Post on 28-Jan-2023
Applied Linguistics: 1–23 � Oxford University Press 2010
doi:10.1093/applin/amq026
NNES Doctoral Students inEnglish-Speaking Academe: The Nexusbetween Language and Discipline
1,*YU-JUNG CHANG and 2YASUKO KANNO1National Tsing Hua University and 2Temple University
*E-mail: yjchang@mx.nthu.edu.tw
Since the mid-20th century, graduate schools in the USA have witnessed a
growing participation of international students, many of whom do not speak
English as their first language. Previous research has often portrayed
non-native-English-speaking (NNES) students in US doctoral programs as dis-
advantaged because of the presumed primacy of English in their academic pur-
suits. This study examines NNES doctoral students’ participation in US
academia, and in doing so, challenges this assumption. Drawing on the concepts
of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Lave 1996; Wenger 1998)
and capital (Bourdieu 1977, 1991), the study analyzes how linguistic compe-
tence plays out in NNES students’ participation in three different disciplines. We
argue that language competence as cultural capital does not have the same value
across different disciplines and may not always be critical to NNES students’aca-
demic success. Furthermore, despite their keen awareness of their differences
from their native-speaking counterparts, the NNES doctoral students in this
study had other forms of cultural capital with which they claimed legitimacy
and recognition in their disciplinary communities.
Since the mid-20th century, US graduate schools have seen a growing partici-
pation of international students. In the 2008/2009 academic year, for instance,
the USA accommodated over 283,000 international graduate students, includ-
ing more than 108,000 doctoral students (Institute of International Education
2009). Over 30 per cent of new doctorates were awarded to international
students in 2007 (Welch 2008).
In light of the ever growing representation of foreign students in US gradu-
ate schools, a substantial body of research has been devoted to the issues and
challenges faced by international students whose first language is not English.
Since English is the means to access, produce, and disseminate knowledge in
US research communities, linguistic challenges have been prominently fea-
tured in studies of non-native-English-speaking (NNES) graduate students’
academic and social integration. Problems reported by NNES students include
the large amounts of required reading and writing, their lack of confidence,
and fluency in using English, and their insufficient familiarity with English
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academic vocabulary, discourse, colloquialism, and body language (Shaw
1991; Morita 2000; Lacina 2002; Parks and Raymond 2004; Tardy 2004; Kim
2006; Poyrazli and Kavanaugh 2006; Kuwahara 2008). Other scholars have
also highlighted the importance of sociolinguistic competence in NNES inter-
national students’ academic success. They argue that compared with
native-English-speaking (NES) American graduate students, NNES interna-
tional graduate students are likely to have less access to rhetorical, pragmatic,
and other sociolinguistic means to express themselves appropriately and es-
tablish positive relationships with peers and professors (Schneider and
Fujishima 1995; Ballard 1996; Dong 1998; Angelova and Riazantseva 1999;
Morita 2004).
Although previous literature has generated significant insights into the crit-
ical challenges faced by NNES international graduate students (henceforth
NNES students for the sake of brevity), in our opinion, it has also presented
an incomplete and biased picture of their experiences in English-speaking
academic communities. First, NNES students are often assumed to encounter
disadvantages because they ‘often lack the cultural and linguistic capital of
their native speaker peers’ (Kuwahara 2008: 187; also see Zimmerman 1995;
Cho 2004). Even Casanave (2008; Casanave and Li 2008), who points out that
learning to ‘do’ graduate school does not come naturally to most people, com-
ments that if NES American students have to go through a double socialization
(Golde 1998) in graduate school, what lies ahead for NNES students is the
process of triple socialization: namely, socialization into (i) the role of graduate
students, (ii) a profession, and (iii) ‘a language and culture that their main-
stream peers have been immersed in for a life time‘ (Casanave and Li 2008: 3).
With the underlying assumptions of NNES students’ linguistic and cultural
disadvantages, the possibility that these students may have other kinds of
competences and resources that can facilitate their participation in
English-speaking disciplinary communities has rarely been pursued.
Second, studies examining NNES students’ experiences are often set within
one discipline (Casanave 2002; Parks and Raymond 2004; Li 2006) or a group
of related disciplines (Angelova and Riazantseva 1999; Morita 2004; Tardy
2005). The different roles that competence in English may play in NNES stu-
dents’ academic experiences across various disciplines have been obscured by
this intra-disciplinary focus. Researchers have long acknowledged cross-
disciplinary variations in discursive requirements (Casanave and Hubbard
1992; Parry 1998; Hyland and Tse 2007). For instance, Casanave and
Hubbard’s (1992) survey study found that writing skills are critical to students
in the humanities and social sciences throughout their doctoral education,
whereas in science and technology, writing practices become prominent
only when students approach the end of their education. However, such in-
sights have not yet informed inquiry into NNES students’ participation in vari-
ous disciplinary communities. Little research has been conducted to examine
whether some disciplines are more heavily reliant on linguistic expressions to
communicate and disseminate ideas than others—what we call
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language dependence—and how different degrees of language dependence in
various disciplines affect NNES students’ challenges in academia. The conclu-
sions that have been drawn without attention to possible disciplinary vari-
ations risk overgeneralizing the primacy of English in NNES students’
success in academia.
This qualitative study attempts to address these gaps in knowledge by exam-
ining the role of English in NNES students’ learning and participation across
different disciplines at a major US university. Drawing on the concept of
communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991; Lave 1996; Wenger 1998)
and Bourdieu’s forms of capital (1977 and 1991), the study aims to analyze
how language competence influences NNES students’ participation and self-
perception in different disciplinary communities of practice. Our analysis of the
firsthand accounts of NNES students and their doctoral advisors suggests that
language competence as a form of cultural capital may not have the same
value across different disciplines and may not always be critical to NNES stu-
dents’ academic success. We further argue that the NNES students’ sense of
legitimacy and confidence in the English-speaking research community is not
always threatened because they may possess other strengths that can be uti-
lized to claim legitimate membership within that community.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The theoretical framework of this study draws on Lave and Wenger’s (1991;
Wenger 1998) conceptualization of communities of practice and Bourdieu’s
(1977, 1986, 1991; Bourdieu and Passeron 1990) notions of capital.
In line with the sociocultural traditions that focus on the social and situated
nature of learning, Lave and Wenger (1991; Lave 1996; Wenger 1998) propose
that learning is a process of growing participation in a community of practice.
Newcomers start at the periphery with limited participation in the community
practices. Such limited participation is legitimate in the sense that it gives
newcomers direct access to community practices, thereby allowing them to
start learning. By interacting with other community members and apprenti-
cing with more experienced old-timers, newcomers gradually develop their
competence.
What is important in such an apprenticeship model of learning is that explicit
teaching may or may not happen (Lave 1996). Rather, a more crucial condition
for learning than explicit teaching is the learner’s engagement in shared prac-
tices (Wenger 1998). The experiences of doctoral students in US graduate
schools closely mirror this apprenticeship model of learning. Although they
take courses and receive explicit guidance on their dissertations from their
advisors, much of what students must learn, if they are to become full-fledged
members of academia, is learned through their engagement with various mem-
bers of the community. If their engagement increases over time, doctoral stu-
dents become less of a novice and more of a full member, for learning is ‘itself
an evolving form of membership’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 53).
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Thus, Lave and Wenger’s conceptualization of learning is closely tied to the
notion of identity development. However, not every newcomer becomes a
legitimate and full member by virtue of sustained engagement in shared prac-
tices; some, in fact, become marginalized over time (Wenger 1998). For a
newcomer to attain the community’s recognition and become a legitimate
member, therefore, she needs to develop and display the kinds of competence
that are valued in the community. As Wenger (1998: 152) notes, ‘Identity . . . is
an experience and a display of competence’. Our inquiry in this article is fun-
damentally about what forms of competence doctoral students need to develop
and display in different disciplinary communities.
To that end, we find Bourdieu’s notions of capital useful. Capital refers to
material and immaterial resources that confer power to people. Of the various
forms of capital that Bourdieu (1977, 1986, 1991; Bourdieu and Passeron
1990) has introduced, two that are particularly important in this inquiry are
cultural capital and linguistic capital. Bourdieu’s conceptualization of cultural
capital has shifted from one work to another over time. In some studies,
Bourdieu has focused more on class-based dispositions and attitudes, while
in others he has referred more to formal knowledge, previous academic ex-
periences, and educational qualifications (Lamont and Lareau 1988). In its
broadest sense, however, cultural capital refers to cultural resources that
have high market value in a particular ‘field,’ or social milieu (Horvat 2001).
In this study, then, we define cultural capital broadly as attitudes, dispositions,
skills to navigate the system, academic preparation, disciplinary knowledge,
and educational qualifications that are useful in earning legitimacy in a com-
munity. Linguistic capital, on the other hand, is sometimes subsumed under
cultural capital and at other times used as a separate construct in Bourdieu’s
work (1977, 1991). Since Bourdieu was primarily concerned with class-based
reproduction of social inequality, he used the concept to refer to one’s facility
with the privileged variety of a language (e.g. having the standard accent). But
in this study, we use this concept to refer to competence in a language of high
market value in a community. Cultural and linguistic capital are related to
other forms of capital such as economic capital (money and property), symbolic
capital (status and legitimacy), and social capital (networks and connections)
(Bourdieu 1977, 1986, 1991). Naming these different forms of capital enables
us to recognize that doctoral students’ participation in their disciplinary com-
munity may not depend solely on one form of capital, such as disciplinary
knowledge or English proficiency, but rather on various forms of capital at
their disposal and how they make use of them.
Developed from our theoretical framework, then, the research questions
that guided our study were:
1 To what extent do NNES students regard competence in English as critical
to their academic participation and performance in their disciplinary
communities?
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2 To what extent do NNES students’ perceptions match those of more
senior members of their disciplinary communities, i.e. their doctoral
advisors?
3 How does the students’ ownership of different types of capital shape their
participation and identities as legitimate members in English-speaking
academic communities?
METHODS
The study was conducted at Padelford University,1 a major public research
university in the USA. Four NNES students from Taiwan and their doctoral
advisors were recruited for this study. We recruited PhD students from a single
place of origin, Taiwan, in order to eliminate nationality-related variability.
Taiwanese students occupy a large segment of the US higher education dem-
ography, ranking as the fourth leading place of origin for international stu-
dents earning US doctorates (Welch 2008). Despite Taiwanese students’ large
representation, only a few published studies have analyzed their experiences
in US graduate schools (Schneider and Fujishima 1995; Swagler and Ellis
2003). Since Chang is Taiwanese, we decided that it would make sense to
focus on Taiwanese students.
To recruit participants for this study, we set the following selection criteria:
(i) that they are full-time, matriculated Taiwanese students who came to study
in the USA at the master’s or doctoral levels; (ii) that they have completed at
least two years of their doctoral programs at the outset of the study; (iii) that
their advisors agree to participate in the study. Our original goal was to recruit
two students each from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The stu-
dents interested in participating in the study were asked to respond to a re-
cruitment e-mail we sent to academic advisors2 in the sciences, humanities,
and social sciences departments. However, finding doctoral students who met
all of the selection criteria under the limited range of recruitment strategies
allowed by Padelford’s IRB3 turned out to be a challenge. In the end, we found
one female and three male students along with their advisors. Since we are not
making claims about the role of gender in NNES students’ success in US gradu-
ate schools, we determined that the gender imbalance was not critical to our
inquiry.
Participants
The participating students were Burnerman, Hou, Julius, and Kathy (Table 1).
Burnerman, in his late 20s, and Hou, in his early 30s, were from the depart-
ment of aeronautics and astronautics engineering and both were in their third
year of study. The two students had majored in mechanical engineering in
Taiwan’s top universities for their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Before
coming to the USA, Burnerman worked as a researcher for an industrial
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research institute for nine months and Hou worked for a well-known IT com-
pany as an engineer for three years. In their doctoral program, Burnerman and
Hou had different advisors and worked in different labs.
At the time of the research, Burnerman had passed the qualifying exams but
had not yet presented at conferences or published a journal article. He received
a departmental scholarship in his first year of study and a teaching assistant-
ship (TAship) in his second year. In his third year, he was paying his own
tuition. After obtaining his PhD, Burnerman planned to work as a researcher
in the US engineering industry. Burnerman’s advisor was a NES full professor
with a long list of publications in the area of aerothermofluids. He oversaw two
labs in the department.
Hou had published one article in Chinese in a local academic journal in
Taiwan before coming to the USA. Three years into the doctoral program,
Hou had passed the qualifying exams, presented at two major international
conferences, and submitted a journal article in English that was in the process
of being revised. After supporting himself for the first two years of study, Hou
received a research assistantship in his third year. Hou was planning to return
to Taiwan and find a faculty position after finishing his PhD program. Hou’s
doctoral advisor was a tenure-track assistant professor in the department and
the only NNES advisor in this study. Although still a junior faculty member,
Hou’s advisor already had numerous publications in aerodynamics and digital
particle image thermometry. Hou’s advisor had received his undergraduate
education and graduate education in the USA. He oversaw one lab in the
department.
Julius, in his mid 30s, was in his fifth year of PhD study. Unlike the other
three participants, he studied in several different disciplines before he finally
landed in economics. Back in Taiwan, Julius majored in computer science at a
junior college and transferred to a university double-majoring in English and
Table 1: Four participants’ profiles
Participants Burnerman Hou Julius Kathy
Gender Male Male Male Female
Doctoral program Aeronautic andastronauticsEngineering
Aeronautic andastronauticsengineering
Economics Chinese
Years in the program 3 3 5 5
Age Late 20s Early 30s Mid-30s Early 30s
TOEFL score 243 Around 270 253 Around 580(paper-based)
Undergraduateeducation
Mechanicalengineering(Taiwan)
Mechanicalengineering(Taiwan)
English & industrialand informationmanagement(Taiwan)
Chinese literature(Taiwan)
Graduateeducation
Mechanicalengineering(Taiwan)
Mechanicalengineering(Taiwan)
Financialengineering (USA)
Chinese literature(Taiwan)
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industrial and information management. He worked in non-engineering
departments at two IT companies before coming to the USA. He studied for
a master’s degree in financial engineering at a state university in the
Midwestern US Julius subsequently enrolled in the doctoral program in math-
ematics at the same university only to discover that the content of study was
too theoretical for him. He dropped out of the program after a year and trans-
ferred to the doctoral program in economics at Padelford University. He had
been a TA in the department since his second year in the program. During the
data collection, he was preparing for general exams. Although he was un-
decided about his future plans, he hoped to find a well paid job that would
also allow him to continue doing research. Julius’ doctoral advisor was a NES
full professor and also the director of the graduate program in the department
of economics. He published in the area of mathematic economics. Julius was
his only advisee.
In her late 20s, Kathy was in her fifth year of study in the Chinese program
in the department of Asian languages and literature. Kathy came to the USA
for a graduate degree because she wanted to receive the best academic training
and eventually become a Chinese modern literature scholar either in Taiwan
or in the USA. Although she had already received a master’s degree in Chinese
literature in Taiwan, she had to start the graduate program in the USA as a
master’s student to fulfill the course requirements. She spent three years com-
pleting the master’s degree before she started the doctoral program. During the
time of data collection, she was in the process of preparing for field exams,
which test one’s knowledge of one’s chosen areas of research interest. Kathy
worked as a TA teaching Chinese language classes on campus. Kathy’s advisor,
a NES, was an associate professor specializing in modern Chinese literature.
He has published one book and several journal articles.
Data collection
Data collection took place during the 2007/08 academic year. Multiple forms of
data were collected for this study, including interviews, shadowing observa-
tions, and written documents. Chang conducted all of the data collection while
Kanno contributed to the theoretical framing, data analysis, and the writing of
this article.
Each student was interviewed four to six times, depending on the length of
their responses. An interview protocol was prepared in advance to implement
some consistency across the participants, but questions were adjusted during
the interviews to accommodate each participant’s unique situation (see
Supplementary Appendix A1 for sample interview questions). In addition to
the four students, their doctoral advisors were also interviewed once individu-
ally. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 min and was audio-taped and
later fully transcribed. Questions asked in the interviews with advisors focused
on their experiences working with NNES international students and their
mentoring and teaching philosophies in scaffolding students to become
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future professionals, or their fellow colleagues. As Chang is a native speaker of
Mandarin Chinese, the participant students were given the choice to be inter-
viewed in Chinese or English. All students chose to be interviewed in
Mandarin Chinese with occasional English code-switching. Student interview
excerpts in this study are Chang’s translations. The interviews with professors
were in English.
Each student was also shadowed for six full school days in conjunction with
the interviews: each person was observed for two non-consecutive days fol-
lowed by two or three interviews. They were then observed again for another
four non-consecutive days and finally interviewed another two to three times.
During the shadowing, the students were observed for the types of academic
activities and interactions in which they were engaged. Detailed field notes
were taken during the observations and follow-up questions were asked either
at the end of the observation or during the following interview.
In addition to interviews and observations, we also collected written docu-
ments, such as information on the graduate school website, departmental web-
sites, graduate student handbooks, and students’ writing samples, in order to
achieve a more contextualized understanding. We gathered writing samples
that the students considered crucial to their participation in their disciplinary
communities and asked them to explain the process of production as well as
the academic practices and interaction related to each writing activity. We also
examined departmental brochures and website information in order to situate
participants’ experiences within the larger institution.
Data analysis
In analyzing the data, themes and patterns were extracted and clustered to
reconstruct each student’s experiences as well as to make cross-participant and
cross-disciplinary comparisons. The analysis of the students’ data focused on
their participation and interaction in the disciplinary communities, their views
on the role of language in their academic endeavors, and their self-positioning
as NNES students. The analysis of the advisors’ data focused on their percep-
tions of the role of English in their disciplines and their observations of NNES
students’ strengths and weaknesses.
NNES INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION INTHREE GRADUATE PROGRAMS
In this section, the results are presented in three parts, corresponding to the
three disciplines in which the four students belonged. In each part, we present
(i) the practices and interactions in which the students engaged, (ii) the chal-
lenges the students experienced as non-native speakers, (iii) their perceptions
of language dependence in their disciplinary communities of practice, (iv) the
kinds of capital each student believed they possessed and (v) the doctoral ad-
visors’ perspectives.
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Engineering
Students’ views
For engineering majors like Burnerman and Hou, lab activities occupied
almost all of their on-campus time. However, contrary to the stereotypical
image of science and engineering laboratories where many graduate and
postdoctoral students engage in intense collaborations, Burnerman and
Hou’s lab lives were rather solitary due to the physical segregation of
lab spaces and research project assignments. Burnerman was the only
person running his lab and except for occasional visitors and weekly group
meetings, he worked and studied in the lab alone. Hou, though sharing the
same lab space with two white American male students, had a different project
assignment so that opportunities for collaboration were limited. It was not
uncommon to see Hou doing an experiment or reading quietly in one
corner of the lab while his lab mates were engaged in a heated discussion in
another corner.
Despite the long, relatively solitary lab hours, Burnerman and Hou saw
frequent communication with others in the disciplinary community as critical
to accessing necessary support and generating new ideas for one’s research.
Burnerman said, ‘After doing an experiment, you need to discuss and ex-
change ideas with others . . . through the communication, you gain valuable
experiences and obtain ideas that you did not learn from doing the experiment
alone’. Although they had already met the language requirements for admis-
sion, Burnerman and Hou felt that their English communicative skills for social
interaction were still limited. According to Hou, mechanics in engineering
departments were valuable members of the community to students because
they often helped build experiment equipment as well as providing expert
advice when students encounter problems in running experiments.
However, Hou’s chances of gaining valuable hands-on knowledge from the
seasoned mechanics were smaller than his American lab mates, he said, be-
cause he was not able to build as close a relationship with the mechanics as did
his lab mates:
How fast and to what extent [the mechanics] can help you de-pends very much on how clearly you can articulate your needs.The more discussion you have with them, the more ideas youmight be able to get from them. If your English is not good andyou are not able to provide enough information, then the help willbe limited.
Nonetheless, Burnerman and Hou sometimes avoided interacting with NES
lab mates, peers, or lab technicians and mechanics for fear of potential embar-
rassment, lack of understanding, and fatigue. Hou, a self-proclaimed introvert,
said he was afraid that he might waste other people’s time and cause possible
awkwardness: ‘I have a hard time understanding people when they speak
[English] too quickly and I feel rather embarrassed to have to ask people to
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repeat’. Even for an extrovert like Burnerman, socializing with native speakers
was still taxing:
If I want to talk about my personal life or to ask about other’s per-sonal lives, there is so much slang that I can’t possibly know with-out having a lot of native English speaking friends . . . if people startusing [slang], I will be totally at a loss.
On the other hand, neither Burnerman nor Hou thought that their academic
performance itself was particularly hampered by their English. The represen-
tation and evaluation of disciplinary knowledge depended largely on the use of
mathematic language and discipline-specific terminologies. As Hou put it, ‘If
you get it, then you get it. A good command of language or English is not going
to give you much of an advantage’.
What follows is an excerpt from one of Burnerman’s papers for a
computational fluid dynamics course he took in his first year in the
program. Burnerman said he did not receive good grades for the first few
assignments in this course because he filled his papers with mathematic for-
mulae without much textual explanation. This example, then, illustrates his
conscious effort to add more text, and he received good feedback from the
instructor.
Shock location
In this problem, assume it’s isentropic everywhere except at the location of the
shock. At first, we should find the total pressure across the shock.
P01
P1¼ ½1þ
� � 1
2M2� �=��1 ¼ 2:625
Since the process is isentropic, we get At=A� = 1.05 when Mt ¼ 1:26
Then,
Ae
A�¼
Ae
At
At
A�¼ 1:74) Me ¼ 0:36
P02
Pe
¼ 1þ� � 1
2M2
e
� ��=��1
¼ 1:09
Despite Burnerman’s extra effort to add more verbal explanation, we can see
that the meaning of the content still depends largely on mathematical formu-
lae and discipline-specific terminologies.
In addition to such discursive practices in the discipline, the existence of
many successful NNES scholars in engineering also contributed to Hou and
Burnerman’s belief that English competence did not influence one’s academic
achievement in their discipline. For these NNES novices who were trying to
work their way up the academic ladder, it was reassuring to find models of
active NNES scholars making significant contributions in the English-speaking
academe. NNES scholars’ strong presence in the field demonstrated to them
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that in their field, the value of disciplinary knowledge and the ability to com-
municate such knowledge through mathematical codes and specialized ter-
minologies outweighed that of general English academic proficiency.
Hou’s previous conference presentation and journal publication experiences
also assisted him in participating in similar academic activities in his present
doctoral program in the USA. Since he was already familiar with the genres,
‘it became a matter of filling in the contents in English’. Hou also found
that Taiwanese students generally have higher computer literacy and
skills, which gave them a competitive edge in the aeronautics and astronautics
engineering program. He felt that even though American students’ often
seemed more expressive and more aggressive, they did not necessarily know
more.
Burnerman was also aware of the different kinds of cultural capital that
Taiwanese and American students possessed. He pointed out that his past edu-
cation in Taiwan had trained him well in doing mathematic calculations and in
exam-taking skills, but less well in the areas of hands-on exercises and critical
and creative thinking skills. Burnerman emphasized that the most reward-
ing and empowering part of his overseas studies was the opportunity to ex-
perience different orientations to academic training. Although there were
challenges, Burnerman chose to see them as a blessing disguised as an
ordeal and believed that if he could succeed in his doctoral studies, he
would be stronger mentally and intellectually. ‘Is it worthwhile’? asked
Burnerman rhetorically. By the time I leave this place, I am sure I am going
to answer in the affirmative’.
Advisors’ views
According to Hou’s and Burnerman’s doctoral advisors, the ability to think and
research independently and make original contributions were among the most
important qualities doctoral students should develop in the discipline.
However, countering their students’ views, the two professors believed that
their discipline was relatively language-dependent. They stressed that even
though engineering students often did not seem to use language as often,
language competence was no less critical to them than to students in other
disciplines. Hou’s professor, a NNES scholar, argued:
I would say maybe for the [students in] social sciences, they wouldhave to talk in English more often than in the science because in thescience [students] are probably in the lab, doing their experiments.They don’t need to talk that much . . . But . . . the level of importancethat I give to be able to communicate what you do is absolutelycritical. Like I said, if you can’t communicate what you’ve dis-covered, it’s worthless.
At the same time, the advisors did not consider the linguistic standards
required for effective communication to be a problem for NNES students.
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Although Burnerman’s advisor thought that some international students
needed more help with writing, he had not experienced many problems
with NNES students’ English overall as long as they had met the admission
language requirements. Hou’s advisor also argued that the abilities to think
independently and to solve problems transcended culture. By the time NNES
students made it to the graduate program, he said, ‘they have sufficient under-
standing of English that I am fully capable of communicating with them’. In
short, although both advisors placed more importance on the role of English in
their disciplinary practices than did their advisees, they also believed that
NNES students who met the admission language requirements already pos-
sessed sufficient English proficiency to meet the communicative needs in their
discipline.
Economics
Student’s view
Unlike the engineering students, Julius preferred to work at home when he
was not teaching or attending classes. Although he shared an office with three
other TAs in the department, he hardly knew his officemates because he rarely
used the space except during his office hours. However, Julius’ academic
undertaking was no less intense than that of the engineering students. He
seemed absorbed in his academic work and rarely talked about anything else
in his interaction with Chang.
Despite having a B.A. degree in English and previous graduate school ex-
perience in the USA, Julius felt that he could only ‘talk about really shallow
stuff’ with native-English speakers and did not have much interaction with his
NES peers in the department. Fortunately, Julius said his lack of communica-
tive competence in English did not really interfere with his academic work.
According to Julius, although the required levels of English varied across dif-
ferent branches of economics research, Julius argued that his field of research,
econometrics and microeconomics, relied heavily on mathematical and visual
representations in expressing ideas. He therefore had not encountered many
problems caused by English per se. Rather, he attributed the challenges he
encountered to his unfamiliarity with disciplinary knowledge: ‘In fields like
finances, math, or economics, the definitions of terminologies depend very
much on the [disciplinary] contexts. It is not something you may find in the
dictionary’.
The following excerpt is from a literature critique Julius wrote for a labor
econometric class. Julius noted that the course was in the area of labor eco-
nomics, which is less mathematics-centric and closer to sociology and huma-
nities. Even so, Julius’ paper shows that information and argumentation still
relies mainly on mathematic representations and would be challenging for a
non-specialist to understand.
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II Model specification
A regression, such as Equation 1, controls for measured personal and back-
ground characteristics:
Oi¼�Xiþ �Piþ e
where Oi indicates the outcome for respondent i; Xi: a function of personal and
background characteristics; Pi: a vector of variables measuring family or par-
ental composition
Julius also found that except in top economics journals, the English level
required to write publishable journal articles was not particularly high. He
believed that, unless one’s writing skills in English were severely limited, the
content of the research was what counted. ‘Even if there are obvious language
problems, they might not be the reason that they reject you for’, said Julius.
Furthermore, similar to Burnerman and Hou in aeronautics and astronautics
engineering, Julius’ perception of the role of English in his discipline was also
influenced by the many NNES scholars in the field of economics:
I find that their ability to express in English was not necessarilygood, some even worse than mine. However, they were able tocome up with unique and valuable academic ideas and expressthem through mathematics or graphics . . . their bad grammar or in-accurate word choices did not matter at all.
In terms of his teaching as a TA, Julius said his English did not hinder his
communication with students. While he still worried about whether his
misuse of words or expressions might impede students’ understanding, he
rehearsed his lectures in advance and used many examples to present his
ideas clearly in class: ‘In other words, knowing that I might not be able to
offer crystal clear explanations for economic concepts, I am using examples to
help me do the job’. However, all this preparation took time. A student of
limited economic means, Julius needed the TAship to continue with his pro-
gram: International students in the USA have limited eligibility to apply for
student loans and internships and cannot legally work outside of the univer-
sity. Although Julius did not think his overall teaching quality was hampered
by his English proficiency, he thought that the criteria for the renewal of the
TAship appointment worked against NNES TAs:
One of the key determinants for [TAship] funding is teaching evalu-ation. But the problem is that it is very hard to teach better thanyour American peers . . . They can probably prepare a perfect lecturewith 20 hours of preparation. But for me, I will have to spend a lot[more] time trying to figure out the way to express myself clearly inEnglish.
Overall, however, having studied and worked in multiple fields, Julius strongly
believed that his interdisciplinary background not only provided a niche for
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him in the academic community, but also gave him self-assurance and resili-
ence in navigating his current disciplinary community:
After changing so many disciplines, I realized that tireless and re-petitive practice would eventually get me through challenges . . . Iknow I probably won’t be able to receive a Nobel Prize with tirelessand repetitive practice, but it will get me somewhere.
Julius said that linguistic challenges would compel NNES students to strength-
en their non-linguistic competences (i.e. math, programming, etc.) so that
once their English proficiency improved; they would be equipped with mul-
tiple skills. ‘It might be frustrating at the beginning,’ he said, ‘but I think God is
going to reward fairly’.
Advisor’s view
Echoing Julius’ view, Julius’ advisor also noted that their area of research was
relatively language-independent: work in econometrics and microeconomics
involved developing mathematic models and analyzing data. ‘The extent that
you are doing one of those two things, you are not going to use much English,’
he said. According to Julius’s advisor, a competent doctoral student in his
research area should have up-to-date technical proficiency with numbers
and model building as well as the ability to think rationally and produce
cutting-edge and publishable research. However, he cautioned that the lan-
guage independence of the field did not mean that English was unimportant.
He stressed that students needed to be proficient enough to be able to read
publications and write in a ‘comprehensible’ manner.
Based on his experience working with NNES students, Julius’s advisor
said that English competence was regarded as more critical only for students
who aspired to teach in English-speaking contexts. Otherwise, he felt that NNES
students’ linguistic problems generally remained on the superficial level, gram-
mar, and word choice, which did not hamper communication and mutual
understanding. In reference to the types of academic competence valued,
Julius’ advisor said that while US students typically had the linguistic advantage,
many international students had a stronger technical background, an important
form of cultural capital in this field that gave international students a competi-
tive edge. Even when learning disciplinary jargon in English, Julius’s advisor
observed, many NNES students’ seemed to be able to acquire the terms as
quickly as US students. Therefore, ‘as far as plain economics goes, American
students’ advantage might not be that great after all’.
Chinese
Student’s view
As a TA, Kathy shared an office space on campus with another international
TA in the department. Depending on her teaching and class schedule, Kathy
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usually spent about half of her day teaching, attending classes, and working in
her office on campus, and the other half doing her academic work at home.
Even though there were relatively more international and Asian students in
her department, Kathy still found herself rather isolated due to both linguistic
and cultural barriers as well as the solitary research environment in literature
disciplines. The need to cope with academic demands also forced her to give up
social and extracurricular activities:
If I had to read every book assigned by my professors . . . and write[assignments] which would only take native-English-speaking stu-dents two days but take me five . . . I would need a lot of time [tostudy,] . . . As for having a good time [with friends], well, just forgetit! So . . . I actually feel like a loner.
However, since Kathy observed that most of the students and scholars in her
discipline lived a solitary academic life, she did not feel disadvantaged because
of her lack of social life.
Although Kathy was in the Chinese program, she considered high profi-
ciency in English to be critical to her performance. She noted that the vocabu-
lary used in her discipline were ‘GRE words’ and the standards for English
proficiency in her area of study were beyond fluent and grammatical: ‘It is not
a matter of whether you are literate in English, but whether your English is
good’. For Kathy, the need to use advanced academic English to express her
thoughts aesthetically and persuasively was one of the greatest challenges in
her studies. She made a concerted effort to improve her language skills by
frequently consulting dictionaries, having weekly Chinese-English
language-exchange meetings with a native-English speaker, and seeking writ-
ing tutorials from her doctoral advisor.
It was also true, however, that Kathy enjoyed the advantage of being a
native Chinese speaker, a highly coveted form of linguistic capital in her de-
partment. First of all, Kathy had the privilege of receiving a TAship, which
brought her steady financial support from her second year of study. In teach-
ing, her authority as a native Chinese speaker more than compensated for her
non-native English. Kathy reported that her students tolerated the imperfec-
tions in her English without undermining her knowledge:
Although my grammar is poor, my mistakes are not preventingstudents from understanding me . . . They probably just think thatI just said something ungrammatical but . . . it is not like ‘I don’tunderstand what you are talking about’.
Moreover, Kathy’s native Chinese-speaker status also gave her an advantage
in the speed of reading and the depth of cultural understanding when working
with original Chinese texts: ‘[For non-Chinese students,] the Chinese culture
has to be learned, it is not in their bones’. While American students may be
able to write linguistically more sophisticated prose in English, Kathy believed
that people from Chinese culture were in a better position to understand
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Chinese texts in greater depth and offer insider perspectives in their analysis.
She was proud that even her NES advisor sometimes had to consult her on
rarely used Chinese characters. Immersed in an English-speaking environ-
ment, Kathy felt that her chances of becoming more competent in English
were far better than her American peers’ chances of improving their
Chinese. Furthermore, Kathy pointed out that even though NNES students
often need to pursue their degree without either familial or financial support,
the lack of support actually gave them the pressure to work harder. As a result,
they ‘are able to finish the degree faster than local students,’ she claimed.
Advisor’s view
Sharing Kathy’s view, Kathy’s doctoral advisor also stressed that English was
very much the tool of the trade in the study of Chinese literature in the
English-speaking research community:
Students need to present themselves convincingly with accuracyand sensitivity and even a sense of humor in English speakingand writing . . . [If not] it’s not likely that they are going to getvery far in the American academy.
According to Kathy’s advisor, the participation of Chinese-speaking interna-
tional students had raised the standards of Chinese language competence and
familiarity with Chinese literature in the program. However, since he upheld
critical thinking skills as the most important skills for graduate students,
Kathy’s advisor also pointed out that NNES students tended to be underpre-
pared in this area. This weakness, together with their unfamiliarity with aca-
demic genre conventions, he noted, could prevent NNES students from
producing satisfactory work in US graduate school. As a doctoral advisor, he
felt responsible for providing extra instruction on academic writing to his
NNES international advisees, including Kathy: ‘You know . . . they are already
here as a graduate student. They are not going to get this training [elsewhere]
and they need it. And therefore it falls to me to try to at least make a little bit of
an effort’.
Without any prior training on the argument and logic structure of advanced
academic writing, Kathy was especially grateful to a quarter-long, one-on-one
tutorial on academic writing offered by her advisor: ‘The practice was really
helpful . . . Although the issue with accurate word choice and usage can’t be
fixed right away, at least I have had fewer problems with the development of
an argument’. The following excerpt is from one of the writing exercises—a
book review—Kathy wrote under the guidance of her advisor. The difference
between this excerpt and those from Julius and Burnerman is clear. The sen-
tences are longer and more complex. Words play the central role in conveying
ideas:
Hung’s book is indeed inspiring because Hung well organizes abun-dant materials which cover at least four forms of popular literature
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in the Sino-Japanese War period and points out the significance ofthe war-time period to the development of popular culture. But Istill have a reservation about the prevalence of popular culture inthe war-time period. Hung’s main argument in this book is that, inthe Sino-Japanese War period, popular culture was not just ‘urbanpopular culture’ any more but a culture that penetrated to ‘interiorprovinces’.
According to Kathy, in writing book reviews, she learned to write a ‘strong
first sentence’ that provides an overall evaluation of a piece of work. Kathy
said that while training her to become a better writer, her advisor was also
training her in the American way of doing research, ‘so it is really a good
practice to the academic ways of thinking and writing . . . and expressing
myself in English’.
DISCUSSION
In examining NNES students’ disciplinary enculturation in English-speaking
graduate schools, researchers have tended to assume the primacy of English in
their academic endeavors and have analyzed students’ experiences through
their efforts to acquire the linguistic and rhetoric knowledge required to par-
ticipate in academic practices. This study, however, has explored NNES stu-
dents’ participation in disciplinary communities from the students’ and their
advisors’ emic perspectives. Our findings can be divided into two major
themes. In what follows we discuss each in turn.
The first central finding is that the importance of language competence
varied across disciplinary communities, community practices, and different
community members. We began this study with relatively simplistic predic-
tions of what we would find: Disciplines in the humanities would be the most
language dependent, while the sciences and math would be the least language
dependent, with the social sciences being somewhere in between. What we
found instead was a much more complex picture of when and how language
competence mattered in NNES students’ learning and becoming legitimate
members of the academic community. More specifically, the results of this
study suggest the complexity of language issues at four different levels.
First, the degree of language dependence varied not only among disciplines,
but also among subdisciplines. For instance, in the department of economics,
Julius and his advisor maintained that their research area was less
language-dependent than other branches of economics, such as labor econom-
ics. Similarly, Kathy’s advisor commented that even within the Chinese pro-
gram, the work of those in Chinese linguistics was more ‘technical’ compared
with those in the literature track: ‘For us, the [English] requirements are
steeper’, he said.
Second, as far as the NNES students were concerned, language competence
was not always critical to their academic participation and performance.
Passing the minimal language requirements at an American university
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meant very different things to NNES students in different disciplines. To Kathy,
passing the institutional language requirements simply meant that a student
had the minimal linguistic capital to get started with the program; a much
higher level of competence was required to become a full member of her
community. In contrast, for Burnerman, Hou and Julius, passing the same
minimal language requirements meant that the students already had a suffi-
cient level of linguistic capital to meet the academic demands in their discip-
lines; NNES students’ effort thus was better spent on accumulating more
highly-valued cultural capital, such as scientific or mathematic expertise,
than on the further improvement of their English.
Third, the importance of English, and therefore the disadvantage of being a
non-native speaker, varied across different community practices within a dis-
ciplinary community. Hou, Burnerman, and Julius saw their fields of research
as largely language-independent, and as far as their academic performance was
concerned, they did not feel any setback because of their English proficiency.
On the other hand, some aspects of their community participation and inter-
action were clearly affected by their non-native English proficiency, such as
their ability to socialize easily with other community members. Thus, even
within a single disciplinary community, NNES students may find themselves
participating competently in some shared practices while they may find it
harder to negotiate an identity of competence in other practices.
Fourth, different members of the same disciplinary community may perceive
the discipline’s linguistic demands and students’ linguistic needs differently.
While the two engineering professors regarded their discipline to be no less
language dependent than other disciplines, their NNES apprentices saw lin-
guistic competence playing a much less critical role in their academic pursuits.
This discrepancy may be explained by the different levels of community prac-
tices in which junior and senior members engage. As third year doctoral stu-
dents, Burnerman and Hou were newcomers to the disciplinary community.
They were not yet on the front line of knowledge production and dissemin-
ation as were their advisors. They therefore may not have perceived a sophis-
ticated and exact use of English as part of the discipline’s necessary repertoire.
Their advisors, in contrast, were the ones who had to publish journal articles,
present at conferences, and write grant applications. As such, they were more
keenly aware of the role of English in disseminating and marketing their re-
search. In other words, as one’s position in a discipline community changes
over time, one’s perception of the importance of language and rhetoric may
also change (Casanave and Hubbard 1992).
A second central finding of the study is that the NNES students were able to
make use of the cultural capital they possessed in order to claim legitimate
membership in their disciplinary communities. In some areas, they readily
acknowledged their ‘otherness’ because of their linguistic and cultural differ-
ences. In other areas, however, they spoke of their differences in positive
terms. The NNES students did not enter the English-speaking academic com-
munity as blank slates (Hirvela and Belcher 2001). Having attended college,
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graduate school, and, for some, worked in the industry, they were most likely
seeking advancement in, rather than entry into, their disciplinary commu-
nities. With the knowledge and skills Burnerman, Hou, Julius, and Kathy
had accumulated through their past academic and professional experiences,
they had confidence in themselves. They knew that they possessed the kinds
of cultural capital that had high market value in their disciplines: be that
knowledge in mathematics and physics, proficiency in Chinese, publication
experiences, computer programming skills, or interdisciplinary education
backgrounds. In other words, compared with their NES peers, the NNES stu-
dents in this study viewed themselves as no less legitimate, albeit relatively
new, members in the English-speaking academic community. Their cultural
capital certified these foreign students’ membership so that in their still per-
ipheral but legitimate positions, they were able to regard the challenges they
encountered as part of the ‘doctoral package’. Likewise, their doctoral advisors
also believed that NNES students brought positive influences to enrich the
English-speaking academic community. The advisors did not think that the
four students suffered marked disadvantages because of their NNES status.
In short, rather than participating as marginalized members, the students
related their experiences in their programs with a strong sense of pride and
hope. They saw themselves as competent and legitimate members of the aca-
demic communities despite the extra linguistic and cultural barriers they en-
countered. By going through the extra work and challenges, they believed that
their cross-cultural investment would yield high returns: They were going to
be better and stronger academically and mentally compared with not only
local NES students, but also doctoral students trained in their home country.
CONCLUSION
In this study, we have provided an analysis of the emic perspectives of NNES
students and their advisors in three different disciplines. The findings of the
study challenge the often negative portrayals of NNES students’ positions in
the English-speaking academe and the presumed centrality of English in most
previous studies. Although the international students in this study were aware
of their disadvantages as non-native speakers, they felt that they were none-
theless legitimate members of their disciplinary communities because they
have other cultural and linguistic capital that enabled them to display
enough competence in their communities. In showing these results, our
intent was not to gloss over NNES students’ linguistic and cultural challenges.
Rather, the findings of the study underscore (i) the importance of examining
NNES students’ experiences within the specific cultural, linguistic, and discip-
linary contexts in which they are situated, and (ii) the ways in which the
students make use of the resources they do possess to vie for legitimate mem-
bership in their disciplinary communities.
This study only examined the experiences of four NNES students in three
disciplines, and within those disciplines the students’ overall experiences were
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positive. However, are such positive experiences shared by NNES students in
other disciplines—in education, English literature, or political science, for in-
stance? In Morita’s (2004) study, Lisa, a NNES student in an MATESOL pro-
gram in a Canadian university had difficulty negotiating her sense of
competence and legitimacy because she did not speak perfect English amid
her NES, English-teacher colleagues. In a discipline like TESOL, in which
native or near-native English proficiency is often assumed, do NNES students
have the same kind of leverage to claim their legitimate membership as those
in this study?
According to Kiang (1992), Asian immigrant students in the USA tend to
concentrate in a narrow band of majors such as business, engineering, and
computer science for reasons that include these disciplines’ lighter English
demands, potential financial returns in the job market, and the more objective
(and therefore perceived to be less culturally and linguistically biased) evalu-
ation criteria. Cho’s (2004) study also suggests that NNES students tend to
gravitate towards quantitative rather than qualitative research because quan-
titative research is perceived to be less language-dependent. When 37 per cent
of international students (including undergraduate and graduate students)
choose business or engineering while only 2.9 per cent choose humanities
(Institute of international Education 2009), there must be a reason. The results
of the study, then, raise the question of whether NNES students intentionally
and strategically choose the disciplines in which their cultural capital would
enjoy a higher market value. In future research, it would be important to
examine not only how well NNES students fare in a variety of fields, but
also on what criteria they choose their area of study and what role English
plays in their selection.
SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
Supplementary material is available at Applied Linguistics online.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the participants in this study, who generously shared their experiences
and insights with us. We are also grateful for the helpful suggestions of Dr Jane Zuengler and three
AL anonymous reviewers on earlier versions of this study. Finally, Ms Sarah Grosik enhanced the
quality of this work with her thorough copyediting.
NOTES
1 All the names of institutions and
individuals in this study are pseudo-
nyms. The students’ pseudonyms were
chosen by themselves.
2 Academic advisors are staff members
who provide advice to students about
course taking and program
requirements. They are different from
doctoral advisors, who are faculty
members who supervise doctoral
students’ research and dissertation
work.
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3 Padelford University has an extremely
stringent IRB process, and we were lim-
ited in how we were allowed to recruit
students. For instance, we were
not allowed to recruit participants
through our personal contacts or use
‘snowballing’ strategies (Patton 1990;
Heckathorn 1997; Atkinson and Flint
2001) commonly used in social science
research.
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Yu-jung Chang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and
Literature at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. She is interested in issues of glo-
balization, English as an international language, and EFL/ESL students’ language
learning resources and identities.
Yasuko Kanno is an Associate Professor of TESOL in the College of Education, Temple
University. She is interested in how linguistic minority students employ their agency to
negotiate their identities and educational opportunities. Kanno is the author of
Negotiating Bilingual and Bicultural Identities (2003) and Language and Education in
Japan (2008).
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