Journal of Education and Human Development

Discipline-Specific Academic Language Development for Freshman International Students
Wei Zhang

Abstract
The globalization of higher education has brought unprecedented impact to the global economy. It has also presented opportunities and challenges to administrators and educators in universities and colleges to provide a quality education to international students on their campuses. This paper describes a prototype of a credit-bearing bridge program for discipline-specific academic language development for freshman international students in a Mid-western university traditionally serving regional residents in the United States. It begins with an overview of the bridge program, followed by a detailed description of the curriculum design, faculty training, and learning community of the program as well as the implementation of each of the three components in the program.

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