Applying agar’s concept of ‘languaculture’ to explain Asian students’ experiences in the Australian tertiary context

Abstract

This paper reports part of a broader qualitative case study of Asian students “translation” (Agar, 2006) to study in an Australian university. The paper is concerned with the experiences of eight participants and their involvement in a training programme in the use of language learning strategies (LLS) to support their engagement with second language (L2) academic and social discourses. Agar’s (1994) concept of languaculture is used to frame the study. The participants’ ability to translate between languaculture 1 (LC1—their home linguistic and cultural context) and languaculture 2 (LC2—the linguistic and cultural context of Australia) is investigated. The findings indicate that LLS can be assistive in this process but that there are contextual and linguistic factors that mediate success. These findings, and the data from the study, have enabled a refinement of Agar’s (1994; 2006) languaculture model to better accommodate how training in the use of LLS can support translation from LC1 to LC2.