Challenges that Students Face

At the heart of this research project is the need to amplify the various challenges that English language learning students face in their writing education at SCU. These challenges are just a few of the many that I spoke with students about (and the ones that I wanted to highlight for this website.) For many students, talking about these challenges was difficult. Often, my interviews got uncomfortable and students tended to get shy about talking about challenges in their education. For a myriad of reasons, asking for help from professors with these challenges can be daunting for students–and especially for students newer to campus or the United States, asking for help from professors can feel impossible. These are the challenges that students spoke to me about and came up again and again in my interviews...

Frustrating Grading

This is just one example of conversations I have had with students. Everyone, across the board, wanted to do well in their courses. But for students who are learning English, frustrating experiences like these have the potential to be really quite impactful. Student 5 from China expressed how demoralizing it was to be receiving the same grade, over and over again from their professor.

Accented English

Accented English was a central theme in many of my interviews. Students often expressed how they could see professors and students treating them differently based on their accents. Specifically, accents changed others' perceptions of fluency and nativeness–which can obviously be pretty damaging in the classroom. And this common theme of accented English and perceptions of skill level can lead to feelings of otherness or shame…

Feelings of Shame

A lot of the difficulty in recruiting students for interviews, probing questions about experiences at SCU, and asking about uncomfortable anecdotes is based on feelings of shame associated with English language learning. One student I interviewed was a writing partner at the HUB and spoke about their difficult experiences with students apologizing for their writing or their mistakes before the tutoring session even started.

Please consider checking out 'Writing Across Borders' a film produced by Oregon State University that considers international student experiences. Click below! ↓

Writing Across BordersWriting Across Borders is a film for anyone who works with international students in a writing environment. Its purpose is not to provide easy answers but rather to consider day-to-day practices in new ways. Through interviews with students and professionals in the field, the film encourages us to ask the following questions: How does culture play out in writing, and how are our expectations shaped by cultural preferences? How do we assess international student writing when we have to grade it alongside the writing of native speakers? And how can we think about surface errors in a fair and constructive manner? What kinds of teaching and testing practices disadvantage international students and which help them improve as writers?

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