| Description |
The institutional access and educations offered by community colleges, and the transfer to universities they facilitate, make a college education in the U.S. available for many Korean international students who otherwise could not gain access. This dissertation explores how the backgrounds and future plans of Korean international community college students come to bear on their community college writing experiences and learning. I also address how community college writing curriculums might respond to Korean international student wants and needs. This qualitative inquiry relies on narrative data about students studying writing at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), a large urban community college in the Intermountain West of the United States. Data relied largely on 23 interviews total. Data analysis was thematic. The figured worlds theoretical framework helps to interpret writing knowledge as cultural artifacts (cultural ways of knowing, doing, and being) that Korean International Students carry from home and into U.S. schools. Students call upon South Korean ways of knowing and doing writing to find educational and rhetorical success in unfamiliar contexts and with unfamiliar educational expectations. This research finds that, based on the perceived success of their writing cultural artifacts, students choose to continue, discontinue, or negotiate the simultaneous continuity and discontinuity of their artifacts as necessary to accomplish their goals. iv This dissertation also speaks to some SLCC faculty teach versions of first-year composition (FYC) that focus on preparing students for comprehensive rhetorical success across one's life, while others focus on specifically academic literacies. Nevertheless, participants express they improved upon and gained confidence in their writing, regardless of the focus of their FYC coursework. These findings push back on the Guided Pathways curricular model by suggesting that less prescription of curricular pathways can benefit future flows of Korean international students and others like them. The final sections detail benefits offered at SLCC that are not generally shared by universities. Eminent among these benefits is the greater ease with which SLCC students reach academic success and because of which were able to invest additional time to learning the culture of SLCC and the U.S. more broadly. |
