Complaints and troubles talk about the English language skills of international students in Australian universities

ABSTRACT

International students have continued to be the focus of simplistic stereotyping in media discourse where they are frequently identified as one of the forces behind declining academic standards in Australian universities. Their English language skills, in particular, have continued to be the focus of debate both in the mainstream media and in higher education research and policy. It is argued in this paper, however, that such debates do not sufficiently acknowledge the moral and affective complexity of the so-called ‘English problem’ amongst international students in Australian universities. Drawing from an analysis of small group interviews with international students, domestic students and university staff, the beliefs and experiences of various parties about the English language skills of international students are examined. A key finding from this analysis is that the English language skills of international students, and their concomitant interactions with others, can be the object of both complaints and troubles talk. These complaints or troubles can be either ratified or resisted by those participants. The difficulties international students may experience in using English thus have complex moral and affective consequences. The way in which the so-called English problem in Australian universities is generally couched as one of objective, measurable deficiency on the part of international students arguably neglects the moral and affective complexity of the difficulties facing international students. This neglect leads, in turn, to an impoverished understanding of the English language capabilities of international students.

KEYWORDS:

• Complaint
• English proficiency
• higher education
• identity
• international students
• troubles talk

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The author has taught international students both in English language courses and in classes in linguistics where they are part of a larger cohort involving local students. He has also been an international student himself in the past, studying in a second language in Japan.

2. The author would like to thank Louie Dragut for his assistance in identifying these initial themes.

3. Only those themes that were found to recurrently occur across the interviews were included. Frequency counts are not included, however, as the sample size was not deemed large enough to warrant generalisations across stakeholders in the higher education sector. The aim of this section is thus to illustrate the kinds of complaints and troubles raised by the participants, not to make claims about the extent to which these might occur across larger populations.

4. Participants in the small group interviews are identified as follows: the interviewer is identified by ‘I'; international students are identified by codes for nationality (HK: Hong Kong; K: Korean; J: Japanese; C: Mainland Chinese; T: Taiwanese; R: Russian) and number (e.g., HK1); academics are coded by ‘A' and number (e.g., A1), and local students are coded ‘LS' and by number (e.g., LS1).

5. See Haugh (2015) for further elaboration of this theme.