. This is strongly suggestive of the fact that ‘language’ is not perceived by school systems as a significant operative variable in student performance, not even in the current education climate of data-driven improvement. Moreover, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), the annual standardised testing regime, does not collect relevant information on students’ language repertoires and levels of proficiency in Standard Australian English (SAE). Indigenous students who are over-represented in NAPLAN under-performance data are targeted through ‘Closing the Gap’ for interventions to raise their literacy and numeracy achievements (in SAE). However, Indigenous students who are EAL/D learners cannot be disaggregated by system data from their counterparts already fluent in SAE. Reasons behind such profound language invisibility are discussed, as well as the implications for social inclusion of Indigenous students in education.

‘Like the fish not in water’: How language and race mediate the social and economic inclusion of women migrants to Australia

Donna Butorac

Learning English is an important aspect of post-migration settlement in Australia, and new migrants with beginner to intermediate proficiency are strongly encouraged to attend government-subsidised English language classes. Underpinning the framing and delivery of these classes is a commitment to the discursive construction of Australia as an English-monolingual nation state, in which increased English proficiency will lead to new migrants gaining employment, thereby achieving an important benchmark of successful inclusion in Australian society. The assumption that English language acquisition leads to social and economic inclusion is not challenged within the settlement English program, and the language learner is seen as linguistically deficient in English, rather than as an emerging bi- or multilingual. Moreover, the ways that race, as well as gender, mediate both language learning and social inclusion are never problematised. This paper is based on data from a longitudinal ethnography that examines subjectivity in three interactional domains – family, society and work – in order to explore how language, race and gender impact on the post-migration settlement trajectories and sense of social inclusion of women migrants to Australia.

Working it out: Migrants’ perspectives of social inclusion in the workplace

George Major, Agnes Terraschke, Emily Major, Charlotte Setijadi

This paper explores the concept of social inclusion from the perspective of recent migrants, from language backgrounds other than English, at work in Australia. We adopt an understanding of social inclusion that acknowledges the importance of economic independence, while also considering migrants’ feelings of connectedness at work and their sense of belonging. Based on qualitative interviews with migrants collected two years apart, we explore the ways language and language practices can lead to feelings of inclusion or exclusion at work. The data suggests that migrants who felt included at work often had colleagues and/or bosses who actively supported and encouraged them in learning new skills, and made an effort to connect with them through small talk. In contrast, participants who felt excluded were unable to fully participate in work activities and/or workplace interaction because of limitations they or others placed upon them based on their English proficiency. We suggest that social inclusion, as it relates to employment, can also encompass different things for different people. For some, a sense of belonging is not promoted solely by having work or the ability to connect with colleagues, but also by obtaining employment of a type and level commensurate with their pre-migration status.

Writing feedback as an exclusionary practice in higher education

Grace Chu-Lin Chang

This ethnographic research probes into feedback on academic writing received by Taiwanese students in Australian higher education institutions, and examines whether the feedback received helped students to participate in the written discourse of academic communities. Academic writing dominates the academic life of students in Australia and is the key measure of their academic performance. This can be problematic for international students who speak English as an additional language and who are expected to acquire academic literacies in English ‘by doing’. As a social practice, academic writing depends on participation in dialogue for students to be included in the community of academia. However, the findings show that few participants received any useful feedback. Some assignments were never returned; in other cases, the hand-written feedback was illegible, and often included only overly general comments that puzzled the participants. As a result, the learning process came to an end once the students handed in their assignments; feedback failed to promote further learning related to content, and particularly to academic writing. The article highlights the few instances where participants received helpful feedback that was accessible and constructive, and which can be considered best practice for the promotion of academic literacy.

Christmas party at an International High School in Yunnan

Over the past few decades, an increasing number of Burmese international students have enrolled in high schools in Yunnan, a province in the Southwest of China bordering Myanmar. More and more Burmese students are crossing the border in order to receive formal education in China. These international students have come to China with various dreams and parental expectations. Upon crossing the border gates, the contrast between the two countries remains imprinted on their memory, marking the beginning of Burmese students’ lives in China. One Burmese university student told me about her first impression upon crossing the border:

我们的国门，我们的路是石头满地飞，中国是油漆路，有多大区别！ 这边是，国门很大，我们的国门就是一个篱笆一样的，去到中国人，人家很有礼貌，穿着制服问你：‘你好 怎么怎么样’； 我们是穿着拖鞋，拿着钢笔在那里给你勾，给你过.

Our national check-point, our road is full of gravel flying everywhere. In China, it’s a tarred road. What a big difference! On this side, the [Chinese] national gate is very big. Our national gate is like a bamboo fence. When you go to the Chinese border soldiers, they are very polite, dressed in military uniform and greeting you with ‘nihao blah blah blah’ [makes typing motions with her fingers to indicate computerized bureaucratic procedures]. Ours are wearing flip-flops, holding pens and ticking boxes on forms before allowing you to pass.

The modern border buildings and infrastructure, advanced computer technologies, standardized Chinese language and homogenous military uniforms seem to mark a positive beginning for the international experiences of Burmese students. However, being able to cross the geographical border does not mean that Burmese students are able to cross the various ideological boundaries that they encounter in their daily lives.

The story of Yingying (a pseudonym) shows that even after crossing a physical national border, international students may continue to carry the border within them.

Yingying, a straight-A student in Myanmar, came to China to attend high school in 2013 when she was 14 years old. She and her parents had a long-term plan for her education in China: after studying hard, she would go on to enrol at a Chinese university and eventually graduate to become a doctor.

However, things did not go according to plan. Her experience at school brought her nothing but feelings of discomfort and exclusion.

来这边在得不舒服，学习也跟不上，我旁边坐的是学习好的人，老师讲呢，不懂呢问他们，但他们爱理不理，不想理啊! 问老师，老师在批作业没有时间，等晚自习时才能去问。 以前在缅甸发高烧时都要去读书的，来这边连点小感冒都不想去，看他们觉得太不舒服了。

I have never felt comfortable since I arrived here. I can’t catch up with the others. I’m surrounded by high-achievers and my teacher said I could ask my peers if I don’t understand something, but they are indifferent, and can’t even be bothered to speak! I could ask my teachers for help, but they are busy marking students’ homework and don’t have time. I have to wait until evening class. When I was in Myanmar, I insisted on going to school even if I had a high fever, but since coming here I don’t want to go to class if I have even the slightest cold. Seeing them really makes me uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, sitting with the high-achievers does not help the new Burmese students successfully integrate into the class. To her surprise and disappointment, Yingying receives nothing but indifference and blank rejection from her Chinese classmates. Her only hope is that help will be forthcoming from her teacher, but the likelihood of this too becomes quite slim and her cumulative questions and uncertainties arising from the heavy coursework load have to wait until evening class every day. Within two months of starting at the school, this formerly outstanding student has already ‘learned’ to be absent from class in China, something she would never have been in Myanmar even when she had a high fever.

What has made this straight-A student learn to play truant, and what makes her feel ‘uncomfortable’ sitting with her Chinese classmates in class? Her laziness? Her isolation from her peers? Each and every Burmese student will have had different expectations of their life abroad before their departure, but what they could hardly have imagined is the overwhelming feeling of isolation from the mainstream school culture that they would experience. The students are all receiving the same education in the same school, but what has separated them from the mainstream group? What invisible borders stand between them? To answer these questions, I adopt critical race theory (CRT) as a lens to analyse the intersection between race, language and other social categories on campus.

Yosso et al. (2009) demonstrate how racial micro-aggressions can create a negative campus climate in US schools. Latina/o students were found to experience various forms of micro-aggressions at individual and institutional levels. Micro-aggressions include assaults, such as intentionally derogatory verbal or nonverbal attacks; insults, such as subtle put-downs of a rude and insensitive nature regarding a person’s racial heritage or identity; and invalidations, or remarks that diminish, dismiss, or negate the realities and histories of people of color (Yosso et al. 2009, p.662). No matter whether micro-aggressions are conscious or unconscious, they permeate everyday mundane life on campus, which can cause extreme stress to marginalized students.

Similar to exclusions experienced by Latina and Latino students on US campuses, Burmese students are also being racialized in Chinese schools. At educational institutions in China, Putonghua is the (only) legitimate medium of instruction and Burmese students’ linguistic repertoires are often problematized. Most of the participants in my study are huaqiao (华侨), Burmese nationals but ethnically Chinese. Huaqiao students such as Yingying believe that their motherland is in China even though their nationality is Burmese.

However, crossing the border often changes what it means to be huaqiao. Yingying speaks perfect Chinese; in fact, her Chinese writing has received the acknowledgement of her teacher by being awarded the highest mark in the mid-term essay writing exam. Despite this, she is treated as an outsider and excluded by her Chinese peers.

Yingying’s dream of pursuing her academic aspirations in China ended after only half a year when she could no longer cope with the exclusion she experienced. She has gone back to Myanmar to continue her studies, rationalizing her return as motivated by ‘the cold weather in China.’

Crossing the border back from her imagined motherland to her birthplace must also have changed her perception of the meaning of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’.

Yingying is not alone in traversing national borders only to find that borders are also being carried within as a sense of difference and exclusion. Every day thousands of Burmese people are crossing borders to seek their future in China. More and more highways, railways and airports have been established to facilitate mutual cooperation and understanding. China is working hard to open up to and strengthen its ties with Myanmar and other ASEAN nations. But Yingying’s story shows that transforming physical borders is not enough. Critical race theory can help us understand the intersection between language, race and other social categories in China’s rapidly transforming border regions, and more specifically, in China’s rapidly internationalizing educational institutions. Her experience reminds us that borders can take many forms.

Tara J Yosso; William A Smith; Miguel Ceja; Daniel G Solórzano (2009). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates Harvard Educational Review, 79 (4)

For international students, it’s sink or swim (Image source: luvimages.com)

It is one of the basic findings of decades of research in bilingual education that language submersion is not a productive way to educate minority students. ‘Language submersion’ refers to a situation where students are made to study exclusively through the medium of a language that they have not yet fully mastered; i.e. they are learning a new language AND curriculum content at the same time; usually in the presence of peers who are native speakers of the language of instruction and in the absence of any structured language learning support.

It is beyond doubt that this type of education produces poor results, both in regards to language outcomes and in regards to content learning. In Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Colin Baker (2006, p. 219) lists the negative consequences of submersion education:

Listening to a new language demands high concentration. It is tiring, with a constant pressure to think about the form of the language and less time to think about curriculum content. A child has to take in information from different curriculum areas and learn a language at the same time. Stress, lack of self-confidence, ‘opting-out’, disaffection and alienation may occur.

Indeed, in a famous court case, Lau vs. Nichols, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that submersion education constituted a violation of civil rights:

[…] there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.

Research that has demonstrated the negative consequences of submersion education has mostly been conducted at the primary and, to a lesser degree, the secondary level (see Baker 2006, Ch. 10 for an overview). The relative absence of research at the tertiary level is probably due to the fact that most attention has been devoted to students who do not speak the language of instruction at all. However, in higher education a certain proficiency level in the language of instruction is typically an admission requirement. Even so, it is reasonable to assume that students who meet the language-related admission requirements but do so at a relatively low level of proficiency will still be disadvantaged by the combined weight of having to improve their linguistic proficiency and having to learn complex academic content at the same time.

A recent study of the academic progress of pharmacy students in a four-year degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, demonstrates exactly that (Green 2014). The study analysed the performance data of 297 students entering the program in three consecutive years and examined whether performance in the program could be predicted on the basis of student variables such as English language proficiency, ethnicity and residency status. 265 of these graduated in the end; 28 had to repeat a year; and 105 failed at least one paper at some point during their studies.

It is an admission requirement into the program where the study took place to sit an English diagnostic test. Those who fail may still enter the program but will be required to pass a remedial English paper in the first year. The number of students who were admitted despite failing the English diagnostic test was 48 and these were coded as having ‘weak English.’ The number of students who should be considered English language learners was probably higher but the study did not use further measures of English language proficiency. The data were coded for ethnicity, though (94 students were European/Maori; 186 Asian; and 17 ‘other’), and one might assume that the ‘non-local ethnicity’ students (Asian and ‘other’) included some more language learners even if their English might have been good enough to pass the diagnostic test.

The strongest predictor of success in the program (graduating within four years; not having to repeat a year; not failing a paper) was, unsurprisingly, academic performance on entry. The predictors of low performance (not graduating; having to repeat a year; failing one or more papers) were more complex, and included “having weak English, being of non-local ethnicities, being male, and having lower grades at entry” (Green 2014, p. 5).

In his discussion, the author (who is not a language but a health researcher) sums up the language problem as follows and, implicitly, provides a perfect description of language submersion in higher education:

Within our own university, the students reported on in this study that are identified as having lower English proficiency in the [admission] screening test are enrolled in a remedial programme that they are required to pass. All students are then re-screened in the second year of our programme, but none of those identified in the first year excel, and 77 % of them fail a subsequent screening test in second year, and are then directed to further remedial help and further rescreening. That the students who are initially identified in the first year continue to have academic difficulties, even at the end of the programme, in spite of having to seek remedial help, and being further re-tested suggests two possibilities. The first is that the remedial help is ineffective, but the second, and in my opinion more likely, possibility, is that students who start with weaker English will be improving their English skills over time during the course, but are unable to make up enough ground. (Green 2014, p. 8)

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about bilingual education. What is surprising is that – despite decades of research that show the detrimental effects of submersion education – submersion education in higher education has, paradoxically, come to be widely perceived as the IDEAL method of English language learning and higher education. This supposedly ideal method is, of course, not called ‘submersion education’ but ‘international education’ or ‘global education,’ and includes international students coming to study in English-dominant countries and the proliferation of programs with English as medium-of-instruction around the world.

As Green’s research demonstrates, the price for this misguided belief in the sink-or-swim method is, inter alia, paid in academic performance.

References

Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 4th ed. Bristol, Multilingual Matters.
Green, J. (2014). The effect of English proficiency and ethnicity on academic performance and progress Advances in Health Sciences Education DOI: 10.1007/s10459-014-9523-7

Burmese newspaper in a Bangkok restaurant

They say, ‘Aaaah, Pamma (Thai word for ‘Burmese’)…. You don’t look Myanmar!’ Obviously, they think all Burmese are poor migrants. I stopped telling them I’m from Burma. They react nicely if I say I’m from Singapore.

Thiri’s experience is part of the narrative of the intensifying internationalisation of higher education in Thailand. Since the 1990s, Thailand has been driven to internationalise its higher education as part of its economic expansion effort in order to generate income (Lavankura, 2013). As a result, the number of international programs offered by Thai universities steadily increased from 14 programs in 1984, to 520 in 2003, and to 981 in 2010.

English as the medium of instruction is the key characteristic of these international programs (see Piller and Cho, 2013). Pad Lavankura (2013, p. 670) from Ramkhamhaeng University explains that “the extra demand for international programs is based on a growing need for graduates competent in the English language, in addition to being competent in their own discipline”. Similar to other Southeast and East Asian countries, Thailand enthusiastically embraces the discourse of English as capital to elevate its standing in the global economic and academic system. Against the background of Thailand’s poor record in English language proficiency (ranked 53 out of 54 countries; English First, 2012), and in thrall to the glamorous global status of the language, English MoI international programs have become an attractive option among middle- and upper-class Thais desiring to improve their social status and access to better employment.

While the majority of students enrolled in the international programs are Thai nationals, the number of international students has seen a steady increase. Lavankura (2013, p. 666) observes that ‘the ambition to “catch up with the West” continues, but the idea has been expanded to include other geographical parts of the world, especially the ASEAN countries”. According to the Office of the Higher Education Commission (2013), the total of international students enrolled in higher education in 2010-2011 was 20,309, and the highest number of international students came from China (8,444), followed by Myanmar (1,481), Laos (1, 344) and Vietnam (1,290).

Foreign Students in Thai Higher Education Institutions 2011

Indeed, many of my students are international students, mainly from other parts of Asia such as China, Myanmar, South Korea and Taiwan. Many of them opted out of going to an expensive English-speaking country and chose Thailand instead as a study overseas destination for affordable tuition fees, geographical proximity to their home country, friendliness of Thai people and wonderful local food.

Two students in my course told me eagerly that they have much more opportunity to use English here than they had in their home countries of China and South Korea. As a result, their confidence in their English has increased since they arrived in Bangkok. Few of them have learnt much Thai, but that has not caused much discomfort or inconvenience, and in fact, they say they are often admired by local Thais for their fluency in English, and their national identity as Chinese and South Korean has a strong currency in Thailand.

This positive reception by locals and their instant admiration for English-speaking Asians is rare in the narratives of the Burmese international students I’ve met to date. In fact, the opposite is true as demonstrated by Thiri’s experience. Another story comes from Tom, a young Burmese MBA student. Tom and his Thai-speaking Burmese friend were shopping in a watch shop one day. Tom asked several questions in English to a smiling Thai shopkeeper, who eventually asked him where he was from:

I said I was from Myanmar, and he said ‘Oh… Pamma…’ and quickly turned to other shopkeepers and start talking amongst themselves. My friend can understand Thai and said, ‘they are saying you won’t be buying anything because you are poor. They are surprised that a man from a poor country can speak English.’ I was so sad.

It is not only the public space where the stigmatisation of Burma impacts their everyday lives as international students. Speaking to several Burmese students enrolled in international programs at universities across Bangkok, I have learned that they have experiences of being excluded from classroom activities, of being called names, and of being ridiculed for their perceived naivety and accent in English on campus. As a result, there is a tendency to study and socialise among themselves. This obviously reduces access to interactional opportunities in English as a lingua franca, and they are well aware that such socialisation is counterproductive. Commonly, however, many of them have been able to form close friendship with their fellow international students, who share their goals of gaining more proficiency in English and more international experience.

‘With the introduction of the “Global 30” Project, the best universities in Japan are now offering degree programs in English’

My observations in this post are based on anecdotes that I have been collecting informally since I arrived in Thailand in 2011. The problem I see is that their complex experience of study overseas in English as a lingua franca in a (so-called) non-English speaking Asian country remains largely invisible in the fields of Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication and related areas, as the research focus to date has been concentrated on fee-paying Asian students studying in English-speaking Western countries.

As demonstrated by Ingrid Piller and Jinhyun Cho (2013) in the case of internationalisation of higher education in South Korea, and as further exemplified by Japan’s ambition to internationalise its higher education and by Thailand’s declaration of their plan to become a regional education hub, universities in Asia are en route to attracting Asian international students to their English MoI international programs.

The commodification of internationalisation of higher education within English-crazy Asia is a relatively new ball game in the name of globalisation. How do we make sense of this and its impact? One possible way is to start documenting challenges and issues faced by this emerging student population, like those experienced by the Burmese students discussed in this post. Such research efforts must look closely into the historical tensions among nations and ethnic groups and their impact on everyday negotiations of identity, access to interactional opportunities and a sense of belonging on and off campus.

Piller, I. & J. Cho (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society , 42 (1), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887

Lavankura, P. (2013). Internationalizing Higher Education in Thailand: Government and University Responses. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17 (5), 663-676 DOI: 10.1177/1028315313478193

ライター:高橋君江(Kimie Takahashi) | 翻訳: 貝和慧美 (Emi Kaiwa)

バンコクの憂鬱

「タイ人から出身地を聞かれた時は、『フィリピン、それかシンガポールから来ました。』って答えるようにしてるんです。そうすると、嫌な顔されないですみますから！」最近出会った経営学を学ぶ若いミャンマー人女子留学生が、バンコクでの暮らしぶりを教えてくれた。タイ語があまり話せないティリさん（本掲載内、登場人物は全て匿名）は、バンコクでの生活は英語でこなしている。アジア人なのに流暢な英語を話すという事に驚かれ、売店のタイ人に出身地がどこなのか聞かれる事が多いという。「どこから来たの？」という質問には慣れたが、その答えに対してのタイ人の反応は未だに悩みの種だ。

「『あぁ、パーマ（タイ語でミャンマー人の意）．．．、ミャンマー人みたいに見えないね！』って言われるんです。明らかに、タイ人は、すべてのミャンマー人が貧しい移民民族だと考えているんです。だから、もうミャンマー出身だって言わないんです。シンガポールから来たと言うと、優しくしてもらえますから。」

ティリさんの経験の背景には、タイ王国（以下、タイ）で過熱する高等教育の国際化への取り組みがある。1990年代以降、タイは、収入を増やす為の景気拡大の一環として高等教育国際化を推進してきた（Lavankura, 2013）。その結果、タイの大学におけるインターナショナルプログラムは増加し、1984年には14だったプログラム数が、2003年に520へ、そして2010年には981にも上った。

これらのインターナショナルプログラムの重要な特徴は指導言語が英語であることだ。（Piller and Cho, 2013参照）。ラムカムヘン大学のパッド・ラバンクラ（Lavankura, 2013、p.670）は、「大学の卒業生に専門分野における能力だけでなく、高い英語力が求められている現状が、インターナショナルプログラムへの需要増加の根底にある。」と述べている。他のアジア諸国と同様に、タイは経済と学問をグローバルレベルに高めていくための資本として英語を取り入れている。英語能力が低いとされているタイ人（54か国中53位；English First, 2012）にとって、グローバルステイタスである英語が出来る事への憧れは強まる一方だ。よって、英語で学べるインターナショナルプログラムは、高い社会的地位やより良い仕事に就きたいと考えている中流、上流階級のタイ人の間で魅力的な選択肢として注目を集め始めている。

タイ王国の高等教育機関で学ぶ留学生2013年盤

インターナショナルプログラムに入学している生徒の大多数がタイ人である一方、留学生の数も増え続けている。ラムカムヘン大学のパッド・ラバンクラ (2013, p. 666) は、「『西洋に追いつけ』という強い風潮はこれからも続くが、この考え方は、他の地域、特にASEAN諸国へと拡大している」との見解を示している。高等教育事務局（2013）によると、2010年～2011年の間にタイの大学へ入学した留学生数の合計は20,309名で、留学者数の多い国は順に、中国（8,444名）、ミャンマー（1,481名）、ラオス（1,344名）、ベトナム（1,290名）となっている。

確かに、私の学生の多くは留学生で、主に中国、ミャンマー、韓国、そして台湾などの他のアジア地域から来ている。彼らの多くは、費用のかさむ英語圏の国には行かずに、学費を賄う事ができ、地理的にも母国と近く、友好的な国民性があり、且つ食事のおいしいタイを留学先として選ぶ。

私の授業を受けている中国人と韓国人の生徒は、タイにいる方が母国にいた時よりも英語に触れる機会がとても多いと言う。その結果、バンコクに着て以降、彼らの英語力に対する自信は高まっている。タイ語ができなくとも生活に不便を感じる事は少なく、実際には、英語を話す方がタイ人に賞賛されるという。そして、彼らの国籍はタイで強い価値をもつ中国と韓国だ。

このようにタイ人から好意的に歓迎されたり、英語を話すアジア人として瞬時に賞賛されることは、私が今まで出会ったミャンマー人留学生の体験の中ではほぼ皆無である。ティリさんの体験のように、逆のケースの方が多いのだ。ミャンマー人の若いＭＢＡ学生のトムさんがいい例である。ある日、トムさんとタイ語が話せるミャンマー人の友人で時計店で買い物をしていた時の出来事だった。トムさんは、タイ語があまり話せないので、英語でタイ人店員に質問していたところ、「どこから来たのですか？」と尋ねられた。

「ミャンマーから来たと答えました。そしたら店員が、『あ、パーマ』と言うと、すぐに他の店員の方を向き、自分たちだけで話し始めました。僕の友人はタイ語がわかるので、通訳してくれたのですが、『彼らは、君がミャンマー出身で貧しいから、何も買うはずがない、と言っている。貧しい国出身なのに君が英語を話せる事に驚いているよ。』と。とても悲しい想いをしました。」

ミャンマー人留学生として生活する上での問題は、公共の場所だけに限らない。バンコクにある数々の大学のインターナショナルプログラムに入学したミャンマー人留学生達と話す中で、キャンパス内でも、クラスの諸活動から仲間はずれにされたり、嫌な名前で呼ばれたり、ナイーブさや英語のアクセントなどを馬鹿にされるなどの経験があるという事がわかった。その為、ミャンマー人学生は固まって行動する傾向にある。その結果、インターナショナルプログラムで学ぶ学生間の共通語である英語を使う機会が減る事になってしまい、彼ら自身、この様なミャンマー人同士だけのコミュニティー形成は逆効果である事に気づいている。ただその一方で、他国からの留学生と友人関係を築いているミャンマー人学生も多く、英語力を高めたり、より国際的な経験を得ていることも事実だ。

グローバル30プロジェクトの始動に伴い、今、日本の一流大学が英語での学位取得プログラムを開始している。

この記事で述べた私の見解は、2011年の来タイ以降、非公式に収集してきた逸話に基づいている。課題と思われるのは、応用言語学や異文化コミュニケーションなどの分野では、研究対象が西洋の英語圏におけるアジア人自費留学生に集中しており、（俗にいう）アジアにおける非英語圏に留学して英語を共通語として学んでいる学生たちの複雑な経験があまり研究されていないことである。

アジアの大学は今、英語インターナショナルプログラムによるアジア人留学生獲得に本腰を入れつつある。イングリッド・ピラー及びジンヒュン・チョウ (2013)が検証した韓国における高等教育の国際化、日本の高等教育国際化への取り組み、さらにアジアの地域教育のハブ国を目指すタイの計画がその良い例である。

英語崇拝のアジア、この地域における高等教育の商品化は、グローバリゼーションという名の下に始まったばかりだ。今後、アジアにおける高等教育の国際化・商品化とその影響をどのように理解していけばよいのだろうか？一つの方法は、上述したミャンマー人学生の話のような、留学生が直面している問題等を調査していく事である。その様な研究は、国家間・民族間の歴史的な問題とそれらが学生たちの日常生活において、どのようにアイデンティティーの形成、人との係わり合いの機会、キャンパス内外での帰属意識に影響を与えているかなどに注目する必要があるだろう。

Piller, I. & J. Cho (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society , 42 (1), 23-44.
Lavankura, P. (2013). Internationalizing Higher Education in Thailand: Government and University Responses. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17 (5), 663-676.

Panel devoted to Jeju Global Education City (Source: Jeju Weekly)

Now that Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has become a global hit, I wonder if you know what Gangnam is? The dictionary definition of ‘Gangnam’ is the southern part of Seoul – the capital of South Korea – but in actuality ‘Gangnam’ is much more than a place name: it refers to the most affluent and exclusive area of the country. “Tower Palace,” a luxury residential apartment complex, is the pinnacle of its exclusivity. Built in the most prestigious section of the Gangnam district by Samsung between 2002 and 2004, it is literally a palace, in that its occupants are among the wealthiest and the buildings are equipped with amazing amenities ranging from a library, spas, a golf range, banks, and, yes, high-end boutique shops such as Channel.

Education is part of Gangnam’s attraction: South Korea’s best schools are located in Gangnam. And that includes English-language education. Gangnam parents are wholeheartedly devoted to their children’s English education, as English proficiency is a key status marker in 21^st-centry Korea. They led the trend of sending children abroad for English learning (known as jogi yuhak) either alone or accompanied by their mothers as guardians beginning in late 1990s. The number of jogi yuhak children, which peaked at 27,331 in 2008, has been on the wane since 2009. Apart from the Global Financial Crisis, family breakups as well as readjustment issues found among the first-generation returnees are cited as reasons behind the decline.

Undeterred, Gangnam parents are now setting a new trend in English education of Korea: they have found a way to immerse their children in an English-Only environment without actually going abroad. English language immersion is now available on Jeju Island, the country’s largest island. As part of Korea’s globalization drives, the government launched 940-acre Jeju Global Education City, a self-contained community, in 2011. Designed as an English-only district, there are currently three international schools operating within Jeju Global Education City.

Tuition fees in Jeju Global Education City are hefty. If accommodation is included, parents pay between 31,000 and 48,000 US dollars per year for schooling there.

Despite these high fees parents have little control over their child’s education once they are enrolled in a school in Jeju Global Education City. A recent report on a bullying case in one of the three schools there exposes what happens behind the ambitious global education project. The family of a victim student, who had been bullied by his roommate for one and a half years, was helpless at the school’s inaction. While that may not be unusual, what is unusual is that the victim’s family could not take this matter to the Korean education authorities or to police, since the school is “international” in nature and thus not subject to the Korean laws. International schools operating in Jeju have neither internal dispute settlement systems nor a teacher-parent committee to discuss such issues as bullying, as such measures are merely recommended, not required. As is the case in other countries, the Korean anti-bullying regulations stipulate that primary, middle, and high schools put in place an anti-school violence committee composed of various education stakeholders of whom parents should take up a majority. In the absence of such schemes, parents take to the media to air their grievances.

The absence of a requirement to follow Korean laws is even more extraordinary when one considers that the Korean government made a huge financial commitment to woo foreign schools to Jeju. For example, North London Collegiate School Jeju is committed to pay 56 million US dollars in royalty to their parent school North London Collegiate School in the U.K. over the next 21 years. In fact, the government even promised to find money from tax revenues (paid by all citizens) in case the school (which caters to a tiny elite who can afford to send their children there) runs into deficit.

The bullying cases reported above occurred in an extraordinary constellation of a globalization-driven Korean government, commercialized international schools, and education-obsessed parents. Who is the ongoing expansion of Western schools in Asia actually serving? As seen in the Jeju case, international schools even get away with not protecting the children in their care from harm as they are granted exclusive powers to resolve any ‘internal’ matters.

Whether you can afford going Gangnam style or not, it is a losing game for everyone in South Korea. In their search for exclusivity, Gangnam parents have ended up being excluded from their children’s education in the island. As for non-Gangnam parents who work hard to pay for their children’s extracurricular English education on land, they are doing so without realizing that their hard-earned money might only fatten the pockets of schools faraway.

If you google images for “study abroad,” you get many pictures of inclusive-looking racially-diverse groups of people such as this one.

A persistent theme in research with international students in Australia is the tension between dreams of inclusion pre-departure and the experience of exclusion once in the country. In Kimie Takahashi’s ethnography with international students from Japan, for instance, participants often spoke about how their decision to study abroad was partly motivated by dreams of being part of a multicultural student body. Indeed, marketing materials for study abroad abound with images of groups of diverse students jointly engaging in study or leisure activities. Inclusiveness in such images is typically signalled by images of people who look racially different.

Participants in Takahashi’s research described elaborate fantasies of how they had imagined themselves being part of an international (in their case, that meant mostly ‘non-Japanese’ and sometimes also ‘non-Asian’) group of friends, hanging out in a cool café in Sydney and chatting away in their fluent English.

Unfortunately, in real life such scenarios hardly ever happened. Making friends, joining study groups, collaborating in diverse groups all turned out to be extraordinary difficult. This problem is not unique to the Japanese participants in Takahashi’s study but comes up again and again in research with international students: locals stick to them themselves and international students stick to their co-ethnics or other international students.

The campus advertising images of happily collaborating diverse student groups only seem to happen for the camera and fostering an inclusive culture on campus remains a vexing problem for universities. While there is a large body of advice aimed at individual international students (“Don’t be shy!” “Get over your lack of confidence!”), the actual production of international student exclusion on the micro-level of daily interactions remains poorly understood.

Maybe that is where internationalization can learn from Critical Race Theory.

A 2009 article published in the Harvard Educational Review (“Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates” by Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja and Daniel Solórzano) draws on the concept of “micro-aggression” to explain why Hispanic students at US elite universities share the experience of exclusion and isolation reported by international students at Australian universities.

“Micro-aggression” is a concept introduced by the psychiatrist Chester Pierce in the 1960s and refers to “subtle, innocuous, preconscious, or unconscious degradations, and putdowns, often kinetic but capable of being verbal and/or kinetic” (Yosso et al. 2009, p. x). In itself any act of micro-aggression may seem harmless but their cumulative effect over time can be deleterious: it causes stress, takes time and energy, and leads to an erosion of confidence and self-image. Can a concept developed to explain the exclusion of African Americans in workplaces of the 1960s be of any use to explain the exclusion of international students at contemporary universities?

As Yosso et al. show, the concept can certainly explain the exclusion of Hispanic students at US elite universities. In focus groups interviews, students spoke about their experiences of interpersonal relationships on campus. Everyone had a story to tell about subtle and not-so-subtle exclusions. The net result of many trivial interactions was a sense of non-belonging and a lack of feeling comfortable on campus, as one student explained:

I’m not really comfortable just being in the classrooms. Just going to class I feel the fact that I know that I’m different and I’m reminded of it every day . . . There’s me, a Black male and a Black female, and everybody else is White in my classroom. And me and those two Black individuals tend to sit together every session, every class session, whereas everybody else would just kind of tend to sit away from us. So as I put my book bag on the table, I would notice that the rest of the chairs would be empty while the other table would get crowded. It would be sixty people sitting at one table pushing each other off whereas I would be by myself sitting at my own table. […]The professor is talking and the whole time you’re thinking . . . Why doesn’t anybody sit here? (Yosso et al. 2009, p. x)

Experiences such as these made campus a stressful and exhausting place for Hispanic students in the study. They responded by withdrawing and by creating safe spaces with co-ethnics. The latter often led to accusations of self-segregations and so was an ambivalent strategy, too, even as it helped to ameliorate the acute sense of exclusion they experienced in the wider campus community.

In the 1960s, Chester Pierce had argued that the best defence against micro-aggression was the ability to recognize it and to defend promptly so as to reduce the cost of accumulation. That seems true of the Hispanic students in the study, too: their ability to recognize micro-aggressions as racist gave them the chance to create counter-spaces and, at the very least, to recognize that their exclusion was not their individual personal problem.

As regards international students, the racism inherent in micro-aggressions is often obscured by linguistic proficiency and the assumption that they are being excluded because their “English isn’t good enough.” Making micro-aggressions visible is thus a key task to create a more inclusive campus experience. As educators in internationalizing institutions we have a lot to learn from Critical Race Theory.

Tara J Yosso; William A Smith; Miguel Ceja; Daniel G Solórzano (2009). Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o UndergraduatesHarvard Educational Review, 79 (4)

Kimie Takahashi (2013) Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move. Multilingual Matters.

It’s Valentine’s Day today. Valentine’s Day is a truly global event inextricably linking the emotional life of individuals with the capitalist world order. Young women around the world dream of romantic love and many men do their best to meet those dreams, showing how much they care by buying flowers, chocolates, lingerie, jewellery or any of the other consumer goods that have come to symbolize romantic love. Those that do not engage in the consumption bonanza also find their lives touched by Valentine’s Day: for instance, an estimated 198 million red roses are grown specifically for Valentine’s Day and that’s a huge amount of one particular crop to get ready, to harvest and to bring to market for one single day: the socio-economic structure of whole counties in Kenya, Colombia or Ecuador has been changed to make way for this floral industry.

Given the deep connections between individual emotions and the socio-economic order, it is not surprising that English, too, has found its way into this mix. A timely new book, Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move* by Kimie Takahashi, explains exactly those connections.

Following a group of young adult Japanese women studying overseas in Sydney, the book shows how, during their teenage years, the romantic desires of these young women had been shaped by Hollywood movies and other popular media. Teenage crushes on media stars are nothing unusual and each generation seems to have their own idols. However, for the Japanese women in the study the pop stars they had teenage crushes on (men like Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt) had a salient characteristic: they were white native speakers of English.

As a result, they ended up making a deep emotional connection between romantic attractiveness, Whiteness and English. While they outgrew their teenage crushes, their desire for white English-speaking men lingered on.

As the study shows, this was not only an idiosyncratic romantic desire that the five women who were the study’s main participants happened to develop. Rather, the association between learning English, going abroad and falling in love is actively fostered in many discourses promoting English language learning, from women’s magazines to language school advertising. Indeed, teaching ‘the language of love’ – Relationship English or Renai English – has become a form of English for Specific Purposes that is addressed in specific language learning materials and courses.

In sum, a range of powerful media discourses worked to inculcate particular emotional sensibilities in these women, which included a conflation of going abroad, learning English, and romantic desires.

Once in Sydney, of course, a different reality quickly hit: establishing contacts and relationships with locals (and particularly the kinds of locals they desired) was far from easy; becoming fluent in English was not as easy as they had imagined it would be once they were in Australia; and few of the men they met conformed to the chivalrous image of Westerners they had formed in their minds.

Each of the participants has her own life story and had to face her own trials and tribulations in Sydney. However, their emotional experiences are deeply shaped by the role of English as both an object of desire and a consumer commodity.

If you are looking for some academic reading this Valentine’s Day, Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move is the one. Don Kulick’s endorsement of the book sums up the reading experience you can expect:

Romance blossoms, hearts break, and lives change as Japanese women go troppo in the Antipodes and tell the author all about their dreams, adventures and experiences of learning English as a second language. This delightful book is the definitive answer to the question, ‘Is the concept of “desire” useful to students of language?’. The ethnography is wacky, the analysis is insightful and the writing is engaging and crisp. An absolute must-read for everyone interested in language and desire, language and learning, and language and globalization.

Enjoy! And Happy Valentine’s Day!

*In the interest of full disclosure: I was the supervisor of the PhD research the book is based on.

Takahashi, Kimie (2013). Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move Multilingual Matters