Episode 1.
THE LEARNING CURVE
Graded in a Foreign Language.
Chapter 1.
Through the experience of college students in Vermont who have a language other than English as their first language, this chapter highlights the challenges, merit, and power dynamics of language in higher education, particularly focusing on international students and new Americans, exploring the positions their linguistic identities put them in, in comparison to their native English-speaking peers.
1,057,188
International students in
the United States.
(2022/23)
Open Doors, Institute of International Education
2023
31%
The number of domestic students of immigrant origin enrolled in higher education is
Higher Ed Immigration Portal 2021
21.3%
is the percentage of school children who spoke another language than English at home in 2021.
Child Stats, U.S. Census Bureau 2021
What do they have to say?
ABOUT ALISSON
Alisson Fernández
Spanish Native Speaker
Peru
University of Vermont
Alisson Fernández is an international student at the University of Vermont from Lima, Peru. She is part of the executive board at UVM’s International Student Club, and also part of the executive board for UVM’s Alianza de Latines, UVM’s Latino alliance club. She came to Vermont at the age of eighteen to get her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering, having two years of English learning.