NNES doctoral students in English-speaking academe: The nexus between language and discipline

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: [email protected]

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

2 ASSESSED LEVELS OF SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKING PROFICIENCY

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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).

Y.-J. CHANG AND Y. KANNO 3

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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)


English & industrialand informationmanagement(Taiwan)

Chinese literature(Taiwan)

Graduateeducation



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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NNES doctoral students in English-speaking academe: The nexus between language and discipline

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