Six Brandeis University student researchers collaborated with Hub director Leigh Swigart, seeking to shed light on how international students live their linguistic lives on our campus. A central question for the study was “how do international students use all the linguistic resources at their disposal and respond to language challenges and opportunities, in both their academic and social lives, in a space that is predominantly English-speaking?”

Multilingual Life on a Monolingual Campus was enhanced by running in parallel with similar studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, under the direction of Agnes Bodis, and the University of Birmingham in the UK, led by Hub member Karen McAuliffe. Both of these institutions, like Brandeis, are English-dominant spaces with large international student populations. The LCJ Hub acted as the coordinator of this multi-country study. The Brandeis student research team interacted online with the other teams, shared ideas for the survey design and the subsequent interview process, and compared their results.

The Brandeis team’s final report outlines the project’s findings on the language experiences of international students, both in learning and social spaces. We found, for example, that students whose first language is not English are too often viewed through a deficit perspective; in other words, they tend to be seen as deficient English speakers rather than students whose diverse linguistic, cultural and educational backgrounds could enrich the the classroom setting and the entire campus community more generally. Another section of the report discusses how speakers of “other Englishes”  — i.e., students from English-speaking countries of the Global South — navigate their linguistic lives. We also delve into seemingly ill-informed policies around English-language proficiency exams, some of which may be rooted in unconscious or unacknowledged raciolinguistic ideologies. The report ends by suggesting several ways in which Brandeis might create a more welcoming and productive environment for the international and multilingual members of our community.

Although this report is particular to Brandeis University, our research team believes that its findings may be relevant to many educational institutions with large international student populations, especially those located in countries with a monolingual mindset.

Download the full report here (30 pages). Comments and queries may be sent to [email protected].