Crossing the Boundaries of Language

Doctoral research is a time-intensive commitment. Between designing your study, collecting data, crunching said data, and presenting your results in a compelling way, you also need to spend time immersing yourself in your subject matter. For Marsha Jing-Ji Liaw ('19 PhD), this labor of love was more involved than usual.

"Because I’m not originally from the US, I had to get to know the context, then decide what I wanted to understand more,” says Liaw, who is originally from Taiwan. Like many doctoral students in the Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) Program, Liaw is an ethnographer, someone who relishes connecting with the people and places she investigates.

Broadly speaking, Liaw works on critical biliteracy, a richly interdisciplinary field that questions how multi-lingualism can inform students' capacity to think critically. One of her current areas of interest examines parents' perceptions of Chinese-English language immersion programs.

"A lot of language classrooms miss the thinking skills part—they are linguistic based only," says Liaw. "In my field, we think of the power dimensions of society."

Liaw works with a student in her classroom.

Language, critical thinking, and power relationships are all interconnected—and overlapping. Peeling back those layers prompts educators, students, and researchers to think about the ethical dimensions of literacy, racial and ethnic identity, culture, and a host of other topics. Social justice is a top consideration as well, Liaw said. 

All of these hard-hitting topics (and questions) are baked into the curriculum at Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS) in Hadley, Massachusetts, where Liaw serves as education director for grades six to twelve. To ensure that PVCICS teachers are equipped to facilitate class activities and discussions about ethnic/racial/cultural identity, Liaw hosts workshops in the summer that address social justice education and theory. Teachers don't just teach from the textbook, Liaw said—they actively deconstruct and reconstruct the ideas they present in class.

"One of the biggest misunderstandings in any immersion program is the belief in monolingualism," says Liaw. "People think two languages develop separately. But actually, in terms of our human nature, language doesn’t really function that way. One language can support the other.”

"We want people to understand that bilingualism is an asset."

At PVCICS, students from all ethnic and racial backgrounds immerse themselves in Chinese language instruction. For grades six to twelve, approximately twenty percent of the student body is Chinese-American, Liaw said. Students spend roughly one-fourth of their day on Chinese language education, too. But, in addition to structured language instruction throughout the day, students also have extra-curricular opportunities to build their language skills. One of those opportunities is the PVCICS podcast club, where students engage with different media and discuss their opinions in Chinese.

Liaw's own experience as a teacher-educator in Taiwan informs her current practice as a curriculum director. She noticed that language instruction tended to be more focused on knowledge—i.e. learning the nuts and bolts of grammar, syntax, conjugation—than on applying that knowledge to understand broader issues of culture, bias, or identity. 

Marsha Jing-Ji Liaw

Liaw recognized that she needed to expand her experience, which is what motivated her to apply to UMass Amherst. Working with Professors Theresa Austin and Maria José Botelho, Liaw started to develop critical biliteracy as her academic lens.

Fast forward to 2022, and Liaw continues to work at the intersection of language and power in multiple ways. In addition to her duties at PVCICS, she serves as Visiting Scholar in the LLC program through 2023. What keeps her coming back to campus? It largely has to do with the community she built in the College of Education.

"As an international student, [it was] the best educational experience I've ever had in my life," she said. "I really felt the multicultural aspect of the education faculty, the whole school. I felt like it is inclusive and supportive. The faculty always want to understand our perspectives as international students." 

Or, to sum it up in a way that only a doctoral student can truly appreciate: "We all collaborate together, go to conferences together, and publish together."

Photos © Lisa Quiñones