Negotiating socioacademic relations: English learners' reception by and reaction to college faculty

The experiences of English learners in tertiary education in the US are significantly colored by their interactions with faculty in courses across the curriculum, who are largely responsible for setting the tone in their classes. The intersection between L2 students' expectations, abilities, and needs and the requirements and attitudes of their instructors may be a site of frustrating contention or of enabling accommodation on both sides. Despite the potential academic and personal importance of such socioacademic interactions, relatively little research has systematically examined this feature of the academic context in which L2 undergraduate students must function.This report, based on case studies of immigrant and visa undergraduate students in the US and interview research with college faculty, explores these socioacademic interactions from three perspectives: the degrees and types of accommodation that faculty made for L2 students; the faculty's interview comments about L2 students; and the focal students' interview commentary on their experiences with these professors. In illuminating the relational context of these L2 students' undergraduate studies, this examination points to the students' efforts to manage their relationships with faculty and to construct comfortable subject positions for themselves in the context of unequal power relations.