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ISEJ The International Student Experience

Journal

Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2018. Volume 6. Issue 1 Editorial Phil Horspool, University of Leicester Articles  Researching international students: methodological challenges of rebel data. Sidonie Ecochard and Julia Fotheringham  Social networking and international student integration at University. Dr Sarah Brewer. Emma Copping, Jingshu (Ivy) Huang and Dr Liz Wilding Student Articles  Reflections on being a student: A home and international perspective. Sidonie Ecochard  Assimilating to the Rainbow Culture in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Kyle Tan and Zhiyuan Wang Conference Reviews  EAP Conference 2018: No Innocent Bystanders: Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse - University of St Andrews, 24 February 2018. Janice Bain  EAP Conference 2018: EAP Conference: No Innocent Bystanders: Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse - University of St Andrews 24 February 2018 Getting to Grips with Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse. Janice Hinckfuss

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Editorial Philip Horspool

University of Leicester Welcome to Volume 6 Issue 1 of the International Student Experience Journal. As always we have a range of articles and reviews from academics, language teachers and students.

Firstly, we have a research paper from Sidonie Ecochard from the University of Strathclyde and Julie Fotheringham from Edinburgh Napier University looking at the challenges associated with analysing qualitative data with a focus on Scottish Higher Education institutions. It concludes that ‘Thematic analysis may not always be the best approach to representing and honouring the accounts of international students studying in the UK’.

The second article comes from staff and students from the University of Reading and focuses on student integration there. The four authors saw the focus of their research change from social networking and social media to ‘the role of networking in the transition period of international and home students’. The authors promise us a more in depth follow up research project and we look forward to seeing it in a future issue.

Article 3 is a reflective piece from Sidonie, one of the authors of the first article. Sidonie shares her experience of being a student in her native France with her different experience of living and studying abroad, in her case in Scotland. Following that, and in her role as a ‘professional’ student, she did a PG programme in Finland as well as travelling to many other countries. These experiences have led her to question the home and international student distinction as she shares the many challenges she has faced with us.

Next comes an article about the experience of studying in New Zealand, or Aotearoa , by two Chinese students who ‘share their encounters and understandings of Aotearoa LGBT culture in relation to their Chinese identity, based on their personal experiences and communications with other LGBT international students’. Both offer fascinating accounts and insights and contrast their experience with that of LGBT students in their respective home countries of China and Malaysia.

To finish we offer a double dose of Janice, with Janice Hinckfuss and Janice Bain offering us their individual and distinct experiences of the 2018 St Andrews conference. Reading these will no doubt persuade many to take part in the 2019 conference and as someone who has been to St Andrews on many occasions, you won’t regret it.

Finally, a small apology for the tardiness of this issue and we hope you agree that it was worth the wait. If you would like to be involved in the editing, writing, proof reading or mentoring involved in producing ISEJ, please do get in touch. Most importantly of all, we’d like to see your contributions to the next issue which is already developing.

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Article

Researching international students: methodological challenges of rebel data Sidonie Ecochard University of Strathclyde Julia Fotheringham Edinburgh Napier University

ABSTRACT This paper presents findings from a small scale study into the attitudes and preferences of international students regarding support provision at a Scottish Higher Education institution.

The article outlines some of the challenges arising from analysing qualitative data from surveys and interviews with international students, and calls into question the use of thematic analysis which systematically reduces and finds patterns in the data, but which fails to capture the singularities of the international student voice. It argues for the reconsideration of the epistemological underpinnings of the international student experience and the methodological tools with which it is explored. ……………………………………………………………………………………………..........

Introduction In Scotland in 2015-16, international students represented 22% of the student population (HESA, 2017), making an important contribution to universities, most notably by bringing resources in the form of fees and cultural capital for local students. Support for international students on arrival in the UK and throughout their programme of study is embedded in universities’ international recruitment offer and in institutional efforts to secure their retention and achievement. Initiatives which target resources and services to support these students may give rise to deficit thinking which positions international students as in need of ‘support’. Jones (2017) points to the ways in which the literature over-generalises the needs and experiences of international students clustering them according to their nationalities, while disregarding factors such as socioeconomic background and linguistic fluency. These factors may have more bearing on the types of support required by students than their country of origin (Jones, 2017). This critical stance on the literature led the authors to question the ways in which thematic analysis was deployed in their investigation into support preferences 2

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amongst international students at a Scottish university. In attempting to uncover and understand the patterns in the data, there was a risk of over-privileging pattern seeking (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011) while under-privileging the heterogeneity of the students’ responses.

Background to the study In 2016, a University-wide scoping project explored transition support provision for international students and concluded that although there were pockets of support throughout the University, the distribution was uneven across disciplines and clustered around the induction period. Instead of tailored transition support for international students, support was most commonly delivered as inclusive provision for all new students (Ecochard, 2016). In 2017, having established what transition support existed, ethical approval was granted to undertake a mixed methods study to explore the University’s international students’ preferred sources of support and the topics to be addressed by those providing support. International students across the institution were contacted by email to answer an online survey regarding the formal and informal support accessed during their time at the University and their perceptions of the transition support services they received. To supplement the survey, 12 face-to-face follow-up interviews were conducted, using visual methods to map the time and place of delivery of services, and to inquire into students’ recommendations for future enhancements (Ecochard et al., 2017).

Battling rebel data During the analysis, we discovered that the most outstanding feature of the data was not the patterns emerging about students’ preferences, but rather the fragmentation of the data and the absence of any coherent pattern. This contrasts with many other small scale investigations such as Allhouse’s (2017) which investigated international students’ preferences for a social learning space. In that study student responses to a questionnaire were ‘limited in range and could be grouped according to a number of themes’ (Allhouse, 2017, p.7) which is exactly the outcome that we were expecting from data in our study.

Instead, the research team became dissatisfied that the data was being condensed by thematic analysis in ways that obscured the singularity, diversity and richness of the international students’ perspectives. Although the research team had had previous success with using thematic analysis following approaches advocated by Saldaña (2009) and Braun and Clark 3

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(2006), with this data set we encountered a number of challenges: specifically, a proliferation, broadening and overlapping of codes (Saldaña, 2009) and difficulties fixing the data within categories. Instead of identifying patterns in the data, the individual narratives revealed in our data refused to submit to our efforts to combine or thematise them.

Rich data and proliferation of codes The first cycle codes were established deductively in line with the conceptual framework of the study and modified inductively after several readings of the transcripts. Axial codes relating categories to their subcategories were established to reflect key elements of the data emerging during the analysis process and data which did not fit within existing categories (Huberman and Saldaña, 2014). However, accounting for the richness and complexity of the participants’ accounts led to a proliferation of axial codes. Far from the clear trends, models and phases dominating the literature on international students, the participants painted a picture that was messy and non-linear, representing the unique intersectionality between their entry route, nationality, and age, subject of study, socio-economic background and personal preferences. When asked about the informal support the participants relied on during their study abroad period, the interviewees described wide and complex networks, including friends and family from home, co-national communities and fellow students at the University, as well as flatmates, societies and clubs, work colleagues and landlords. Major (2005) reports the importance of co-national networks to the adjustment of Asian-born students, but no such pattern could be distinguished in terms of a preference for the main source of informal support among the participants, and interviewees had very different experiences and approaches towards associating with co-nationals more specifically. In fact, some interviewees avoided co-nationals on purpose, and several survey respondents complained there were too many students from their nationality group at the University. On the other hand, one interviewee explained she attempted to form a co-national network but did not succeed. All in all, none of our participants, including Asian-born, reported using a conational network as their main source of informal support.

As a result, in the case of informal support and across the data set more generally, axial codes were added to account for the striking and unexpected differences among the respondents, leading to a lack of clarity and difficulties in organising the codes into code maps and main themes.

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Many and broad codes Connected to the proliferation of codes, the diversity of accounts also led to a broadening of code definitions which accommodated the numerous diverging and contradictory extracts (Braun and Clarke, 2006, Bryman, 2012). As such, the initial codes comprised a category for the academic challenges of international students, originally defined to include international students' widely documented difficulties with academic skills such as critical thinking, referencing, independent studying or academic writing (Ecochard and Fotheringham, 2017).

The following quote recognizes students’ awareness of the differences between academic skills required at home and those required in their new context.

“I’ve seen a lot of people finding difficulties writing their assignment, they don't understand the first thing what to do because in India […] they give you every single instruction, every single point [...] to write in the assignment, so you just follow the pattern. Here it's completely different.” (Student A)

The interview suggests that some students are completely unaware of the academic skills they are required to demonstrate in their assignments in their new context. Although some of the participants' testimonies aligned with the quote from Student A, the perception of the academic challenge of studying abroad varied greatly. Illustrating this point, a respondent stated: "As it wasn't very demanding, I coped well" (Student B). Moving beyond the question of skills, participants related academic challenge to considerations of quality of education, learning style, course content and structure. Furthermore, what the respondents identified as key academic challenges central to their educational experience were often singular: a steep and unexpected rise in tuition fees, a bad experience with a lecturer or tutor, essential reading unavailable at the library. As illustrated in the examples from Students A and B above, the accounts collected were much less homogenous than the literature led us to expect and singularity was key to each participant. Thus, code definitions were stretched to represent more accurately the experiences of the respondents. This raised the question of the internal coherence of codes for mapping into themes; the alternative, however, was to break the broad categories and contribute further to proliferation.

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Overlapping codes Simultaneous coding is used occasionally in thematic analysis to remediate the matter of ‘fuzzy’ code boundaries (Saldaña, 2009); in this study, the authors had to rely extensively on this technique as the accounts of participants did not fit within neatly bounded categories.

For example, the literature distinguishes separate dimensions of the international transition, usually identifying academic, linguistic and sociocultural aspects (Ecochard and Fotheringham, 2017). For the respondents however, academic, linguistic and sociocultural dimensions of transition are connected and intertwined. In the quote below, the student recounts her experience of induction where some aspects of transition were addressed, but other dimensions were completely absent leaving her feeling uninformed: “I don't have the feeling it [the induction day] was very informative in the sense of opening a bank account or finding your way around Edinburgh, what you would need for university […], how to register with a doctor, how to get a sim card for your phone. […] it was just a brief introduction to what the course was going to be like. I remember some statistics about employability of graduates.” (Student C)

This interviewee expressed the common expectation that the University will provide support and information towards all aspects of her transition to the UK. Students in our study did not understand the various dimensions of transition as separate in the manner of distinct coding categories; as a result, the extract above (Student C) had to be coded in both the academic and sociocultural categories. With a great deal of data presenting this feature of interconnectedness, simultaneous coding became frequent and the content of codes overlapped and boundaries became increasingly blurry.

Fixing data, capturing movement Transition and transition-related concepts are overwhelmingly depicted in the literature as stage-based models or typologies (Ecochard and Fotheringham, 2017) which in theory, should easily be broken into codes for thematic analysis. The phases of transition for instance, are often divided into ‘pre-transition’, ‘transition’ and ‘post-transition’. In contrast, such organisation, logic and linearity is absent from participants’ accounts in this study and their narratives are characterised by spontaneity and responsiveness, fluidity and movement “from/toward/between/of bodies and their affective experiences” (Taylor and Harris-Evans, 6

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2016, p.11). In the quote below an interviewee explains that she was given the impression that gaining employment would be straightforward, whereas securing the right job was complex, involving several stages and parallel processes: “In India, they (the agent) told me 'yes you can go apply for (a job)' they didn't tell me you have to go through websites, search for jobs, and you'll have interviews and all that, but when I came here my sister told me 'just go for any job that you get' so I just went to this restaurant, and within a week or something they gave me a trial and then I got a job as a waiter. And after some time I started getting bored doing every day the same routine work so after that I left and one of my friend had this cleaning job, her boyfriend has a company and she asked me if I could help her so I thought ok I’ll do that job and she told me she'll pay me also, it's better money, so I was doing for her every week 20 hours […]. And I also got this internship at the University so I made some savings with that.” (Student D) Taylor and Harris-Evans’s depiction of transitions as a "confusing whirl of emotions, spaces, materialities, people, relationships, histories, affects, responses, demands and expectations" resonates profoundly with our respondents’ accounts(2016, p.6). Fitting this “whirl” within bounded blocks of analysis means sacrificing the very essence of transition, which is of movement and of its singularity.

Conclusion The data from this small scale study contributes to an evidence base for enhancing practice with international students. There is a risk that small scale qualitative studies which emphasise pattern-finding during analysis may obscure the heterogeneity of this group’s support needs. International students’ experiences of transition create images of movements, forward and backward and transversally, across and between networks, opportunities, circumstances and emotions. Thematic analysis may not always be the best approach to representing and honouring the accounts of international students studying in the UK.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR sidonie.ecochard@strath.ac.uk J.Fotheringham@napier.ac.uk

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References Allhouse, M., 2017. Creating a Student Union social learning space for international students.

International Student Experience Journal, 5(1), pp. 1–14.

Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D., 2011. Qualitative Research and Theory Development, Mystery as Method. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Braun, V. and Clarke, V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.

Bryman, A., 2012. Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ecochard, S., 2016. Investigating International Students’ Transitions Using a Scoping Methodology. In: HEA (Higher Education Academy), Ready for retention: effective systems for transition and student success. University of South Wales, 6-7th July 2016.

Ecochard, S. and Fotheringham, J., 2017. International Students’ Unique Challenges - Why Understanding International Transitions to Higher Education Matters. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 5(2), pp. 100–108. Available at: https://jpaap.napier.ac.uk/index.php/JPAAP/article/view/261/pdf Ecochard, S., Perry, P., Tomasini, S. Glabus, M. and Fotheringham, J., 2017. What international students say they need as support - A collaborative research. In: QAA (Quality Assurance Agency), 3rd International Enhancement in Higher Education Conference: Inspiring excellence – transforming the student experience. Glasgow, 6-8th June 2017.

Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), 2017. Table 1a: HE student enrolments by location of HE provider, mode of study, domicile and level of study 2011/12 to 2015/16. [online]. Available at: <https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/12-01-2017/sfr242-student-enrolmentsand-qualifications> [Accessed 7th March 2018].

Huberman, M. and Saldaña, J., 2014. Qualitative data analysis : a methods sourcebook. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications Ltd. Jones, E., 2017. Problematising and reimagining the notion of “international student experience”. Studies in Higher Education, 42(5), pp. 933–943..

Major, E. M., 2005. Co-national support, cultural therapy, and the adjustment of Asian students to an English-speaking university culture. International Education Journal, 6(1), pp.

84–95.

Saldaña, J., 2009. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Taylor, C. A. and Harris-Evans, J., 2016. Reconceptualising transition to Higher Education with Deleuze and Guattari. Studies in Higher Education, Nov, pp.1254-1267

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Article

Social networking and international student integration at University Dr Sarah Brewer Emma Copping Jingshu (Ivy) Huang Dr Liz Wilding University of Reading

ABSTRACT This paper will describe a project designed to investigate the transition of international students into the University of Reading, focusing on interpersonal dynamics as evidenced in social networking and group work. The project was undertaken as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP), a scheme to give Part 2 students hands-on research experience, and had two aims. One was to provide an environment where the student investigators could learn and develop research skills through experience; the other was to gather data from current students to learn more about how they use social media and social networking and how this impacts on their sense of integration into the University community. This paper is a reflective account explaining the process, drawing on the UROP students’ perspectives and presenting some of the findings. The surveys carried out by the student researchers indicated a preference for Wechat over Facebook and Instagram, reflecting the high proportion of Chinese among the international student population, but there was a strong sense generally that social media networks could and should be used more by the University to build multicultural interaction. The process of developing the research and writing up the findings gave the student researchers more confidence in their developing research skills, but increased their awareness of the challenges of undertaking research. ……………………………………………………………………………………………..........

Background One of the key strategic teaching and learning priorities at the University of Reading is to engage students in active research. To this end, since 2006 it has run the Undergraduate 9

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Research Opportunities Programme (UROP), offering undergraduate students a funded opportunity to work on small-scale research projects with academic staff for six weeks during the summer vacation period. This is a competitive scheme with funding being offered to a selection of projects that are then advertised to Part 2 students who apply to work on them.

Sarah Brewer and Liz Wilding, English for Academic Purposes specialists, proposed this particular project, building on ongoing research into the experience of international students moving from the Pre-sessional Programme to subject departments. A significant feature of student life in the current climate of UK Higher Education is the prominence of group communication. This operates on several different levels: socially through social media; academically as students engage in group projects; and as a mix of the two as students interact through social media negotiating their way through demanding academic courses.

Some research has been carried out into group work and how international and home students cope with the demands of managing a task in a multicultural group, (Popov, Brinkman, Biemans, Mulder, Kuznetsov, Noroozi, 2012; Moore and Hampton, 2015; Sedghi and Rushworth, 2017; Spencer-Oatey and Dauber, 2017). There has also been some research into how international students use social media (Margaryan, Littlejohn and Vojt, 2010; Paul, Baker, and Cochran, 2012; Tess, 2013; Carey, 2017). However, little is known of the experience of international students in the University of Reading and how they are interconnecting (virtually and face-to-face) once on their courses and the impact this may have on their studies. A key goal of the project, therefore was begin to gather evidence of the ways in which students were interacting and use analysis of this to inform course design at ISLI.

In spring 2017, two second-year UG student-researchers were recruited through the UROP: Jingshu (Ivy) Huang, an Accounting and Finance student from China, and Emma Copping, an English Literature student from the UK. Due to time constraints, it was agreed that although Ivy and Emma would co-ordinate their work, they would conduct their research independently.

”Interaction, communication, participation are approaches for international students to adapt to a new culture.” (Ivy)

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The project: student training in methodology The UROP scheme is intended to provide a structured learning opportunity; the student researchers were given on-going support through the research process and were encouraged to explore and develop relevant research methods and tools. The first step was to undertake a literature review and to produce an annotated bibliography. The researchers' interests focused on slightly different areas and student populations; Emma focused on home and international students’ use of social media platforms and the impact this has on their university experience, while Ivy looked at how international students build their social networks and the impact social media may have on this network building. They each constructed questionnaires, selected appropriate online survey tools (EasyQuest and Qualtrics), and sent them to different groups. Together, they received a total of 112 responses, after which Ivy conducted two student interviews to supplement her survey data.

Finally, they collated and analysed their data to produce final reports and posters to present at University level.

Findings Several points emerged from the literature review. In terms of face to face social networks, some findings have identified a tendency for international students to form co-national friendship groups first, then make connections with home students and finally to develop relationships with international students of other nationalities (Taha & Cox, 2014; Schartner, 2015). The building of networks can be affected negatively by stereotyping (Harrison, 2010; Montgomery, 2010) and different expectations of the study experience. In terms of online networks, this is an area that has become increasingly the focus of attention, although until recently empirical evidence has been limited (Tess, 2013). Some findings suggest that online social networks can enhance students’ academic interaction (Hamid et al, 2015); while other evidence indicates a negative correlation between time students spend on online social networks (OSNs) and attention span and academic performance (Paul et al, 2012).

The two UROP questionnaires collected data on student networking, as well as on their usage of and views of social media usage. There were 37 respondents to Emma’s questionnaire, eight of whom were home students. The most popular platforms were WeChat (25 users); Facebook and Instagram (both 21 users); and Whatsapp (15 users). Students were somewhat 11

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more likely to use their choice of social media to maintain relationships (92%), for social events (70%) and for academic purposes (63%), as opposed to establishing new contacts (57%). Only 24% responded that they did not rely on social media for social interactions and there appeared to be strong support for developing social media networks within the University to build multicultural interaction.

Of the 75 respondents to Ivy’s questionnaire, the majority were Chinese (82%) and were studying at Master’s level (60%). The findings indicated that they felt their social relationships at university were based largely around class work and friendship rather than on pre-existing advice and support networks. The length of time international students had been in the UK had an effect on the relative importance of motivational factors involved in making friends. Learning English and learning about local culture were more important early on, but decreased in relative importance compared to factors such as shared study interests over time.

The data on social media use showed a preference for WeChat (33%) over other tools such as Facebook (19%) and Instagram (17%) for general use. However, while only 13% used Facebook for academic purposes, 35% used it to make new friends. Overall, 85% of the students agreed that using social media such as Facebook/Whatsapp is helpful in making friends.

Ivy also conducted semi-structured interviews with two students. They both expressed some dissatisfaction with the extent to which they had been able to integrate with local students, though were hopeful that there would be more opportunities in the coming academic year.

They reiterated the view that more could be done by the University to support students integrating and provide networking opportunities for international students.

Discussion The findings from the two surveys revealed similarities and differences. They both noted the importance of WeChat, a highly popular Chinese multi-function social media mobile app, to many of our students. It is perhaps no coincidence that Ivy, who distributed her questionnaire via WeChat as well as email, received a higher response rate than Emma, who used Facebook as her secondary distribution method. They also showed, unsurprisingly, that students make use of different media for different purposes. The picture of networking that emerged was of a dynamic process, changing according to the people, situation, or task-type involved, and also changing over time. However, as the research progressed, “the complexities of the 12

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factors impacting the interactions became apparent” and Emma saw a clear need for further research beyond the limited six-week period of the project.

“Social media have played a key role in helping me integrate into Danish Higher Education.” (Emma)

Reflections We asked Emma and Ivy to reflect on their experience of carrying out the research, thinking about its impact on themselves as students; the challenges; and what, with hindsight, they might change in their approach to the project. Both commented that being involved in the work had developed their understanding of the processes of research, but also that it had impacted on their actual practice in various ways. Emma had previously used social media largely to maintain existing relationships, but as an Erasmus student then studying at a university in Denmark, she felt that the knowledge gained had “given me a new outlook on how to actively immerse myself in another culture” and that she was actually using social media to her “social and academic advantage”. In fact, she concluded, social media have been a gateway to much interaction with other international students and have played “a key role in helping me integrate into Danish Higher Education”. Ivy, as an international student with three years in UK HE (Foundation, and two years of undergraduate study) felt that her research indicated that group work was “the most effective and realistic approach” to getting to know students from other countries. She reflected that, in future, she would “try to have further relationship that goes beyond pure academic cooperation”. This realisation may have been influenced by the opportunity to work closely with Emma, as a home student, in the few weeks where they were both researching the project. She had also become aware of a wider use of Facebook than she had expected and that “in order to get involved with peers and other local people, I may need to use Facebook more regularly than before”.

Both Ivy and Emma felt a great deal more confident in their ability to carry out academic research, but had found that the demands of undertaking research were quite challenging, particularly in researching the literature. Ivy felt better informed about “social relationships and social media” after some guided reading of articles to form the basis of a literature review, but could not, initially, identify any “link or logic between them”. For her, “working 13

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out the implied connection between articles and focusing on a narrowed area” was what she struggled with the most. It was important to reduce the possible areas of focus, but very difficult to “find an entry point in order to design and think” about a specific point. Emma also found the literature review a challenge, with a similar struggle to pinpoint” a specific issue” when she wanted to “explore many issues”. It was hard to move away from the literature onto the “more practical elements of the research project” and she wished that she had focused more narrowly which might have yielded “more fruitful and insightful results”.

Emma also recognised the challenges of time management in working independently on a project and would have reduced the time she spent exploring the literature. Ivy’s reflection focused more on methodology. She had found time to carry out two interviews, but felt that these produced limited data and that the interviewees were constrained by being interviewed individually and did not “think associatively” and did not expand on their answers.

Retrospectively, she wished that she had used focus groups as well, in the expectation that this might have generated more discussion and the opportunity for more “thinking”.

A significant outcome of the research for both Ivy and Emma was the realisation of the difficulties that international students face in building networks beyond those already established with friends and contacts within their own communities. Ivy saw the fairly strong response from her questionnaire as an indication of “strong motivation” among international students to “get involved in university activities”, but recommended that universities should engage more with the WeChat platform to reach Chinese students. Emma’s insights into the use of social media drawn from her research have enabled her to integrate successfully as she became an international student herself.

Conclusion The original motivation to undertake the research was to develop a deeper understanding of student networking and social media especially in relation to academic group work. During the course of the project, the focus shifted more to the role of networking in the transition process of international and home students, to reflect the interests of the student-researchers in the team. It also became clear that although many students use some form of social media, they had not generally reflected on the possibility of how it could enhance their experience, social and academic, at University. Many would welcome more engagement with the institution through social media that they are already familiar with, rather than adjusting to 14

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new social networking tools. Even if the more familiar social media are not used, the greater awareness may be effective in enhancing engagement, as evidenced through Emma’s own experience in Denmark. Finally, a real highlight of the project was the fact that it was a collaborative effort, in which we could share different views and perspectives on a topic of academic and personal interest to all of us. Our findings corroborated previous research demonstrating the diverse ways in which students use social media for networking, and also reinforced the value of understanding the needs and interests of different student groups in more detail, rather than as one large cohort. The limited time scale constrained what we could do, but indicated a fruitful direction for continued research in the same area; a follow-up student research project will take place in summer 2018.

CONTACT THE AUTHORS e.a.wilding@reading.ac.uk s.m.brewer@reading.ac.uk

References Carey, R. 2017. The use of social media platforms to improve teaching and learning for Chinese students. European Journal of Teacher Education. 20017(10). ISSN 0261-9768.

Available at http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/20600 Hamid, S., Waycott, J., Kurnia, S., & Chang, S. 2015. Understanding students' perceptions of the benefits of online social networking use for teaching and learning. Internet and Higher Education, [online] 26, 1-9. Available at: https://umexpert.um.edu.my/file/publication/00007217_106152.pdf [Accessed 19 June 2017].

Harrison, N. & Peacock, N. 2010. Cultural distance, mindfulness and passive xenophobia: using Integrated Threat Theory to explore home higher education students’ perspectives on ‘internationalisation at home’. British Educational Research Journal, 36(6), 877-902.

Margaryan, A., Littlejohn, A., & Vojt, G. 2011. Are digital natives a myth or reality?

University students’ use of digital technologies. Computers & Education, 56, pp. 429-440. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.004 Montgomery, C. 2010. Understanding the international student experience. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Moore, P. & Hampton, G. 2015. ‘It’s a bit of a generalisation, but…’; participant perspectives on intercultural group assessment in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(3), pp. 390-406. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.004

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Paul, J., Baker, H. & Cochran, J. 2012. Effect of online social networking on student academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, [online] 28(6), pp.2117-2127.

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.06.016 [Accessed 17 Jul. 2017].

Popov, V., Brinkman, D., Biemans, H.J.A., Mulder, M., Kuznetsov, A., & Noroozi, O. 2012.

Multicultural student group work in higher education. An explorative case study on challenges as perceived by students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 36, pp.

302-317. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.09.004 Schartner, A. 2015. ‘You cannot talk with all of the strangers in a pub’: a longitudinal case study of international postgraduate students’ social ties at a British university. Higher Education, 69(2), 225-241. doi:10.1007/s10734-014-9771-8.

Sedghi, G. & Rushworth, E. 2017. The relation between multi-cultural group work and the integration of home and international students. New Directions in the Teaching of Physical Sciences, 12(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.29311/ndtps.v0i12.857 Spencer-Oatey, H. & Dauber, D. 2017. The gains and pains of mixed national group work at university, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, [online] 38(3), pp.219-236. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2015.1134549 Taha, N. & Cox, A. 2014. International students' networks: a case study in a UK university.

Studies in Higher Education, 41(1), 182-198. doi:10.1080/03075079.2014.927851 Tess, P. 2013. The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) - A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, [online] 29(5), pp.A60-A68. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.032 [Accessed 17 Jul. 2017]

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Student Article

Reflections on being a student: A home and international perspective Sidonie Ecochard

University of Strathclyde

In this reflective article, I outline my journey as a student from France who moved through a number of learning institutions abroad, to question the essentialism of the concepts of ‘international student’ and ‘international student experience’. I describe how I came to regard myself as a ‘professional international student’ while paradoxically incorporating elements of both the ‘home’ and ‘international’ student identity. I also give an account of some of the challenges encountered at different stages in my learning journey to compare the ‘home’ and ‘international’ experience and examine whether it is ‘harder’ to be an international student.

Becoming the ‘professional international student’ In France, students often stay close to home to complete their undergraduate studies, and I proceeded as such when I enrolled at the University of Grenoble in 2004. Three years later, I applied to finish my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh as part of the Erasmus exchange programme, and in so doing, kick-started my career as a ‘professional international student’. I found the experience challenging but extremely rewarding and did not want to return to France and the French Higher Education (HE) system after this first taste of the international lifestyle. Thus, I chose to complete my postgraduate studies at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland, a choice based on the specific programme for which I applied – uniquely combining the fields of development studies and education – as well as my curiosity for the Scandinavian countries. Yet, to secure a place on this competitive programme, I had to gain further work experience and academic qualifications, for which I travelled to Ireland, Spain, Peru, England and Scotland.

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As a result of this learning journey across the HE systems of seven different countries, I like to call myself a ‘professional international student’. I use this phrase to refer to the knowledge and understanding of HE culture as context-specific and the variations encountered from one setting to the next, along with the diverse skills required to navigate the society in which the HE institution is situated.

Upon graduating from the University of Jyväskylä, I applied for a position at Edinburgh Napier University assisting on projects investigating international student support. Arriving for the interview, I could not help but chuckle when I handed my diplomas which looked like the stamps on my passport. Was it my first-hand experience of the diversity of educational systems that gave me the edge? All I know is that I got the job, along with the opportunity to research the very phenomenon about which I had become so familiar and passionate.

Home or international?

After working as a research assistant, I decided to undertake my doctoral studies and moved to Glasgow where I am currently attending the University of Strathclyde. Nevertheless, I had spent a lot of time with international students and the literature on international transitions, which left me wondering about my own status and identity. Am I an international or a home student now? Indeed, I can fit in either category – both in terms of conceptual definition and lived experience.

In the literal sense, I am an international student -I am a French citizen and I study in the UK. This was clearly registered by the University judging by the ‘EU and International Update’ emails I frequently receive. However, I am a home student as per my stipend and tuition fee status, a privilege granted to me on the basis of my French nationality –a European Union country- in combination with the fact that I had lived in the UK for over three years prior to my application. Furthermore, in Biggs (2003), international students are defined as those students who have moved to a different country to study. According to this description, I obviously qualified as an international student when I first came to the UK in 2007. But how about now that I am doing my doctoral studies? Am I still an international student as per my initial move from France, or am I a home student due to my more recent move from Edinburgh to Glasgow?

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My everyday experience of studying in Glasgow also challenges the bounded and fixed divide between home and international student. In fact, I feel like a home student in my ability to navigate the Scottish culture: for instance, I know how to ask for help in the street, which ones are the best music venues and the good bands, I understand the Glaswegian accent (mostly), how to register with a GP – and what a GP is. I often feel like any other home student who moved away to study, as I did myself from the East Coast to the West Coast of Scotland. But on many occasions, I am reminded that I am not British, nor am I a home student – and for more reasons than my obvious French accent.

Indeed, I got pregnant shortly after moving to Glasgow, and became acutely aware of how uninformed and foreign I still am, even after all these years in the UK. Dictionary and telephone in hand, I painfully figured out the English names for baby clothes and equipment, the childcare possibilities in the UK, the workings of the NHS –all specific to the British context. In addition, I experienced feelings of homesickness, loneliness and being lost, as when I first moved over ten years before. As a result, I have sometimes identified as a home student, other times as international. In some ways, I consider myself as a ‘hybrid’ nowadays, the ‘local international student’ if such a creature exists.

Comparing the home and the international and student experience Identifying groups of students in terms of the characteristics they share or which differentiate them from others allows us to research them and devise specific provision adapted to their circumstances. International students are presented in the literature as a group facing additional and specific obstacles to their academic success, for instance at the linguistic and sociocultural levels, so that the international student experience is often depicted as somehow more challenging (Ecochard and Fotheringham, 2017). Yet, I wonder how pertinent it is to portray experience in such a way, implying the possibility of comparison and measure. To examine this point, I will briefly outline some of the tests I met at different stages in my student journey.

My time as a home student in France was a lot about learning to bear the pressure of studying.

I had to learn to be a student, to live away from home by myself for the first time, while juggling classes and the stress of exams, as well as the frequent changes in rhythm throughout the year that accompany the student lifestyle. When I moved to Scotland, I became estranged from my family and I had to pursue my studies without any emotional support from that quarter, while 19

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worrying about my finances and my mental health. At the same time, I was acquiring the level of English and the academic skills required to keep up with reading in a foreign language and to write essays. Finally, returning to University as a doctoral (and pregnant) student, I had to look for a flat in a different city while still being in employment, I then moved and made a new social network at an age when I am finding it more difficult, I figured my way around a new university in all its specificities, such as its modes of assessment and online environments. In addition, due to my pregnancy, I have often found myself quite tired and facing a number of physical ailments.

In conclusion, becoming the ‘professional international student’ led me to question the essentialist divide between ‘home’ and ‘international’ student experiences and to view instead each learning journey as comprising its own unique set of challenges. In my case, as the academic requirements progressed steadily, so did my ability to handle the pressure and the different learning environments. While I did clearly notice the differences inherent in each HE system, they were not necessarily the striking features of my learning journey. Therefore, rather than identify as a home or international student, I would perhaps recognise myself as pertaining to the ‘anxious learner’ category as, for me, my personal and emotional landscape often predominated over the institutional one.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR sidonie.ecochard@strath.ac.uk

References Biggs, J., 2003. Teaching international students. In: J. Biggs, ed. 2003. Teaching for quality learning at university (2nd ed.). Maidenhead, United Kingdom: Open University Press. pp.

120–139.

Ecochard, S., & Fotheringham, J., 2017. International Students’ Unique Challenges – Why Understanding International Transitions to Higher Education Matters. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 5(2), pp. 100–108, [online] Available at: <file:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Temp/261-2323-2-PB-1.pdf> [Accessed: 26 August 2017].

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Student Article

Assimilating to the Rainbow Culture in Aotearoa/New Zealand Kyle Tan and Zhiyuan Wang

University of Waikato, New Zealand

Abstract The welcoming environment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people in Aotearoa/New Zealand is appealing for many international students. This article includes accounts from two Chinese students from Malaysia and China respectively. They share their encounters and understandings of Aotearoa LGBT culture in relation to their Chinese identity, based on their personal experiences and communications with other LGBT international students.

First Account The culture that I affiliate to is Malaysian Chinese My founding ancestor is from Fujian, China I am from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia My parents are KS and CH My name is Kyle Tan

The paragraph above is the English version of my pepeha. A pepeha is usually recited as an introductory speech in a formal situation in Aotearoa1. I was first introduced to the notion of pepeha in the orientation program for international students at my university. I was told the indigenous Māori people in Aotearoa believe that the recital of pepeha helps them in connecting to family and people of wider communities who share similar identities. Since then, my interest in indigenous Māori knowledge in relation to how Māori people establish their identities has been piqued, especially of those related to diverse sexualities and genders.

In a bicultural country like Aotearoa, the Western understanding of sexual and gender identities has been problematic. For Māori people who belong in the communities of diverse 21

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sexualities and genders, most of them would generally refer to themselves as takatāpui, rather than classify themselves into one of the following English identity categories: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). Māori people prefer the term takatāpui because it conveys both a sense of indigenous identity as well as their sexual or gender identity (Kerekere, 2017). Simultaneously, this term also emphasises a sense of community by permitting Māori of non-heterosexual orientation to find solidarity through the non-gendered specificity that it encapsulates (Murray, 2003).

Intrigued by the conceptualisation of the term takatāpui, I did a quick search for a similar term in both the Malaysian and Chinese cultural contexts. Although there are some local terms in Malaysia to describe LGBT people such as pondan and mak nyah, they usually carry a stigmatising meaning. Comparatively, there are more positive terms in China, such as 同志, pronounced as tong zhi, which portrays a sense of collectivism among Chinese LGBT people.

While most people in Aotearoa show respect and provide autonomy for international students to identify themselves, we often have to use English identity terms at places where our cultural terms are least understood. In this instance, most LGBT international students would either specify their sexual orientation or gender identity, or recognise themselves as a member of the LGBT or rainbow2 communities.

Finding a place to fit in is not an easy task for new international students in Aotearoa. This is especially true for those who identify as LGBT, who may feel that they are ‘minorities within the minority communities’. In my conversation with a Chinese friend who identifies as a 同

志 at my university, he told me that he had struggled to find a comfort zone in the LGBT student group. Not only did he feel marginalised for his LGBT identity among his heterosexual friends, he also felt unwelcomed for his Chinese identity in the predominantly White LGBT student group.

The homophobic and transphobic nature of Asian countries have often made LGBT students from these countries look forward to experiencing the LGBT-friendly environment of Aotearoa. When their expectations are not met, they suffer from even greater disappointment.

There is a lot of support for LGBT students in Aotearoa universities, however these support systems are deemed not to be culturally sensitive by most international students. Most LGBT international students who I know, have chosen not to disclose their sexual or gender 22

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identities to their heterosexual and cisgender friends. They choose to remain in stealth because they are afraid of the possible discrimination and stigma that they might face. Until the university is competent in providing support for LGBT international students, it is likely that the visibility of these students will continue to be low.

Currently, I am involved in the Rainbow Alliance group, which is part of the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiative to promote equality and further social inclusion for LGBT students and staff. It is a group for both LGBT people and allies3 of LGBT people. We host regular meetings to share research ideas, to discuss recent LGBT issues in Aotearoa, and to design an advancement plan to better support LGBT members in the university. We usually begin the meeting with a round of introduction from all members, where we say our preferred name and pronoun.

Although I am the only Asian representation in the group, I rarely felt left out by the members. There were times when I was silenced because I was not familiar with the Aotearoa context, but there were also times when other members would listen to what I have to share and show appreciation to my distinctive cultural background.

On 17th February, I, along with few of my Chinese friends had an opportunity to visit the Pride Parade at Auckland. Almost everyone who participated in that event dressed up in rainbow colours to support the notion of diversity. The organiser was also generous enough to provide each of us with a free rainbow flag. There were more than 50 marching entries that evening, which included LGBT community organisations, cultural groups, political parties, civil servants and universities. The sight of the Prime Minister of Aotearoa in the march was especially empowering as it signifies the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s support and concern for the wellbeing of LGBT people. It was the first time I had celebrated a carnival of diversity, and it was really eye-opening.

2018 marks my third year in Aotearoa. However, I do not consider myself to have fully assimilated into the Aotearoa culture. Very often, I still have to negotiate my Asian identity while being influenced by the local culture. While I do agree that international students should attempt to assimilate into the local culture to avoid the consequences of cultural shock, it is not necessary for us to forgo our original identity. This is particularly relevant to the context of rainbow culture, in which the notion of diversity is constantly emphasised. In my university, the LGBT student group and Rainbow Alliance group serve as the first point

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of contact for international LGBT students. These support groups assist international students in embracing their LGBT identity, and provide guidance for international students to ensure that they transition smoothly in the university life. Although efforts are still needed to increase the competency of these support services for international LGBT students, much progress has been made to promote the friendly environment of campus for these students.

References Kerekere, E. (2017). Part of the whānau: The emergence of takatāpui identity He Whāriki Takatāpui. (Doctor of Philosophy), Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.

Murray, D. A. B. (2003). Who is Takatāpui? Māori language, sexuality and identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Anthropologica, 45(2), 233-244. doi:10.2307/25606143 Aotearoa is the Māori name for New Zealand, which indicates the land of long white cloud Rainbow is the inclusive term for people of diverse sexualities and genders in Aotearoa, as there are takatāpui, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, non-binary and other people of similar identities who might feel left out in the LGBT representation 3 Ally is a member of the dominant group, for example a heterosexual and cisgender person, who works to end oppression by providing support, and act as an advocate with and for the minority group 1 2

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Second Account The culture that I affiliate to is China Chinese.

My founding ancestor is from Hubei, China.

I am from Hubei, China.

My parents are HW and AL. My name is Zhiyuan Wang

Nowadays, the topics of human rights, freedom, equality, and democracy have been discussed and debated for political purposes throughout the world. People fiercely express their opinions by protesting and demonstrating, but they are still not equally treated and respected because of race, religion, and identity. The term ‘political correctness’ has been abused which has created hatred and conflicts among different groups of people. The Orlando nightclub shooting on 12 June 2016 created anxiety and panic for the LGBT people not just in America but all over the world. Is there any way for all people to live in peace and harmony no matter what their races, religions, and identities are? Aotearoa may offer an answer.

Before I came to Aotearoa, I had watched two episodes of a famous Chinese talk show named ‘Morning Call’ which comprehensively introduced the country including its history, environment, people, lifestyle, and especially its diverse and inclusive culture. There is an interesting phenomenon mentioned in the show. Immigrants from China have built Chinatowns almost everywhere they settled like in America, Canada, and Australia, but they have never done that in Aotearoa. Chinese people have a strong sense of protecting their culture, so they build Chinatowns to protect it from being invaded. But when they come to New Zealand, they drop their defence and embrace the culture of Aotearoa. This is because they know Aotearoa is a peaceful and tolerant country that will also welcome and embrace their own culture.

I identified myself as gay and completed my self-recognition after I entered university in 2008 in China. Since then, I gradually came out to my friends, classmates, and even to my colleagues at the workplace after graduation. I was fortunate that I was accepted most of the time but even today, I am not prepared to come out to my parents. This is because, compared to the tolerant and inclusive culture of Aotearoa, the mainstream culture of China is conventional, strong, and exclusive, and my parents, like thousands of Chinese parents were brought up and educated in such culture.

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Confucianism, which has controlled and civilized Chinese people for thousands of years, continues to influence the mainstream of China. Since we were born, we have been educated to set everything including the country, society, the family, and our parents ahead of ‘myself’ in the ranking of who we should be responsible to. During the entire process of receiving education, we barely have the chance to talk to our inner selves and ask ourselves the questions of ‘what you really are’ and ‘what you really like’. We rarely have the tendency to find our own will and establish our own value system but simply follow the mainstream will and values.

When it comes to problems of self-recognition, we subconsciously avoid facing and resolving them. Therefore, many Chinese LGBT people are afraid and reluctant to confront their confusion and even deny themselves at the very primary stage when they realize they are different from other people. In the face of the strong mainstream, they would even identify themselves as ‘abnormal’ (contrary to ‘normal’) rather than identifying themselves as ‘different’.

Another factor that influences the self-recognition of Chinese LGBT people is the treatment from the Government. Even after the WHO cleared the name for LGBT people in every aspect of science and social science in 1990 and many countries have passed laws for same-sex marriage since 2001, the Government of China has always held a ‘neither for nor against’ attitude towards LGBT people. There is not a single written rule against the LGBT community in China, but little information related to LGBT is mentioned in publications and media coverage. Public speeches, discussions, arguments, and disseminations are strictly scrutinised by the Government. A famous Chinese internet-based debating show ‘U Can U Bibi’ discussed the topic of ‘whether you should come out to your parents’ in one episode in Season 2, but before long, the episode was ordered to be removed from the website.

The two factors are not isolated and separated. The ‘neither for nor against’ treatment results from the conventional, strong, and exclusive culture which has lasted for thousands of years.

This is particularly problematic because Chinese LGBT people have no access to knowledge and information about sex, sexuality, and self-recognition from official channels when they are confused, struggling, and in need of guidance. There is very famous proverb in the theory of Confucianism which is strongly agreed with by most typical and traditional Chinese families ‘There are three forms of unfilial conduct, of which the worst is to have no descendants’. How

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to give birth to a child to continue the bloodline of a family is the first, major, and toughest issue faced by most LGBT people in China.

Compared to Aotearoa with an open, diverse, and inclusive culture, without a more tolerant universal value shared by the whole society, or at least most people in the society, it is extremely difficult and complicated for people in a minority culture to build self-esteem and establish their own value system to recognise themselves, stick with themselves, and resist the pressure from the mainstream in China. The LGBT people in China have to struggle for years to resolve the issues of ‘myself’ before they explicitly identify and accept what they really are.

Actually, the first time I was acquainted with the rainbow culture in Aotearoa was in a lecture discussing voluntary disclosure in the heritage reporting in Aotearoa. I still remember the question proposed by our professor - ‘Aotearoa has been one of the first few countries that allowed women to vote and enacted the law of same-sex marriage, but what else can we do?’

This question has impressed me and kept me thinking for a long time, and most essentially, inspired me to start thinking about a concept above ‘myself’ which is ‘community’ when it comes to the topic about LGBT.

Aotearoa has been walking far ahead of China in the LGBT area for years. I have been thinking about the question proposed by our professor, but I still cannot find a good answer. However, through considering the question, I am starting to believe that a good society is one that always allow its people to ask for ‘more’ which will always lead a country to be better.

CONTACT THE AUTHORS Account 1 Kyle Tan, kht5@students.waikato.ac.nz Account 2 Zhiyuan Wang, zw115@students.waikato.ac.nz

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Conference Review

EAP Conference 2018: No Innocent Bystanders: Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse - University of St Andrews, 24 February 2018 Janice Bain

Glasgow International College

One of the interesting features of the annual St Andrews EAP conference are the thoughtprovoking conference titles themselves. This year’s title was no different. “No Innocent Bystanders” with its crime-thriller appeal, juxtaposed with the more prosaic “Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse” immediately intrigued. The pairing is apt as innocence, or neutrality, is not actually what academics want to see in their students’ work.

Dr Zak Lancaster dealt with the expectations of academics in his opening plenary entitled, “Stance and judgment: what discourse analysis can reveal about successful student writing in the disciplines”. These expectations often appear as mystifying paradoxes to students, for example, “take a position and offer judgements – but don’t be biased or judgemental”; “use your own words, your own voice – but don’t be colloquial or too personal.” He demonstrated how using corpus-based linguistic analysis of student writing shows the relationships between patterns of stance expressions and student level (beginning and advanced); disciplinary context; and high- and low-graded papers. More advanced level students and those who receive higher grades show greater contrastiveness (foregrounding problems and disagreements), critical distance, and positive alignment with the concepts and values of their discipline. Zak ended with some recommendations among which was the training of faculty.

Zak had run a workshop where academics with different subject specialisms underwent a consciousness-raising of the stance expressions they valued within their disciplines, and then considered ways to make their expectations explicit for their students.

Anna Murawska, Laura Sleeman and George Stevenson, gave a presentation on “Revealing and developing stance through engaged reading.” They investigated the unwillingness among 28

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students to voice a personal or academic stance, and found the problem stemmed from a general disengagement with the subjects they were studying. Recognising that developing a stance has to be preceded by knowledge about the subject and by exposure to texts demonstrating critical appraisal, they redesigned the early weeks of the EAP syllabus to focus on reading and on reading techniques which encourage a critical engagement and analysis of texts. Activities aimed to identify stance and the mechanics for achieving stance, as well as to encourage a personal response. These techniques were adopted by subject teacher, George, to approach core social science texts.

Jenifer Spencer also prioritised knowledge as the basis for stance development. The answer to the question posed by the title of her presentation, “Teaching stance: is our approach too simplistic?” was clearly “yes”. Pedagogic EAP tasks often encourage students to declare a stance at the outset – “the stampede to stance”, which she equates to presenting a solution before analysing a problem. Other tasks can result in students expressing an evaluative stance without meaning to, which may be because they are unaware of the nuances of meaning of various stance expressions. Instead, teaching should focus on the process of acquiring stance.

This process can be expressed as an “epistemological journey” – where stance is built through gathering, refining, consolidating and synthesising knowledge. Having acquired a stance via this journey, it can be shaped for an audience, and this is where the expression of stance becomes meaningful through language choices.

The contrast between stance expressions used in real lectures and of how they are presented in EAP coursebooks formed the content of Katrien Deroey’s presentation, “Importance marking in lectures: confronting EAP coursebooks with real lectures.” Using lecture corpora Katrien analysed importance markers in 25 commonly-used EAP listening course books and found that they were unrepresentative of authentic lectures and therefore inadequate for preparing students for the challenges of real lectures. Using authentic academic lectures with appropriately scaffolded activities were suggested as a more useful alternative to course books.

The “I” question was raised in many of the presentations and was the main focus of some.

Bella Ruth Reichard in “Who uses “I” and for what purpose?” offered an analysis of how scholars of theology referred to themselves in journal articles and demonstrated how more

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established scholars use more “text-external” references, often in a self-promotional way.

Helen Taylor and John Goodall examined how the genre of writing seems to influence how “I“ is used in “A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of “I” in different genres of successful student academic writing”. These were interesting as they challenged a common belief that “I” should be avoided at all costs and that a less “simplistic” approach is once again needed.

As it is impossible for one person to attend parallel sessions, I apologise for the exclusion of equally stimulating presentations and thank all the presenters for an interesting and rewarding day. An especially big thank you is merited by Kerry Tavakoli and her team for organising this event each year.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR janice.bain@kaplan.com

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Conference Review

EAP Conference 2018: No Innocent Bystanders: Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse - University of St Andrews, 24 February 2018 Getting to Grips with Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse Janice Hinckfuss

University of Leicester Mention St Andrews and most people will think of golf or more recently of where Prince William met Kate. The Northpoint Café in St Andrews is a little more specific, indicating that it is ‘Where Kate Met Wills (for coffee).’ However, visitors from around the world on Saturday February 24 of this year were attracted to St Andrews for reasons other than golf or the chance of a selfie in front of the Northpoint Café sign. The University of St Andrews was hosting the 7th annual EAP Conference, organised by Kerry Tavakoli from English Language Teaching (ELT) which drew attendees from as far afield as Japan, Vietnam and the United States, as well as from Europe and many parts of the UK. Such widespread interest may have been due in part to the conference theme No Innocent Bystanders: Stance and Engagement in Academic Discourse. As Kerry mentions in her Welcome in the online programme, stance and engagement are central to argumentation, yet remain ‘particularly difficult to get to grips with.’ I cannot claim to have ‘fully come to grips’ with the term stance but that is more a personal failing than due to any shortcomings on behalf of the conference presenters who offered interesting and varied perspectives on the idea of stance and engagement.

The following summary includes brief mention of the pre-conference seminar; the plenary Stance and Judgement: What Discourse Analysis Reveals About Successful Student Writing in the Disciplines by Dr Zak Lancaster from Wake Forest University, North Carolina; Stance, structure, and significant others: getting personal about position by Dr Jonathan Leader from Southampton University; Importance marking in lectures: confronting EAP coursebooks with real lectures by Dr Katrien Deroey from the University of Luxembourg and A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’ in different genres of successful student academic writing by Helen Taylor from Coventry University. As with any conference 31

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with parallel sessions, it was not possible to attend all the sessions so my summary can only be partial.

The pre-conference seminar, led by Zak Lancaster, was held on the Friday and was well attended by both conference delegates and the Masters students who were assisting Kerry. It provided an opportunity for a wide-ranging discussion on a number of issues related to stance. Lancaster encouraged active participation by all attendees, starting with the invitation to complete the following sentence: An “academic stance” means adopting a stance in your writing that is ______________, ______________, and ______________. The responses lead to an open-ended discussion that raised other issues related to stance. There was general agreement that more time needs to be dedicated to students learning how to ‘read the genre,’ as well as learning how to ‘write in the genre’ and that there needs to be more of a focus on how stance is realised in the particular genres in which students are writing in their disciplines. Picking up on the theme of the conference, No Innocent Bystanders, there was a reminder that students are not simply learning skills and strategies in the writing classroom but learning ‘habits of mind’ and that it is of vital importance for teachers of writing to understand which ‘habits of mind’ are valued in the disciplines. Towards the end of the seminar, Lancaster displayed a quote from Mary Soliday’s (2011 p.36) Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines: “To judge whether a student fulfils motive, teachers respond to the writer’s presence in a text; the quality of this presence helps them decide whether a student has learned something in the course.” It is a useful exercise to consider how to complete Lancaster’s opening sentence, bearing Soliday’s quote in mind.

In the opening remarks of his plenary, Lancaster listed different terms related to stance ethos, persona, style, voice, identity and positioning - and emphasised the interpersonal meanings associated with stance. In other words, for Lancaster, the linguistic resources that a writer uses influence how the writer projects himself or herself and how the writer projects the reader. Drawing on the work of Systemic Functional Linguists such as Halliday and Martin, Lancaster outlined three different dimensions of stance: epistemic (stance towards the evidence), attitudinal (stance towards ideas) and interactional (stance towards readers and other voices). Based on this understanding, Leader has conducted case studies with academics in Political Theory, Economics and Philosophy at Wake Forest University, to investigate whether a writer’s stance is considered when academics are evaluating argument in student writing. He has found that academics do make judgements of the writer’s stance 32

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but these judgements are often tacit. Using discourse analysis, he has been able to uncover these tacit judgements to reveal a difference between what faculty say they ‘value’ in student writing and what they actually value. For example, when asked what was valued in Philosophy, the professor claimed that a ‘blunt and assertive’ stance was valued. The professor was looking for writing that was ‘concise, direct, assertive and straightforward.’

Lancaster’s analysis showed that in the writing of ‘higher performers,’ hedges were more frequent and dense, objections were entertained tactfully and that the writers projected humility when guiding the reader. The Philosophy professor has responded positively to the research findings and now embraces hedging, providing a list of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hedges to the students. Philosophy is not the only discipline to respond proactively to Lancaster’s research. He is working with academic staff in different disciplines to include writing in their assessment goals and to make their expectations more explicit to students in the assignment briefs and in their evaluation of writing. For readers who are unfamiliar with Lancaster’s work, I have provided two references from the journal Written Communication.

Conference delegates can be quite divided in terms of what they expect from a presentation with some looking for theoretical insights, others for references to follow up and many hoping for something to put into practice on Monday morning. Jonathan Leader’s presentation had ‘something for everyone.’ He provided the theoretical framework for his understanding of stance, explained how his ‘influences’ (Biggs & Collis 1982; Godfrey) shape his classroom practice and detailed how his approach plays out in the classroom.

Echoing Kerry’s observation about the ‘slipperiness’ of stance as a term, Leader believes that it is not easy to formulate the meaning of stance. He believes that it is difficult to ‘pin down’ the meaning of stance because it is bound up with the quality of thinking evident in writing.

Differentiating stance from position, Leader argues that stance emerges from the writer’s position. Elaborating on this idea, he explained how stance reflects certain qualities: evidence-based thinking, independence of thought and an aspiration towards ‘original’ thought or sophisticated thinking. In the classroom, Leader asks students to identify relationships in a text. He asks students to firstly identify the type of relationship – is there agreement (convergence) or disagreement or partial agreement between the views of different authors. The students are then asked to evaluate these relationships and to position their own views in relation to their evaluation. This relative position however, is only a ‘temporary lodging’ prior to students formulating their own stance. It would be remiss of me not to

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mention the eloquent way in which Leader describes textual analysis, referring to ‘authorial geography,’ moving from ‘significant others to making others significant’ and the text as a ‘tangle of potential connections’ to name just a few.

In opening her presentation, Dr Katrien Deroey identified the problems faced by EAP practitioners seeking to provide models of lecture organisation. EAP listening material is rarely similar to academic lectures and commercial textbooks tend to over-simplify the structure and language of lectures which does a disservice to students. In her research of 25 coursebooks and 160 lectures drawn from the British Academic Spoken English corpus, Deroey was interested in the representativeness of language, lecture authenticity and what she refers to as ‘research-informedness.’ Her particular focus in this session was importance markers which she defines as lexicogrammatical devices that overtly indicate the importance of both verbal and visual points. Comparing the type of importance markers in coursebooks with importance markers used in lectures, Deroey identified the following in coursebooks: “The important point is” (21.2%), “I want to stress” (13.5%), “Remember that” (11.5%), “You have to remember” (11.5%) and “It’s important to note that.” In lectures the following were identified: “Remember, notice/note” (33.7%), the point/question is” (20.7%) for highlighting importance and when wanting to be more explicit in indicating importance, lecturers used: “I want to emphasise/stress; (as) I (have) pointed out” (8.9%), “The important/ key point/ thing is (8.2%) and “You have to remember” (5.2%). Summing up, Deroey recommended working with authentic lectures as soon as possible with pre-listening work on vocabulary and content, support through transcripts and skeletal notes, simplifying tasks and incrementally increasing the length of the lectures and the speech rate.

Helen Taylor’s presentation showcased her Masters research which was a response to the Research Question: Does genre affect the function of the first person singular pronoun (I) in successful business student academic writing? Her data was drawn from Successful Writers in the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus which she analysed according to genre and Hyland’s (2002a) pronoun typology. Taylor firstly outlined the different genres examined in her case study and their corresponding central social purpose. For example, she suggests the social purpose of an explanation genre is to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, whereas the social function of a research report, literature survey or a methodology recount is to develop research skills. She then explained how she mapped these genres onto Hyland’s continuum of pronoun use from least powerful authorial presence 34

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(acknowledging support and expressing gratitude) to the most powerful authorial presence (stating results and claims). Taylor pointed to the limited scope of her investigation and thus the tentative nature of any conclusions, although she did offer teaching implications. Firstly, she suggests students learn to be discourse analysts ‘lite’ and secondly, she recommends that in-sessional courses be taught according to genre.

The concluding comments made by Lancaster in relation to stance at the end of the conference are worth considering. As has been mentioned above, it is important to determine the sorts of stance that are valued in the field and for students to learn how to identify stance in assignment prompts. However, the focus needs to be on reading as well as writing. To that end, classroom practice should include drawing attention to instances in the reading material where the writer’s stance is effectively stated. Lancaster also recommends providing samples and encouraging students to ‘play with stance’ by rewriting a piece adopting a different stance.

After the conference, I took the bus to Leuchars railway station. When looking for the connecting bus at the bus station, I saw that it was leaving from Stance 11. Well, that certainly got me thinking all over again about stance and engagement. Attending a conference can unsettle your thinking, raising more questions than providing answers. In that way, a conference keeps conversations about ideas alive and evolving.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR jah107@leicester.ac.uk

References Aull, L. & Lancaster, Z. 2014. Linguistic Markers of Stance in Early and Advanced Academic Writing: A Corpus-based Comparison. Written Communication, 31 (2) pp.151183.

Hyland, K. 2002. Authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics 34 pp.1091-1112.

Lancaster, Z. 2014. Exploring Valued Patterns of Stance in Upper-Level Student Writing in the Disciplines. Written Communication, 31 (1) pp. 27-57 Soliday, M. 2011. Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments across the Diciplines. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.

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ISEJ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; International Student Experience Journal

Volume 6, Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2018

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT EXPERIENCE JOURNAL Call for Papers Deadline for submissions to the Autumn/Winter Issue is 30th November 2018 For submissions and submission guidelines please visit our website http://isejournal.weebly.com

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ISEJ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; International Student Experience Journal

Volume 6, Issue 1 - Spring/Summer 2018

ISSN 2397-3072

The International Student Experience Journal is a peerreviewed online publication for those involved in researching, teaching and providing services to international students in Higher Education in the UK and other English speaking countries. The Journal links the everyday concerns of university staff including academics, researchers, EAP practitioners and the students themselves with insights gained from related academic disciplines such as applied linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology.

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