ABSTRACT
This chapter uses a language socialisation framework and a narrative methodology to interpret the transition experiences of 145 international students in a New Zealand high school. The findings of the study suggest that transition experience of international students is determined by macro, meso, and micro levels underpinning their socialisation process. The chapter presents the macro level and the policies determining the possible pathways that are made available to students. Then it showcases the meso level and the institutional context which determined the expected forms of capital, knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise that students needed to develop in their educational context and the support available to them so that they could be more future ready. Then the chapter presents the micro level at which the narratives of high school international students are presented. The findings showed that linguistic capital emerged as a form of capital capable of mobilising these students’ social and cultural forms of capital through which they could represent themselves as more tertiary ready individuals. The transition experience of these students is an active process in which students proactively used their agency to appropriate their social space.
