Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

The number of international students who pursue higher education in Western countries, such as the US, increases yearly. Asian international students are a significant proportion of international students from different countries. Numerous researchers have identified various challenges encountered by this group of international students, including difficulties in adjusting to new linguistic and academic environments (Scheyvens, Wild,& Overton, 2003; Yeh & Inose, 2003), struggling to learn Western styles of academic writing (Silva, 1992), inadequately participating in class discussions (Currie, 2007; Liu, 2000; Morita, 2004), being isolated from faculty and peers (Le & Gardner, 2010; Trice, 2003), and lacking the knowledge of local culture (Scheyvens et al., 2003). Some researchers also discovered that the use of technology could assist international students in developing their L2 competence (Bakar & Ismail, 2009; Kessler, Bikowski, & Boggs, 2012), increasing their participation in course-related discussions (Kamhi-Stein, 2000; Kim, 2011), and making connections with people from the identical ethnic group (Cao & Zhang, 2012; Fan, 2008; Kim, 2010; Kim et al., 2009) and from the target culture (Fan, 2008; Hodis & Hodis, 2012; Kim, 2010; Kim et al, 2009) in a foreign country. Nevertheless, a few studies (e.g., Hughes, 2013) have investigated the influence of technology use on international students' discipline-specific learning. This present study, therefore, examined the role of technology during Asian international doctoral students' acculturation to their particular academic disciplines. Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural theory, Lave and Wenger's (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) communities of practice, and Casanave, Li, and other scholars' academic acculturation (Casanave, 2002; Casanave & Li, 2008) were adopted to design this research, collect and analyze data, and interpret findings. Participants were three Chinese-speaking international students who (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Keiko Samimy (Advisor); Alan Hirvela (Committee Member); Francis Troyan (Committee Member) Subjects: Educational Technology; English As A Second Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

Given that minimal research has looked at doctoral level reading and considered the extent to which this is an intercultural experience for second language readers, this multiple case study explored the academic reading practices and perspectives of four international doctoral students from different first language backgrounds all studying in an Education program at a large research-intensive higher education institute in the midwestern United States.

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); George Newell (Advisor); Ian Wilkinson (Committee Member); Ulla Connor (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Language; Literacy; Reading Instruction

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, EDU Teaching and Learning

With the increase of international graduate students in English-speaking universities, second language writing professionals have called attention to neglected genres in the academic socialization literature. However, most of the studies have been skewed either toward the early or later stage of writing practices, for example, course assignments or theses/dissertations, and not addressed the academic genres of candidacy examinations and dissertation grant proposals. This qualitative dissertation addresses the gap in the literature. Throughout an academic year, I conducted retrospective interviews with 29 students and multiple text-based interviews with 10 case study students from China and Taiwan. Drawing upon Casanave's (2002) use of the writing games perspective for analysis, this dissertation presents two studies based on the multiple case study approach. The first study explores five students' writing experiences with candidacy examinations. Findings show that the genre of written candidacy examinations varies across disciplines. Among 17 disciplines examined, five examples existed: (1) literature reviews, (2) assigned questions, (3) a dissertation proposal, (4) a dissertation proposal and questions based on the proposal, and (5) a non-thesis proposal. Despite this stressful situation, the students were able to develop strategies and negotiate their roles to win the candidacy writing games. The second study compares the dissertation grant writing experiences of two doctoral students from two disciplines: biophysics and musicology. The analysis shows that grant writing was like playing writing games, where students had to follow a set of rules and interpret funding agencies' expectations within the complex genre systems. However, the students developed strategies to play the games through rereading guidelines, rewriting proposals, and networking with senior members of discourse communities. Moreover, the findings reveal that grant wri (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Keiko Samimy (Advisor); Jan Nespor (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Bilingual Education; Composition; Education; Higher Education