Academic discourse socialization in a “bilingual” undergraduate course: Group work among students with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds

With the growth of internationalization in higher education, there is a need to examine students’ experiences in increasingly diverse classrooms. This study explores students’ academic discourse socialization (ADS), within a context where the majority of students are non-native speakers, in a course designed to enhance intercultural communication skills by providing students with both theoretical knowledge and practical experiences to collaborate with a diverse group of peers. We aim to answer the following questions: (1) Does native-speakerism ideology impact Japanese students’ comprehension of intercultural communication with non-native speakers, and if so, how? (2) How does the understanding of intercultural communication affect students’ interactions and group work with international peers? We conducted qualitative semistructured interviews with Japanese and international students at a private Japanese university. Our findings show that despite the absence of specific language instruction in the course, the group work predominantly utilized English and Japanese. Furthermore, the results revealed a unique ADS process in this context, with no clear dichotomy between experts and novices. Instead, all students negotiated their participation and language use within the academic community, with native-speakerism ideology influencing the ADS process. These results enrich the research on ADS in non-English-speaking countries and development of new conceptual frameworks to better comprehend its dynamics.