title: Adventures into the Unknown: The Lived Experience of East Asian International Students as Foreign-Accented Speakers in Australian Higher Education
Creators: name: Park, Eunjae
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: International students
subject: Higher education
subject: Lived experience
subject: East Asian
subject: Foreign-accented speakers

description: A large number of international students in higher education speak English as their second (L2) or even third language and their levels of proficiency vary. Much of the focus in higher education research and public attention to these students has been high-stakes language proficiency, implying that the responsibility for declining academic standards is assigned to these students. However, in the dominant language context, where L2 students need to live and study through an unfamiliar language, the problem is not simply how competent they are with the language. They encounter challenges related to being different as they become part of a social minority. In particular, the way they use the language can produce adverse social consequences (e.g., accent stereotypes and linguistic discrimination), creating “walls” that may preclude the students from accessing their fundamental rights to be heard, understood, and endorsed. By shifting attention from L2 students’ language proficiency to their use of language in a new social and cultural context, this study focuses on a specific phenomenon—being a foreign-accented speaker—which is largely missing from scholarly and public discussions. Concentrating on the largest student cohort in Australian higher education, this study investigates the lived experience of East Asian international students as foreign-accented speakers. These students can encounter accent-related linguistic challenges at two different levels: (a) communication barriers caused by their accented English and that of their interlocutors, and (b) the experiences of stereotypes and discrimination. These challenges are often accompanied by a wide range of emotional distress such as loss of confidence in their linguistic abilities, communication anxiety, depression, social isolation, and so forth. In this sense, being a foreign-accented speaker is a commonly practised social role for these students in the dominant language context. Therefore, this study aims to expose the uniqueness of the students’ study journey as they experience the everydayness of being a foreign-accented speaker and how they come to understand the demands of having a different accent from the native speaker norms. Using pragmatism as an overarching framework, this study adopted a mixed methods phenomenological research approach. In order to reach a deeper understanding of the essence of being a foreign-accented speaker and to enlarge the interpretation of the students’ experience, this combined a survey of the student group enrolled at the selected university, followed by a series of semi-structured interviews. The quantitative preliminary phase served as a vehicle to develop the phenomenological orientation to make sure the most relevant and interesting phenomenon was chosen for this mixed-methods phenomenological research study. The follow-up interviews developed an in-depth understanding of how participating students constructed the meaning of their experiential world as an accented speaker. Issues ranged from the immediate challenges of being an accented speaker upon arrival in Australia to a survival point where they sought out strategies to be brave and make lasting and meaningful differences in their life at the university. The initial survey captured the experiences of 306 participants enrolled at the selected university. For close-ended responses, descriptive statistics were used to profile the target group and find out common, interesting, and unexpected experiences of participants. For open-ended responses, thematic analysis was applied to account for strategies deployed to overcome barriers associated with accented English. Interview data collected from five participants were analysed following van Manen’s phenomenological method. The analysis revealed their journey as an L2 accented speaker can be traced through a four-stage process: (a) surprise, (b) anticlimax, (c) learning to survive, and (d) feeling empowered. The first two themes refer to a period wherein participants experienced unexpected turns and high levels of stress and anxiety in an attempt to fit into the new university settings. The last two themes refer to a period where their challenges turned into a deep motivation to develop abilities at a survival point with increased confidence and adaptability and which strongly reflected their new identity as an L2 speaker. The results of this mixed methods phenomenological research, through the exploration of the lived experience of L2 East Asian students, provide insight that could inform future policy and practice in this area. The increased awareness provided by this study, of this previously under-researched aspect of the linguistic experience of L2 students, is a potentially valuable contribution to higher education policy and management. Enhanced understanding of these students’ transition experiences is crucial in re-developing pedagogies for effective engagement of these students in their learning environments. Further, the research can inform a rethink of university support services and training programs for the assistance of future international students as well as preparation of university staff members to create more equitable and welcoming campus environments. In addition, the findings of this study are of significance as they highlight future research possibilities in international higher education, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), intercultural communication, and World Englishes.