An overview of Open Doors 2003 by the Institute of International Education reported there were 586,323 international students studying in the United States in 2002‒2003 (Chin, 2003). This authoritative overview was charted and graphed with different categories of international students but female students with families remained invisible on it. The women’s children were considered an even less important population in these kind of statistics. Notably enough, research on this group of children in TESOL and sociolinguistics is just as limited and unavailable. As part of a larger project, this study advocates further understanding of the complexities of bilingual children of international bilingual professionals in the United States as exemplified in the educational experiences of two Chinese boys who were studying with their doctoral student mothers in the United States.

From a sociocultural perspective, for young nonimmigrant children to the United States, the process of their ESL literacy development can be influenced by such factors as family background, L1 literacy, friend circle, culture shock (Kohls, 2001), and parents’ literacy knowledge and orientation (Ling, 2007; Park, 2006; Zhang, 2006). An important concept related to literacy development is the difference between academic and conversational language. According to Freeman and Freeman (2001), conversational language is “the language we use to carry out activities that are rich in context, such as shopping, asking for and giving directions, or playing games” (p. 156). In comparison, academic language refers to the language we use to “attend college classes, or take notes or tests or write essays” or carry out other activities of this kind. Usually, it takes about “two years for a new immigrant to acquire conversational language” (p. 157) and six or seven years “to develop academic language proficiency” (p. 158). It is thus quite possible that an English learner can “do math computations, which were less language dependent,” “memorize spelling words he did not have to really understand or doing anything with,” (p. 157) and “speak English, often without an accent,” but he or she may not do well in academic school tasks that “have little context,” (p. 156) or compete with peers in “challenging content-area activities” (p. 157). As such, it is important to ask in this study (1) whether K‒12 and postsecondary schools have implemented these theories in their teaching practices and holistically facilitated bilingual students’ actual needs and (2) whether the children’s parents’/mothers’ bilingual education expertise has been valued enough in scaffolding the children’s ELL/ESL literacy development in these schools.

CASE STUDY

This study took place in a university on the east coast of the United States, where both boys were studying with their mothers. The two women were matriculated in two different doctoral programs in the university. Data were collected from the two boys’ mothers by employing postmodern interview, personal journal writing, and researcher’s journal. Because of the inseparable experiences between the boys and their academic mothers, I use Yan’s boy/son for one boy, and Ping’s boy/son for the other throughout the presentation of the study. Actual excerpts from the data are stated in quotes.

FINDINGS FROM PERSONAL INTERVIEW: YAN’S SON

Yan’s son went to university 2 years after they got to America. The boy did very well in the first year and got straight As in all his courses so that when he was a sophomore he already had finished taking all the 300-level courses. For this reason, his advising professor “probably also thought” that the boy was “very strong” and “could handle” even higher level courses (Interview, 5/4/2009). As a result of the problematic advising, Yan’s son registered in a very tough course, where he suffered three times unnecessarily. When he took the course for the first time many students “failed, dropped it in the middle” yet Yan’s son persevered and had to withdraw “at the end of the semester” (Interview, 5/4/2009). The boy insisted that “this professor taught well” so he took the course for the second time in spite of Yan’s objection. It turned out that his grade “was still not that high” (Interview, 5/4/2009). Greatly disturbed at the result, Yan very politely e-mailed the course professor asking why. The professor simply replied that “based on whichever policy he could not talk with the parents” and asked Yan’s son to make an appointment to go to his office if he had any questions (Interview, 5/4/2009). Without other choices Yan clicked the “university policy” link that the professor sent her and learned that “He just asked us to appeal” (Interview, 5/4/2009). When Yan’s son took the course for the third time, the professor had retired. The boy “tried all his efforts and got a ‘C’” with the new professor (Interview, 5/4/2009).

FINDINGS FROM PERSONAL INTERVIEW: PING’S SON

Ping’s son was enrolled in a local elementary school in August and he was recommended to go to transition math in junior high school in September (Interview, 5/16/2009). Ping was doubtful about the acceleration because the boy had not even learned how to order food at school; “He just asked for whatever available and then waited. . . . If the food was ok, he would eat some; if not, he would force himself to eat” (Interview, 5/16/2009). Apparently, the boy had to deal with too many things at the same time; “He didn't have the [language] ability. He couldn’t understand in his class. He didn't understand a thing. He didn't know the homework assigned by the teachers” (Interview, 5/16/2009). Due to the stereotypes that “Chinese students had learned enough math,” however, both the schoolteachers and Ping’s boy assured her that elementary school math was “too easy” so Ping agreed eventually to let her son go to transition math in junior high school.

Only a quarter later, however, things changed drastically. Around Thanksgiving, the teacher in transition math came to Ping and told her, “If this continues, he [the boy] will fail.” Ping was suddenly “Ah?!” yet could not recall where the boy’s slide started. However, there was no other choice. After Thanksgiving, when it was almost Christmas time, Ping finally had her son withdraw. The boy became “extremely frustrated.” What should have been a good opportunity now ended with “a bad knock” on the boy so that “his confidence was gone” (Interview, 5/16/2009). When the boy took courses later he just wanted to take “lower level courses” so that he could get an A; “I don't take higher courses to struggle” (Interview, 5/16/2009). This dramatic event affected Ping as badly as it did her son so that she had “a good cry in private” and blamed herself: “Why I didn’t know that the kid had suffered so much?” (Interview, 5/16/2009).

IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATORS

As shown above, the bad advice on the part of two or three individual teachers contributed directly to the difficult educational experiences of the two nonimmigrant bilingual boys in the study. In both cases, the boys were not advised individually and comprehensively enough about the courses and their challenges. With the single fact that the boys had done well previously, their teachers jumped to the conclusion that they could handle higher level courses no matter how tough they might be. The advisor of Yan’s son was to blame because he did not provide sufficient information about the tough course and the tough professor was to blame that a former top student failed unnecessarily in the course several times. The same was true with Ping’s son. Although the teacher identified the boy as advanced in math he failed to evaluate the student holistically and produce a follow-up plan for the individual student.

Most notably, the awkwardness of Ping’s son exemplifies once more the dangerous gap between conversational language proficiency and academic language proficiency. The boy may have seemed like he could catch up with other kids and that he had a very strong math background but in fact he was still lacking enough proficiency in academic language to take tests or write essays. He didn't understand the language. So when he went to learn it, Transition Math became “new things to him, not something he had learned in China” (Interview, 5/16/2009). Thus two factors complicate the issue here: (1) the boy was so advanced in math “computations” (Freeman & Freeman, 2001) that staying in the former class was holding him up and (2) his math was no longer “good” so it influenced other things because math was his “strength” in this alien land.

With their high bilingual proficiency, the two Asian graduate student mothers under study distinguished themselves from other immigrants in that they were able to help their children with certain language assignments. Where the children had academic difficulties, the student mothers were able to get involved and directly contact the school and related professors. Unfortunately, because the individual teachers were not familiar enough with the bilingual boys’ educational backgrounds and personal experiences, they did not acknowledge and value the students’ mothers’ expertise as international bilingual education scholars who nevertheless were labeled as nonnative speakers (e.g., Canagarajah, 1999). Most regretfully, failures and mistakes often happened in the courses where the bilingual children previously excelled so that both the children and the mothers got badly hurt and lost their confidence afterward. With all discussed above, it remains a challenging task to future educators and researchers just how to facilitate the individual and diverse needs of nonimmigrant bilingual students, particularly the underresearched and underrepresented children of international graduate students; how to incorporate the bilingual education expertise of these parents; and how to contextualize bilingual children’s K-12 and postsecondary learning processes in the United States.

REFERENCES

Canagarajah, A. S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Chin, H. K. (2003). Open doors 2003: Report on international educational exchange. New York: Institute of International education.

Freeman, D. E. and Freeman. Y. S (2001). Between worlds: Access to second language acquisition (2^nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kohls, R. L. (2001). Survival kit for overseas living: For Americans planning to live and work abroad. Intercultural Press.

Ling, H.-P. (2007). Voices of the heart. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press.

Park, G. (2006). Unsilencing the silenced: The journeys of five East Asian women with implications for US TESOL teacher education programs (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, 2006). UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations, AAT 3222642.

Zhang, Q.-S. (2006, March 14). ESL Literacy Development of Little Sojourners. Paper presented at the 6^th Annual Graduate Student Forum at the 40^th TESOL Annual Convention and Exhibit, Tampa, FL.

Qisi Zhang was a university professor of EFL in China before she came to the United States as an exchange scholar. She received her MEd in curriculum and instruction from Bloomsburg University and her PhD in composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has published widely in EFL and ESL teaching and learning. Her research interests focus on identity study and second language literacy.