with Mai expressed at some point their belief that she would struggle with her chosen TPG programme and that she did not currently have the academic attributes that would enable her to succeed. Despite this, when measured against the criteria which were primarily focused on general academic language proficiency, Mai continued to progress towards her final goal of joining her TPG programme.
Having studied on three terms of English for general academic purposes (EGAP), for the summer, Mai was placed on a pre-sessional programme that was focused specifically on STEM disciplines. This was the first year that this STEM pre-sessional had run and the programme leader had reported difficulties in creating a cohesive programme that covered the needs of a still wide-ranging set of TPG programmes, covering five different faculties. The majority of the students on this pre-sessional were moving onto engineering programmes or food science and nutrition. Therefore, this is where the majority of the content focus was aimed. Mai was the only student on the pre-sessional who was going onto her specific programme, with only two other students moving into her Faculty.
Again, Mai met the expected level of proficiency at the end of programme, scoring 56 overall and no less than 55 in any of the components, with the standard expected level being 55 for students who, like Mai, were required to demonstrate a language proficiency level of IELTS 6.5 or equivalent in all four skills. Mai was allowed to join her chosen TPG programme, with the suggestion that she might want to consider continuing to develop her EAP skills by joining a general insessional programme. At the time, this insessional programme ran in four-week blocks of two hours per week, with students being asked to select the area of EAP they felt they most needed to focus on, the choices being: Academic Writing; Academic Reading and Critical Thinking; Academic Language Development; Academic Lecture and Seminar Skills; Academic Speaking and Presentation Skills; Grammar for Academic Writing. However, there was no absolute requirement either that the School act on this suggestion, or that Mai enrol for any of the classes provided. Frequently, timetable clashes would prevent Mai or any other student from being able to attend their class of choice.
The School that Mai had joined had very few structural links or connections with the EAP teaching unit. However, over the summer I had begun to have conversations with the Faculty’s Student Education Service Manager and an academic member of staff who had taken on responsibility for all international students within the Faculty. The Faculty had very recently begun to consider the best ways to support international students, and I was being asked for advice around the development of a Faculty run series of classes for undergraduate students that would provide them with extra support around academic expectations. As a result of this contact, I was sent an email in early November with the following message from Mai’s programme leader and personal tutor:
• I have just marked her X piece and it is completely incomprehensible. I think her English is at such a poor level she does not understand anything. She has been in two coursework surgeries with me where she has said nothing and written very little and only spoken when asked a direct question. I spoke to her afterwards and she finds it difficult to understand what we say. She had a copy of the paper we were working on and she had made notes in Chinese all over it. She did not understand the (written) instructions for the flow diagram so did not bring a draft to the second coursework surgery and then when she sent me her draft it was clear she didn’t understand what she was being asked to do, despite having sat through the two CW surgeries where we discussed the figures and the other students presented their drafts which we discussed. I had a personal tutorial with her and advised her to get more support through the language centre but I don’t think this will be enough. She came through the presessional English course so I don’t know how her English can be so bad but I really don’t think she is going to be able to cope. (S3)
Analysis of the content of this email highlights multiple intersecting and contradictory threads that I will return to repeatedly throughout the rest of this book. Within this message, there are questions raised about the following in relation to all, but specifically EAL/international students:
• Is language proficiency and therefore ability to linguistically de-code, the knowledge, instructions and tasks students engage with the main issue?
• Is academic ability – i.e. the level of knowledge that is required at TPG study – regardless of language a key issue for students?
• Do students have the required foundational knowledge in a discipline upon which to build the new information they are expected to work with?
• Do teachers approach face to face sessions in a way that helps students to feel comfortable and voice their (lack of) understanding? Are teacher’s expectations fair and reasonable?
• Do teachers speak to EAL students in a manner and using language that enables them to understand what is being said and respond with ease? How do they check this?
• Are the instructions that students are required to follow clear and easy to understand?
• Is there any questioning around students’ choices to make notes in languages other than the one of instruction? Should this be seen as a problem at all? Does it necessarily demonstrate a lack of understanding?
• What role do EAP teachers play in the success or failure of students once they move beyond the pre-sessional programme? Do pre-sessionals inadequately prepare students for a TPG programme?
• Is EAP assessment of language proficiency incorrect?
• Does/should taking a pre-sessional automatically mean that a student is able to cope with the language load of any TPG programme?
The surprise at Mai’s language level also suggests that there is little awareness of what IELTS 6.5 or equivalent means in reality or of what difference can be made to this on a pre-sessional programme. This is a problem faced in many HE contexts (Ginther & Elder, 2014 for parallels within the United States and Australian contexts) It is clear then that the difficulties that Mai was facing were far more complex than simply not having good enough language that should already have been fixed by some extra EAP focused classes.
As well as agreeing to meet both Mai and her teacher to establish where help and support could be provided, I looked again at the assessments and grades Mai had been awarded by the EAP unit, and asked a number of colleagues, some of whom were also IELTS examiners, to provide second opinions of the writing she had produced. There was general consensus that the assessment she had received from the presessional programmes was accurate. Comments on her writing were as follows:
• The student has issues with linking ideas. She frequently uses commas to link ideas when it isn’t appropriate and has issues with basic linking of ideas … It is littered with basic grammatical mistakes … I’m not sure these made the piece of work incomprehensible. (LC15)
This second statement, from an EAP teacher, focuses fully on the language of the piece of student writing. Problematically here, though, the language is taken out of the context of the discourse being built. The EAP teacher is confident in commenting on basic grammatical errors but lacks confidence in connecting these to the comprehensibility or not of the piece of writing. The comment suggests, as might be expected, a strong focus on the mechanics of language used to create a low-level coherent utterance – language that is used to connect ideas within and across sentences to build a paragraph. What is missing is any suggestion that these words work to demonstrate any clear disciplinary knowledge and understanding. In fact, the EAP teacher finishes with this very comment – that she is unclear as to whether it makes sense here or not. There is then, a disconnect between what is valued in terms of language learning and accuracy and the clear demonstration of how to communicate disciplinary knowledge.
In both of these statements, therefore, language is viewed as separate from content but from opposite perspectives – the first viewing language
