Exploring the Bilingual Linguistic Functioning of First-Semester Chinese International Students

Abstract

Bilingual international students’ ability to function linguistically has been found to be closely associated with their academic performance (Karuppan & Barari, 2010; Rowntree, Zufferey, & King, 2016) and social adjustment (Andrade, 2006; Yeh & Inose, 2003). While most previous research has focused on the language and education experiences of graduate international students (e.g., Cheng & Erben, 2011; Jiang, 2014; Lin, 2006; Xue, 2013), it remains unclear how undergraduate students, especially newly-arrived college freshmen, function linguistically during their transnational, translingual, and transcultural experiences. Drawing upon Bioecological Model of Human Development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985), this one-semester-long qualitative study explored the linguistic functioning and first-semester college experiences of twelve international freshmen from China. The guiding research questions were: (1) How did the twelve Chinese international students from different disciplines function linguistically in academic and social settings at the beginning of their first semester in college? (2) How did they meet the oral and written linguistic demands in academic and social settings throughout the semester? (3) What has changed regarding their linguistic functioning over the course of one semester? The participants were twelve first-semester Chinese international freshmen majoring in eight disciplines. Multi-modal data were collected through a combination of a 4-month digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) using a culturally-relevant social media application software WeChat, along with traditional qualitative data collection methods including semi-structured interviews, bilingual language logs, writing samples across genres, talks around texts, and informal communication. Three themes emerged based on data analyzed following applied thematic analysis (Guest, MacQueen, & Namey, 2012), including linguistic functioning in academic and social settings, the students’ coping strategies initiated, and their perceptions of support received. While the students’ previous language and education backgrounds played an important role in their ability to function linguistically in college, internal factors such as motivation and agency also helped to shape their first-semester college experiences. Although Chinese was frequently adopted as a bridging tool earlier in the semester, its popularity naturally decreased overtime throughout the semester. In questioning eight commonly held misconceptions, this dissertation has unpacked the within-group variability and tensions among Chinese international students and drawn attention to their initial transitional, translingual, and transcultural experiences from a developmental perspective. Based on the findings, I present (1) suggestions on how American higher education could better serve the unique linguistic and academic needs of its growing international student population to facilitate their long-term success, (2) implications on research methodology, and (3) directions for future research.