- While language proficiency is the defining characteristic associated with linguistic minority students, there are several challenges faced by this group that are not addressed by language instruction support.
- Social and economic capital can provide advantages to students in higher education.
- Financial challenges
- Linguistic minority students can be challenged by cultural norms in higher education.
- Even if a student is proficient in English, Language is learned through a racialized habitus and we make the mistake of assuming all students have adopted a white racial habitus
- Several features of academic culture in the US are believed to come from a dominant WASP culture
- Success in conventional classrooms is synonymous with adopting a white racial habitus
- Students who do not have access to a white racial habitus will not easily understand its rules
- It’s hard to teach culture (ways of perceiving society); hard to teach someone something they believe they already have mastered.
- Time management and punctuality
- Plagiarism ^c529ce
- Standardized academic language
- Dominant academic discourses are white habits of language
- Literacy is white property and grading is used to exclude non-white bodies from its use
- Judgements of language quality in any grading contract give rise to Stoddardian dikes; a racialized grading apartheid.
- Many rhetorical prohibitions in the standard academic English curriculum are effective rhetorical tools
- Failing to acknowledge non-standard dialects is a form of implicit bias
- Students who have or are adjacent to privilege may not notice the struggle of adopting a white language habitus that other students do
- Students who were not raised in white habitus households struggle to adopt habits of white language in college
- Typical developmental EAP policies attempt to remedy this with a few semesters of language learning, but Acquisition of white languaging does not fit the pre-academic English preparation course sequence timeline
- Additionally, students may be proficient in English for other purposes, but still struggle with academic language.
- One can be proficient in a language for some situations but not others
- Self-advocacy challenges
- Linguistic minority students may also be less likely to advocate for themselves in grading disputes.
- In a negotiated assessment ecology, male and white students are more likely to defend their work which therefore introduces a gender and racial bias in the grading system
- This would have implications for academic integrity as well.
- Political challenges
- The anxiety surrounding immigration issues can put unusual pressures on immigrant students.
- This affects their academic work, as we know that People acquire language better when their affective filters are not interfering.
- History of disrupted education
- People who have had formal education in their first language learn a second language faster than those without. which tells us that students without formal education in their first language would not do as well.
- Even for students who attended U.S. high schools, Students who struggle with understanding English in high school often will end up struggling in other subjects as well.
- Linguistic minority students’ education backgrounds vary widely even if they attended local high schools
- Segregation
- It has been found that multilingual students are less likely to have quality internet connections at home as well as greater challenges using school learning management systems. Multilingual students are also less likely to have access to course textbooks1. Each of these factors could negatively impact their success in college.