Languaging Myths and Realities

Sheds light on the ways higher education institutions might better support their multilingual international students

Drawing on a digital ethnography of Chinese international students’ first semester languaging practices, this book examines how they use their multilingual and multi-modal communicative repertories to facilitate languaging across contexts, in order to suggest how universities might better serve the needs of international students.

Higher education institutions in Anglophone countries often rely on standardized English language proficiency exams to assess the linguistic capabilities of their multilingual international students. However, there is often a mismatch between these scores and the initial experiences of international students in both academic and social contexts. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Chinese international students’ first semester languaging practices, this book examines their challenges, needs and successes on their initial languaging journeys in higher education. It analyzes how they use their rich multilingual and multi-modal communicative repertories to facilitate languaging across contexts, in order to suggest how university support systems might better serve the needs of multilingual international students.