Travel, emotion and identity: an exploration into the experiences of students in post 16 education for whom studying in English means working in a foreign language and culture

Abstract

This paper involves an exploration into the experiences of students in post 16 education taking traditional academic subjects, in the UK, for whom studying in English means working in a foreign language and culture. The students who formed the sample were high achieving students aged sixteen and seventeen from China, Vietnam and Thailand who had come to study in the UK in order to proceed to a British University. In the first part of this paper, the author proposes a conceptual framework suitable for this study. The second part of the paper consists of a summary of the findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with the six participants. In this paper a variety of issues are explored related to the experience of living and studying in England. Although grounded in the specific context of students from three nations studying in the UK. This paper should inform our understanding of appropriate teaching strategies and pastoral and pedagogical approaches for students in a range of multi-linguistic settings