Internationella studenters uppfattningar om litteracitetspraktiker utifrån ett flerspråkighetsperspektiv

Abstract

The last decade has seen a large influx of international students enrolling in Swedish universities, some of whom seem unfamiliar with the literacy taught within in their subjects. From a multi-lingual perspective and within a social-cultural framework this thesis project has explored three commom challenges with academic literacies in pre-paratory courses for international students: referencing, personal pronouns in aca-demic writing and the use of digital tools. The thesis reports an exploration of these challenges within a small group of multilingual students, brought up and schooled in Asia. The study was guided by four research questions, focusing on identifying chal-lenges within the above-mentioned areas and exploring how these challenges were accounted for by the students themselves. The results show that textual borrowing was a prominent challenge among the stu-dents. Some students related these challenges to differences in in-text conventions between Sweden and their home country. Furthermore, drawing attention to oneself by an I form and overusing I forms were two challenges accounted for in the data. The challenges with digital tools were related the use of digital platforms: finding course material, sending assignments, and digital communication between students and teachers. Referencing, the overuse of personal pronouns in academic texts and the use of digital platforms were described as emotional challenges by some students.The findings indicate that the extent to which academic literacies pose a challenge to the students largely depends on whether or not the students regard their previous knowledge and multilingustic competences as valuable resources in the new academic environment.