Abstract
This paper offers a reconceptualisation of international students’ transitions into and through UK higher education. We present two case studies of students which explore their transitions in terms of their academic speaking skills from pre-sessional courses into their disciplinary studies. Students describe how the development of their confidence and performance in academic speaking was contingent on a number of factors and micro-moments, and how this progress into and within disciplinary studies often involved regression and discomfort. Nevertheless, they also talked of developing strategies to overcome challenges and the resultant learning. We argue that transitions to disciplinary studies in terms of academic speaking can be more helpfully understood as non-linear, fluid and rhizomatic. This study offers valuable insights for individuals and institutions to move away from a fixed student lifecycle perspective to consider instead how reciprocal, embedded and on-going support for international students may better reflect students’ experiences.
Highlights
The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualise how we view international postgraduate students’ transitions from their pre-sessional English courses to their disciplinary studies in UK higher education
She joined the programme after the 12-week pre-sessional course. She was a mature student, her previous job being in a international governmental role involving international travel, and use of English as a lingua franca. Having joined her degree programme as a mature student means that Boonsri already had some years of relevant professional experience, which provided her with an initial confidence boost regarding speaking English (1)
This paper has explored how two postgraduate international students experience their transitions into disciplinary studies in terms of their academic speaking skills
Summary
The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualise how we view international postgraduate students’ transitions from their pre-sessional English courses to their disciplinary studies in UK higher education. There is considerable literature exploring international students’ transitions into Anglophone higher education (Dooey, 2010; McKee, 2012; Menzies & Baron, 2014), highlighting challenges students face and how institutions can better support them in order to mitigate negative experiences (Knight et al, 2015). The literature on international students’ experiences of studying in an Anglophone context highlights the linguistic demands they face, reporting for example that international students’ difficulties with speaking are more severe than problems with writing (Berman & Cheng, 2010; Sherry et al, 2010) and that speaking in class discussions and giving presentations are challenging (Berman & Cheng, 2010; Kettle & Luke, 2013; Schweisfurth & Gu, 2009). Positioning international students as independent and agentic with diverse experiences is supported by a reconceptualisation of transitions as fluid and individualised
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