This paper focuses on the academic literacies of two multilingual, refugee-background students who took a university course in their L2 Finnish in Finland. Drawing on nexus analysis and multiple data sources, the study explores how the students negotiate their course assignments.
This paper focuses on the academic literacies of two refugee-background students who had completed university-level studies before migrating to Finland. They took a course on business studies in their L2 Finnish as a part of a piloting training program which aimed to facilitate their access to degree programs and academic jobs in Finland. This case study investigates how the students negotiate their Finnish medium course assignments. Theoretically and methodologically, the study draws on nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) and dialogical theory (Linell, 2009), and the data come from interviews and videorecorded meetings with teachers and tutors. The findings show that the students actively tried to make sense of the target literacy practices. However, the course was challenging for the students, possibly because there was a mismatch between students' skills and resources and what was expected from them either explicitly of more implicitly in institutional discourses. The paper concludes that structures and practices can be exclusionary if no attention is paid to them. Furthermore, it discusses the need for clarifying, explicating, and perhaps rethinking the norms and practices in higher education.
