The Intercultural Dimensions of Reading in English as an Additional Language: Multilingual Doctoral Students’ Experiences

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring the Academic Literacy Practices of Multilingual Readers and Writers in Higher Education Contexts (Table 7)

Abstract

Most international graduate students in the U.S. are expected to build their disciplinary knowledge through heavy academic reading demands, considerable text complexity and variety, and high stakes literacy practices; yet little research exists on these most advanced L2 readers of English (Goldenberg, 2020; Grabe, 2009). Moreover, the importance of culture in writing but not reading has received widespread attention as educators and students may not easily recognize reading issues and identify the intercultural dimensions at play (Hirvela, 2016; Sharp, 2010).

To address these gaps, this multiple case study rooted in an intercultural rhetoric framework (Connor, 2011) explored the academic reading practices and perspectives of international doctoral students to investigate the intercultural dimensions of academic reading in English as an additional language. The participants were four international doctoral students from diverse linguistic backgrounds (i.e., Indonesia, South Korea, Iran, and Morocco) studying in an Education doctoral program in the United States. Reading surveys, reading artifacts, stimulated recall, letters of advice, and semi-structured interviews were collected, and data were analyzed using grounded theory (Charmaz, 2001) and emotive coding (Kleres, 2011), as participants’ affective experiences became an entry point into their L2 reading practices and perspectives.

Findings indicated that as already highly literate, quite accomplished individuals in their L1/C1 academic discourse communities, these most advanced L2 readers entered doctoral programs with assumptions, expectations, and approaches informed by the literacy practices of their home cultural contexts. As a result of these well-established preconceived notions of reading, they often met differences in cultural norms regarding the topics of texts, how they were structured, and how they were expected to engage with them. Moreover, prior experience influenced their reading experiences in complex ways, including exposure to the English language, academic English reading, the academic context, and intercultural experiences. Overall, these international doctoral student readers navigated complex intercultural differences beyond linguistic and structural features of texts as they negotiated different disciplinary norms for engaging with them.

Implications for educators and students are drawn from the participants’ agentive and innovative ways of negotiating cultural tensions to situate themselves as authoritative readers and competent emerging scholars in their fields. For example, too often professors have implicit assumptions about reading that are not articulated, so it is essential that they unpack their expectations for how to read and respond to them. Also, professors need to provide more scaffolded opportunities for students to build their cultural schemata as this was the most prevalent challenge reported. Lastly, it may be beneficial to create spaces for doctoral students to share the diverse ways they respond to reading challenges, which can increase their social reading capital (Compton-Lilly, 2007).

This multiple case study builds an argument for looking at a wider range of literacy practices through an intercultural lens. A research agenda foregrounding the reading side of intercultural rhetoric could equip researchers and practitioners with practical tools to understand how readers successfully draw upon their cultural and linguistic resources as they shuttle between learned and new literacy practices (Ene et al., 2019).

Author

• Tamara M. Roose, California State University - San Bernardino