Graduating as a ‘native speaker’: international students and English language proficiency in higher education

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Joy Benzie
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
International Students ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
English Language Proficiency

Engineering Pathways in a U.S. Public Institution of Higher Education

2017 ◽  
pp. 236-259
Author(s):  
Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala ◽  
Anthony Maciejewski
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
International Students ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Land Grant ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Land Grant Institution ◽  
The U.S

This chapter relates a strategy that emerged from a larger effort of a land-grant institution in the U.S. to more rapidly increase the number of international students on campus and diversify its student body through the development and implementation of pathway programs. Pathway students are international students that do not meet the criteria for direct entry into a university due to lower levels of English language proficiency and/or GPA. The authors discuss strategies for ensuring success in these endeavors.

Internationalizing Higher Education

2016 ◽  
pp. 188-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Snow Andrade ◽  
Norman W. Evans ◽  
K. James Hartshorn
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
International Students ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Educational Mobility ◽  
Academic Tasks ◽  
Future Direction

Although global educational mobility often requires fluency in a foreign language, this fluency may be insufficient for academic tasks, and institutions may provide insufficient opportunities for further linguistic progress. This chapter examines higher education practices for the assessment of English language skills and continued development of English language proficiency for international students. Implications indicate that although institutions view international students as critical to strategic planning and feel these students need increased English language proficiency, institutions generally have not considered innovative approaches. The results support the viability of the proposed framework to guide institutions through a thorough examination of current practices and identification of future direction for research.

scholarly journals What happens to international students’ english after one semester at university?

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 4.1-4.17
Author(s):  
Neomy Storch ◽  
Kathryn Hill
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Language Test ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The Impact

There is a common expectation, particularly amongst international students, that studying in an English-medium university should automatically produce a significant improvement in their English language skills. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that this is not necessarily the case.This paper reports on a study which investigated the impact of one semester of study at a university on the English language proficiency of a sample of 40 international students. This was measured by comparing the students’ scores on a diagnostic English language test at the beginning and end of their first semester. A comparison of discourse measures of writing in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy was also undertaken. Background information, including details of ESL support, if any, was collected for all participants via questionnaires, and interviews were conducted with a subset of the participants.It was found that studying in an English-medium university generally led to an improvement in English language proficiency. The paper identifies a number of factors which appear to support language development, as well as factors that may inhibit it.

The discursive (mis)representation of English language proficiency

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Agnes Bodis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Students ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
International Education ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
The Media

Abstract International education constitutes a key industry in Australia and international students represent a third of university students at Australian universities. This paper examines the media representation of international students in terms of their English language proficiency. The study applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the multimodal data of an episode of a current affairs TV program, Four Corners, and social media comments made to the episode. Using Social Actor Analysis, the study finds that the responsibility for declining standards at universities is assigned to international students through representations of their language use as problematic. This is supported by the visual representation of international students as different. By systematically mapping out the English-as-a-problem discourse, the paper finds that the media representation of language proficiency and language learning is simplistic and naïve and the social media discussion reinforces this. This further contributes to the discursive exclusion of international students.

ELF and migrant categorization at family clinics in Finland

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-123
Author(s):  
Päivi Iikkanen
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Ideology ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Working Life ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
Membership Categorization Analysis ◽  
Membership Categorization ◽  
Standard Language Ideology

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine how nurses in family clinics use language, and clients’ perceived English proficiency in particular, when categorizing their non-Finnish-speaking clients in their talk. Through membership categorization analysis (Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3). 462–482), this study shows that perceived proficiency in English, along with migration status and reliance on the native English speaker norm, seemed to be the most decisive elements in how the nurses categorized their migrant clients. The findings demonstrate the power of categorization as an instrument in institutional decision-making and highlight the role language plays in these categorizations. In particular, the study shows how influential perceived English language proficiency and the native speaker norm are in how nurses categorize their migrant clients. The findings suggest that being able to interact with clients in English is becoming a more and more important skill in working life in Finland, also in the health care sector. It would be important to understand how influential perceived language proficiency is in the way nurses conceptualize their clients, and to what extent this relates to the standard language ideology (Milroy, James. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5. 530–555).

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