Literature Review #5

Citation 

Ma, Yingyi., and Martha A. Garcia-Murillo. Understanding International Students from Asia in American Universities Learning and Living Globalization. 1st ed. 2018., Springer International Publishing, 2018, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60394-0.

Summary

This book is about international students from Asia studying at American universities. It explores significant questions, such as: Why do they want to study in America? How do they make their college choices? To what extent do they integrate with domestic students, and what are the barriers for intergroup friendship? How do faculty and administrators at American institutions respond to changing campus and classroom dynamics with a growing student body from Asia? As Asian students constitute over 70 percent of the international student population. Almost every major American university now faces unprecedented enrollment growth from Asian students. This book argues that American universities need to learn about their Asian international students to be able to learn from them.  Urging for a shift from this framework to the one calling for proactive institutional efforts to bring about international students' successful experiences.

Author:

   

    Yingyi Ma is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Asian/ Asian American studies at Syracuse University, where she is a Provost Faculty Fellow on internationalization. She was elected as a Public Intellectual Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. Professor Ma has published extensively on international mobility and higher education in China. She gave insights into Chinese students' mindsets studying in higher education institutions in America, arguing that they enter university full of ambition. As they navigate through the intuition, they are met with loads of pressure generating a great deal of anxiety. Her new book, Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese Undergraduates Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education, based on research in Chinese high schools and American higher education institutions, this book examines Chinese students’ experiences spanning three key stages: before they arrived in the United States, their lived experiences during their study in America, to their looking ahead and thinking about their futures.

 

Key terms:

"Globalization" - the process by which organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale

"Multilingual" - using several languages/ the ability to speak more than one language. 

"Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA)"

Three Quotes 

"In addition to allowing Chinese in group discussions, a psychology professor also allowed it in written exams." (185)

"The results of the UCFA survey showed that the faculty supported the benefits of more international undergraduates as including the opportunities for an increased global perspective with their students and the experiences all students gain by interactions with people who are from different backgrounds and are not like them" (202)

"Chinese Undergraduate Students Association (CUSA) came into being in 2005 [becoming] an important voice for Chinese undergraduates... Chinese students were seeking ways to be involved on campus" (201)

 

Value

This book has shown that students and professors alike have to work together to create an environment where both domestic and international students can feel comfortable learning. It has shown that professors are being more understanding and lenient with grading writing assignments pulling away from correcting grammar errors to asking students to explain their arguments. Due to the increase in Chinese international students, there are organizations that were. created to help them adjust and for us to understand their cultures.