Asian American Cram Schools: Linguistic and Ethnic Boundaries in Immigrant Educational Sites

Angela Rosario Reyes

Due to recent educational policies in the United States, the increased importance of standardized testing has left an overwhelming number of minority students struggling in schools. In response to this national crisis, this research study will examine the experiences of immigrant students who are preparing for exams in Asian American cram schools. With the goal of writing a substantial portion of a book on cram schools, this study will analyze ethnographic and discourse data collected over the course of a year at an Asian American cram school in New York City. Preliminary analysis suggests that central to the educational experiences of students at the cram school are the identities and relationships produced through a particular cross-racial classroom dynamic between the Asian American students and their non-Asian teachers. This research study will investigate how students and teachers establish, sustain, or dismantle various types of linguistic and ethnic boundaries between one another in the classroom. Drawing on the linguistic anthropology of education in the close analysis of classroom discourse, this research study will uniquely contribute to the study of language, identity, and education by examining a population, setting, and topic urgently in need of more scholarly attention.

About Angela Rosario Reyes

Angela Reyes is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Hunter College, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her research focuses on discourse, ethnicity, and style among Asian American youth in alternative educational settings. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, her books include Beyond Yellow English: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America (2009, Oxford University Press) and Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian (2007, Lawrence Erlbaum). Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation/Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.