Building confidence in multilingual groups: Student experiences from a short-term mobility program within Higher Education

Kirjoittajat

• Lotta Kokkonen Jyväskylän yliopisto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3522-7788
• Teija Natri Jyväskylän yliopisto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6130-6295
• Kanako Nishizumi Chiba University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33352/prlg.148644

Avainsanat:

jaettu vuorovaikutusosaaminen, monikielinen vuorovaikutus, korkeakoulutus, viestintävarmuus

Abstrakti

The recent political and economic instability as well as the global pandemic have underscored the profound interconnectedness of the world, and the repercussions can be seen in higher education (HE) institutions. These institutions are expected to prepare students to become “global citizens” capable of collaborating in this connected yet turbulent world. This is often done under the banner of “internationalization.” For students, the growing internationalization of HE frequently means studying in English while many scholars stress that greater attention must be paid to the complexities of languages in HE. It seems that students often experience elevated anxiety and stress studying in multilingual environments and in a language other than their first language (L1). This qualitative study explores the experiences of students in international groups during a short-term mobility program at a Finnish university. Drawing on reflective papers from 15 students and four recorded group meetings, the study aims at understanding how students perceived their confidence and learning in a multilingual environment, and how they adopted multilingual practices in group discussions. Although students reported that understanding multilingual communication helped them reflect on issues such as inequality in diverse groups, actual multilingual practices were less apparent in group meetings. The findings suggest that students’ learning and confidence were closely tied to their peer relationships. The study highlights the need to further examine and theorize communication competence and confidence as contextual and co-constructed phenomena.