Mehrsprachig leben und studieren. Die Sicht studentischer Migranten

Abstract

Student migration, universities’ institutionalized multilingual language policies and the use of English for academic purposes make academic environments increasingly multilingual. Biographical narratives may provide useful insights about the students’ view on this development. In this paper, five narrative interviews with multilingual first year students of the Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano) have been analyzed, paying attention to the rhetorical organization of narrative and argumentative discourse. The university requires these students to learn Italian, a second Swiss national language and English. All students have acquired competences in several languages and have developed similar lay theoretical explanations of language acquisition. When it comes to the way the first period of studying at university has been experienced, however, the students’ narratives and assessments differ. One student feels isolated and under strong time pressure because confronted with three foreign languages in top of the regular study program. The others consider one or two of the required languages as a first language and have satisfying social contacts, partly within groups of students having the same origin. Besides good linguistic competence in several languages, shared cultural experience appears to be a key resource for accessing social networks and informal learning situations in the first weeks of study.