THE IMPACT OF A UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE POLICY ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

The higher education context is an important site of language policymaking at the micro-social level. A university's language policies and practices, which oftentimes reflect societal ideologies regarding language, for example can powerfully constitute language relations in the wider society. Adopting a multiple-case study and ethnographic design, the present study examines four undergraduate immigrant English language learners' (ELLs) experiences with a U.S. university language policy and how it affected these students' academic and social life at the institution. Findings suggest that ELLs perceived university language policy as affecting their full participation at and engagement with the university. Additionally, success at the university largely depended on the assimilation and resistance strategies they developed in response to university language policy. ELLs weighed the benefits of their strategies against the costs of those strategies in terms of attaining their goals at the university. At times, their actions incurred great losses on a social and personal level. Yet, they principally viewed that the gains made by these actions outweighed the losses because it allowed them to achieve their objectives. Although, the coping strategies used by ELLs to navigate the university system can further ELL marginalization and alienation, these same strategies can also lead to ELL success.