As regards the complexities of the international participants’ linguistic backgrounds discussed in chapter 3, two thirds of them were either from America or the UK, and had English as their first language. The remaining third had communicative spoken fluency in English. Therefore, the term ‘language issues’ in this section refers specifically to the difficulties faced by the international students in communicating with native Chinese, and also in taking part in extracurricular activities. Although the language training programme endowed them with a basic command of and competence in Chinese, this was far from enough to allow them to have good interactions with Chinese students. Therefore, to make sense of this substantial barrier which was faced by the majority of international participants is to shed new light on their satisfaction with the degree of their integration into the host institution. My thematic analysis shows that issues associated with lack of language proficiency were manifested in the following two areas: 1) difficulty in negotiating participation into the host institution; and, 2) difficulty in establishing relationships with home students.
The issue of L2 learners’ participation and socialisation in the new academic community is closely related to important issues such as competence, agency, and access (Duff, 2002; Norton & Toohey, 2002), amongst which linguistic competence must be foregrounded, as it endowed learners with “the ability to apply knowledge of the rules of a standard version of the language to produce and interpret spoken and written language” (Byram, 1997, p. 48). In other words, insufficient language proficiency may increase learners’ difficulty in negotiating their participation in institutional activities. This phenomenon was manifested in this study by the hesitance of the international students to actively participate in extracurricular activities as a result of their lack of linguistic competence:
If you join extracurricular activities, that’s quite difficult, because there is a language barrier, because when you join an extracurricular course which is in Chinese, it’s a little bit difficult to move your way around it. (Michelle)
Similarly, imperfect Chinese proficiency reduces international students’ willingness to take an active part in institutional activities to a large extent. As Dasha remarked:
But I think not so many foreign students were interested in such activities, because their Chinese was not proficient enough to understand those activities and to communicate with local students in those clubs. However, for those students who are taking actual courses or doing master’s here, they may benefit more from joining those clubs and associations, not only for improving their Chinese, but also for making more friends. (Dasha)
This critical condition was also perceived by some of the Chinese master’s students, who also pointed to a lack of language competence as the main hindrance that created foreign students’ reluctance to participate in such institutional activities as the language partner programme:
也跟汉语水平有关，像初级的学生都不报语伴项目，因为她们觉得自己 有了语伴也没法跟她们练习汉语，因为自己水平还不够，所以通常报语 伴项目的还是中高级的学生比较多. (Wu)
It is just mainly because of the language proficiency that did not allow them to join in the language partner programme. For those students in primary-level class, seldom did they show any interest in that, as they felt that lack of language competence prevented them from practising Chinese with local students. (Wu)
In addition, some of the international students also attributed their failure to gain full membership of the host institution to the ‘language barrier’. As Michelle claimed:
I find they don’t encourage me to become a part of the university, which is quite sad. I think again it’s mainly the language barrier, because they have a website with all the columns written in Chinese, so it’s quite difficult to navigate the way around it. And then when you do like all the people in the
club, the club site is in Chinese, so it’s mainly just the language issue. (Michelle)
Overall, as the above discussion indicates, many of the international students’ intention to enact their personal agency in response to the new sociocultural or pedagogical contexts was considerably constrained by their lack of language proficiency. According to Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001), agency arises out of a constant coconstruction and renegotiation with those around the individual and with the society at large. From the critical discourse perspective, individuals are accorded agency to resist being positioned marginally in dominant discourses and to fashion alternative subject positions that fulfill their goals and purposes (Canagarajah, 1999; McKay & Wong, 1996; Rampton, 1995). However, a lack of language competence increased the risk of impeding overseas students from exercising their personal agency, which, as a result, gave rise to their minimal participation and their occupying a relatively peripheral position in the new academic discourse.
Such findings indicate that linguistic competence, which Byram (1997, p. 48) defined as “the ability to apply knowledge of the rules of a standard version of the language to produce and interpret spoken and written language”, constitutes the fundamental skill needed for foreign students to become fully involved in institutional activities. Consequently, the lack of such skill limits their ability to benefit from opportunities to integrate with home students.
6.1.2 Difficulty in establishing relationships
According to Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence, linguistic abilities are closely associated with mutual understanding and effective negotiation in intercultural encounters. Findings from my study also suggest that most of the international participants ascribed their difficulty in affiliating with Chinese students to a lack of language proficiency. Olivia, for instance, elucidated how language incompetence thwarted her expectation that she would make friends with Chinese people:
I was expecting to make friends with a lot more Chinese people, but it has been a lot harder than I thought. I think it is because of the language, because my Chinese…it’s a hard language. So, I never got improved to the point of fluency while I was here, but it {speaking Chinese} is a lot more challenging than I was hoping it would be when I was in China. (Olivia)
Some even indicated that poor Chinese proficiency hindered their willingness to spontaneously communicate with the home students, which, as a result, reduced their confidence in initiating an intercultural relationship:
Also, I can’t enter a lot of Chinese students; they probably don’t want to become friends with someone whose Chinese isn’t fluent or very good. Then I can’t have a conversation in Chinese, but I can understand what a lot of Chinese people probably think, it’s quite annoying being a friend of mine, because when I speak Chinese I have to speak quite slowly or speak very basic sentences. (Struan)
According to Struan, having a better command of the host language was a prerequisite for adjusting to the new learning and living environment:
I think obviously through language, improving language makes it easier, if you can say more to people around you, you feel more at home. If you can’t speak to anyone, you feel by yourself and you are not relaxed. (Struan)
Struan’s feeling was further confirmed by those participants who had taken the advanced level language training programme, and, therefore, showed better adaptation to the new living environment, as Dasha admitted that advancement in language competency enabled her to better communicate with people beyond the campus:
I am in the advanced level, so I know how to communicate with local people, such as the staff in the shops, or in the transport. (Dasha)
Dasha’s feeling was echoed by Ben, who also asserted that moving to an advanced level boosted his interest in exploring more about Chinese culture and history:
I think before when I was in the intermediate level of Chinese, it’s sometimes quite difficult to keep studying. Because I find when I look at a book or a newspaper, and watch a film, I still don’t quite know exactly what they are saying, so my listening skills and reading skills did not improve too much. There were still a lot I don’t really understand. But I think when you study in the advanced level of Chinese, now I feel it much more interesting. I can read maybe an interesting book, like I read the book ‘Leifeng—The Son of Labors’, and watching some Chinese films or some TV series, so it’s a lot more fun and interesting. (Ben)
Looking through the data set, there seems to be a strong relationship between language competence and the feeling of affiliation and intimacy, as the international participants consecutively revealed their sentiment of frustration, lack of confidence to communicate, and even the sense of being isolated, which to a large extent, they attributed to their insufficient command of the host language. That situation conforms to Gatbonton and Trofimovich’s (2008) study, which documented a close relation between L2 proficiency and a positive orientation towards the L2 group. However, this study has extended their finding by showing how language proficiency fostered international students’ better integration into the host community.
Correspondingly, reflections from the international students’ Chinese counterparts also gave priority to the influence that language exerted on constructing intercultural relationships. From Jiang’s point of view, most intercultural misunderstandings can be attributed to the interlocutor’s lack of Chinese proficiency:
语言还是一个很重要的因素，虽然说它不是最重要的，语言一定会阻碍 你的交流，或者说你不是这个意思，然后他就觉得你可能是这个意思。 (Jiang)
Sometimes they took from my words a completely different meaning that created misunderstanding between us, so I think language still plays an important role in interacting with foreign students. (Jiang)
Similarly, from the perspective of the Chinese participants, their lack of English proficiency to some extent undermined their self-confidence in intercultural encounters and thereby reduced their willingness to communicate with the overseas students in their department.
其实我觉得我来了之后好像也没有那么强烈的和外国学生交流的欲望， 可能因为我英语不好，好像没有我当初想得那么强烈，来了这边自己会 变得有点胆怯，可能是突然间来到了一个外国人特别多的地。（林）
In fact, my desire to communicate with international students seems not as strong as it was supposed to be, which I personally ascribed to my imperfect English proficiency. It even made me nervous when being surrounded by crowds of foreigners. （Lin）
This finding resonates with Ting-Toomey and Chung’s (2012) conceptualisation of intercultural communication, which was defined as “the symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities negotiate shared meanings in an interactive situation”, within which, ‘shared meaning’ was highlighted as the stepping stone to mutual understanding and establishment of a relationship. Language incompetence inevitably created a lack of shared meaning and understanding between home and international students in my study, and, therefore, hindered their construction of intercultural relationships.
To conclude, responses from most of the international participants in my study indicated a close relationship between better language proficiency, ‘integration’ and levels of satisfaction with their experience. It was also commonly acknowledged that students who had more advanced language competence would be better integrated and thereby more satisfied with their time at the university.