Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Geography Matters: Space and Identity in the International Student Experience

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The international student experience can be characterised by a sense of being “in-between”: in between childhood and adulthood; in between dependence and independence and of being between cultures. Although the desire to explore the new environment can mitigate negative feelings, a prolonged sense of in-betweenness can become a burden, and individuals may feel a sense of non-belonging or outsidedness.

International students are physically distanced from their established sources of social support, and relationships from home may diminish with distance and time. Meanwhile, although the desire to build friendships is strong, frequently the opportunities to develop supportive relationships are missed, as individuals may struggle with language or acculturation.

Moreover while students gain confidence and competence in interacting with the host culture, they may find diminished opportunities to integrate as friendships groups have formed and settled around them during the initial buzz. As a result, research suggests that international students often inhabit a “third space," juxtaposed alongside the host culture, while at the same time, isolated from it.

There is a need to explore the space that international students create for themselves to ensure that they are getting access to the right support.

Recentering relationships in the international student experience

International students contribute billions of pounds to the UK economy and sustain thousands of jobs. However, the challenges that international students experience are significant and little research has been carried out into this diverse group of people.

The international student experience is situated during a period of life (the ages of 18-25) that is characterised by change, and many of life's most important experiences occur during this period, particularly changes in relationships. A way of understanding the international student experience is by looking at the types of relationships that individuals have during this period.

One of the most fundamental changes of this age group is the renegotiation of relationships from dependence (on family) to independence. Tanner calls this process recentering.

Recentering is a framework for understanding the process of relying on family to becoming independent. It is a three-stage framework where individuals first begin making new relationships with those around them. Secondly, individuals engage in activities typical of this age group (ie. frequent partners, changes in jobs, full-time study, frequently moving house). Finally, individuals start making the long-term connections that will stay with them for the rest of their lives (ie. getting married, getting a stable job and settling down).

Obviously, each individual's experience is unique. For students coming to study in the UK, they are negotiating their independence while also negotiating the transition to a foreign culture, often in a second language, and many may not make a comfortable transition. There is a need to look at how international students develop supportive relationships during their sojourn.

International Students and Social Networks

I recently presented a poster presentation at the HEA conference in Manchester on an abridged version of my MA dissertation. This had grown out of looking at my own students and wondering what on earth goes on when they arrive in the UK.

International students are an interesting group when looking at how humans develop social networks. They arrive in a new country, often without having a mastery of the local language, knowing noone and they are distanced from their established forms of social support. Since social support is important in the academic and emotional wellbeing of students, surely it would be interesting to see how students develop networks when they arrive in the UK.

So I surveyed some of my own students .. I asked them who they went to for different types of support, and which medium they used. The results showed (my poster is attached below in A1 size) that:

  • The students in the sample were an isolated group - with on average only 9.03 connections
  • Cross cultural connections were rare - students tended to establish connections with people from their own culture
  • Students tended to maintain relationships from home rather than develop new connections in-country.

Click here to download:
HEAposter.ppt (534 KB)
(download)
This was only a small survey, but I hope to scale it up so I can get some more definitive hyptheses. I think it's important to look at the way students develop networks, since this can inform how we plan student support. Although there are huge differences in the experiences of indiviual students, it is still good to look for patterns.

Dictation activities

I've recently been asked to teach a class of students to prepare them for the new Pearson PTE (Academic) exam. I am a little unfamiliar with the test as it is a computer-based one, and there are very few example tests that I can look at.

Nevertheless, from what I have seen, the task types are extremely clear. In the speaking part for example, the task types include reading aloud, listen and repeat, describing an image, re-telling a lecture (a summary) and answering a short question. These are not particularly communicative tasks and standard classroom practices such as pair work and group work (ie. speaking tasks that involve more than one people) are not always the most effective preparation. The challenge therefore is to provide students with some fun, engaging and effective practice tasks. I use dictation a lot as it is a powerful way to integrate grammar and vocabulary with speaking and listening.

Dictation has had a pretty bad press, and any mention of it may send people quivering in horror at the thought of having to write down scores of lines of text. However, this is not the case, and there are a variety of dictation tasks that can make the class fun, show a good model of language, and form the basis of effective language practice for students.

I've collated some tasks that I have been using with my students to prepare them for the Pearson exam.

Example tasks

  1. Dictogloss (prepares students for re-telling a lecture)

A dictogloss is a type of dictation where the teacher reads a text, which students have to make notes of and then recreate using their own words. The purpose is to have students "notice" grammar or vocabulary, or other stylistic feature of a text. Teachers and students can analyse the text for structure, or any salient language points that are a feature of lectures (lectures are usually highly structured).

      2. Mutual dictation

This is where students dictate to each other. I do this by giving students half a text each, and have them read their parts of the text to each other in order to complete a coherent whole. They can do this by either summarising their part of the text, or by reading the text aloud to their partner. This can also be done with dates, numbers, telephone numbers, addresses ... anything that a student may need to write down from speech.

      3.  Text to graph

This is another pairwork task. One student is given a description of a graph or an image, while the other has an incomplete image. The speaker reads aloud (or summarises) their text, while the listener has to complete the image they have. This works well with graphs, tables or charts.

      4. Running dictation

Straight from the CELTA handbook. Texts are posted on the wall around the classroom. Students (working in pairs) take in turns to read the text, remember it, tell it to their partner who writes it down. This can be done with single sentences, or longer texts where speakers have to summarise what they read.

      5. Stop/rewind/repeat

The teacher reads a text at a normal speed. Students have to listen and write down what the teacher says. If they need to go over part of it again, they ask the teacher to stop, rewind and repeat, each time the teacher speaking at normal speed (clear but not too slow, using features of connected speech). The teacher can be replaced with a CD (but the controls will be the same).

      6. Picture dictations

Similar to text-to-graph, both partners have images, which they describe to each other while their partner draws it. Students may need preparation time before dictating.

      7. Error dictation

Students are given a text which has a number of errors in it. The speaker reads the text aloud, while the listener has to read and correct the mistakes. This can be done as a type of paired dictation, where one partner has the original, or it can be done as a whole class dictation (the teacher reads aloud, or uses the CD).

      8. Gap fill dictation

Similar to the error dictation, but instead of an error, there is a gap.

      9. Phonemic dictation

Not a particularly good name, but an effective way of practising using connected speech. Students are given short sentences written in phonemic script. Students read aloud what they see (including obviously all the features of connected speech such as assimilation, catenation etc.) while their partner writes it down. This could be done as a running dictation, too.

      10. Retelling

Students are given a text (for example, a joke or a story) which they tell a partner (who writes down a summary). They then change partners and continue telling the same story to different students until there is no need for reading aloud, as students have (hopefully) remembered the text that they are telling.

     11. Dictate vocabulary

The teacher reads out sentences, or short complete texts, which contain new vocabulary. Students write the sentences down (inferring the spelling from the dictation) before using a dictionary to find the definitions. This mirrors the way that students encounter new vocabulary in everyday life - as it is a very lucky language learner who is presented with all new words before they engage in a conversation with a native speaker.

      12. Mark the punctuation

Students are given a text with no punctuation. The teacher reads the text aloud, and students have to infer what punctuation goes where. This highlights how punctuation reflects the pauses and changes in intonation in connected speech. Since the PTE Academic is a computerised test, students need to have good punctuation as the computer relies on punctuation to analyse the complexity of the language (using its top secret algorithm).

Secretary-and-boss-008

That's enough to be getting with I think. Sometimes I like to put music on in the background for paired dictations, while sometimes I get students to sit really far apart from each other, so they have to speak audibly and clearly to their partner. Dictation can be used to liven up a sleep class, or calm a lively class and a good dictatist (dictator?) can exude a calm authority over the class. If anyone has any other ideas, or improvements on these ideas, then let me know.

Further reading

Ruth Wajnryb's "Dictogloss" is a good book on using dictation to teach grammar. Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis wrote an excellent book on dictation about 20 years ago.

Popular Patterns of Texts in Academic Writing

Academic writing is a complex process, however, even articles on the most complex themes often follow very simple structures. One of the most common structures in both journal articles and essay writing is the problem-solution structure (perhaps, as Freire points out, because of the Western habit of problematising everything.)

The problem solution follows a fluid Situation-Problem-Response-Evaluation structure, where each section of the structure has a distinct function:

  • Situation - Details the participants, the location and the time with (often) an indication of the problem-solution structure
  • Problem - A descripton of the problem
  • Response - A description of a response
  • Evaluation - Says whether the response works or not

Though this is particularly common in academic writing it is also found elsewhere as in the advert below:

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The advert is aimed at women in the UK (situation), and the problem is "bad hair". A solution is provided (ie. Timotei) and this is positively evaluated (naturally, since it is an advert).

How does this relate to essay writing?

The awareness that even complex texts follow a simple structure can be enlightening for students. Moreover, such a framework can help inexperienced writers structure their essays (and IELTS writing tasks) clearly and logically.  

One particularly useful aspect of these structures is the idea of lexical cohesion in problem-solution texts. That is, experienced writers clearly signal the different stages of the problem-solution structure using nouns (often) or other markers that signal a problem that needs tackled, and a response to this need.

Words that indicate a problem

need, difficulty, challenge, problem, risk, danger

Words that indicate a response

way, method, measure, means, approach, response, model

The example below shows an abstract for an article from a medical journal which clearly signals a problem-solution structure:

Probsol
I like to emphasise these signals to my students in order to help them scaffold their essays clearly, and to have them impose clear structures in their writing. In short essays, I feel, no topic sentence should be without an indication of a problem or solution.

I have had very positive results teaching this structure with my students. Our assessments reflect this theory in that students are explicitly asked to write a problem-solution essay, and the good students clearly signal their ideas. This also has a positive impact on their critical thinking as students can positively or negatively evaluate various solutions to a given problem. Using a simple framework such as this can free students to engage in engaging in higher order thinking.

Rhetorical Moves in Academic Writing

Writing an essay is a complex process, and as teachers of academic writing, we require our students to make sophisticated rhetorical moves in their essays, asking them to, in a foreign language, synthesise ideas, identify problems, make connections between abstract concepts and real life examples all from a variety of sources.

The academic genre, however, has developed its own ways of making rhetorical moves which are fairly standard. EAP teachers can take advantage of this to help students identify and apply rhetorical moves in their thinking and writing.

I like to be clear with my students, and I use a framework developed by Drown and Riedner to help students identify rhetorical moves in academic arguments. These templates are useful because they provide a scaffold for inexperienced writers for support. As students' linguistic and intellectual competence develops, they take ownership of the language and move beyond the support. Though this takes time, as students become more expert at identifying rhetorical moves, so they become more critical of others' and their own ideas.

Examples of rhetorical moves include:

Justifying an approach: 

  • I approach [my topic] by ______ to support and expand points about the significance of ____
  • This approach allos us to see evidence regarding _________, prompting further questions about _________

Identifying a complication

  • This explanation gets us [only so far] as [evidence] does not fit in to this explanation. Consequently, [reformulate the argument]
  • The case is not so simple, rather _________

Reformulating arguments

  • Although this term is often understood [in this way], in the context it means more [more complex, more nuanced, specific thing]
  • While [situation], in my context [slightly different situation]

Moving from the general to the specific

  • [Problem x] is a significant challenge, particularly [for specific focus]

Identifying a counterclaim

  • [Writer] claims that [idea]. However, in fact, [evidence] shows that this is not entirely true.
  • While some evidence suggests [one thing], others claim that [other thing]

Teaching tips:

  1. Students categorise the moves (for example, where in an essay might you expect to find these moves?)
  2. Students identify moves in a text/argument. Students read an article and find examples of various moves in a text (and make a note of the language used).
  3. Students write their own simple rhetorical moves.
  4. Students rewrite a text,applying some rhetorical moves to arguments.