Higher education, in the UK, is sold as a transformative experience, one that has the potential to turn anyone into more successful versions of themselves. UK universities list among their priorities to provide the opportunity to "anyone with the will and potential to succeed, regardless of their background, to transform their lives through accessing an outstanding learning experience at a UK university" (Universities UK). They seek to have "a positive impact on students' lives" and contribute to their own economic advancement through consuming the world-class knowledge and skills they produce (UK Universities). Such discourses have made UK higher education attractive to students who seek to develop and make career progress nationally, and globally. Gaining UK stamped educational credentials and the linguistic capitals associated to them (i.e. a premium English) has become an important part of the future-making projects of many overseas students who migrate temporarily to "invest" in prestigious educational capitals abroad aimed at securing future educational and job 'success' (Bae & Park, 2019; Copland & Garton, 2011). To be admitted to MA programmes students need to meet linguistic requirements (Pearson, 2020) – and many universities organise pre-sessional EAP courses to help candidates be ready to undertake their studies.
This paper will present the reflections emerging from a collaborative workshop activity addressed at dismantling circulating language ideologies and reflecting on ways to promote social justice in spaces of academic language teaching in Higher Education inspired by this symposium. We are or have been L2 teachers in higher education and do research in the broad field of critical sociolinguistics. The workshop has been designed as a research activity to engage students, teachers and researchers to discuss key discourses emerging from our ethnographic exploration of the pre-sessional academic skills course at the elite university in the UK all participants take part in. The study aims to better understand the meanings, practices and resources associated to becoming an "International student" in contemporary HE markets, and the forms of inequality that emerge in such processes. We will discuss the ways in which unpacking together the (unequal) distribution of linguistic and non-linguistic resources in this educational space, and the limits and boundaries in the processes of 'becoming', can inform (our) teaching practices.
References
Bae, S., & Park, J. S.-Y. (2019). Investing in the future: Korean early English education as neoliberal management of youth. Multilingua. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2019-0009
Copland, F., & Garton, S. (2011). 'I felt that I do live in the UK now': international students' self-reports of their English language speaking experiences on a pre-sessional programme. Language and Education, 25(3), 241–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.566617
Pearson, W. S. (2020). Mapping English language proficiency cut-off scores and pre-sessional EAP programmes in UK higher education. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 100866. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100866
