Qianqian Zhang-Wu – författare

Higher education institutions in Anglophone countries often rely on standardized English language proficiency exams to assess the linguistic capabilities of their multilingual international students. However, there is often a mismatch between these scores and the initial experiences of international students in both academic and social contexts. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Chinese international students’ first semester languaging practices, this book examines their challenges, needs and successes on their initial languaging journeys in higher education. It analyzes how they use their rich multilingual and multi-modal communicative repertories to facilitate languaging across contexts, in order to suggest how university support systems might better serve the needs of multilingual international students.

Higher education institutions in Anglophone countries often rely on standardized English language proficiency exams to assess the linguistic capabilities of their multilingual international students. However, there is often a mismatch between these scores and the initial experiences of international students in both academic and social contexts. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Chinese international students’ first semester languaging practices, this book examines their challenges, needs and successes on their initial languaging journeys in higher education. It analyzes how they use their rich multilingual and multi-modal communicative repertories to facilitate languaging across contexts, in order to suggest how university support systems might better serve the needs of multilingual international students.

While substantial research has looked backward at the colonial history of language and forward to the potential of decolonizing English for linguistic justice, there is a lack of investigation looking inward at the lived raciolinguistic experiences of multilingual scholars. This edited collection opens a healing space for storytelling and deepens readers'' understanding of raciolinguistics in practice through autoethnography. The book brings together language education researchers and scholars, with each author representing and in contact with multiple cultural, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Together they create a community of practice to bring scholars with diverse backgrounds together for inward reflections on their lived raciolinguistic experiences. Through this journey, the book empowers both the chapter contributors and readers and allies who may see themselves in the stories to reflect, learn and change their practices, and provides valuable insights into raciolinguistics and autoethnography as a research method.