English-Medium Instruction at Universities: Global Challenges 9781847698162

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English-Medium Instruction at Universities

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Series Editor: John Edwards, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Multilingual Matters series publishes books on bilingualism, bilingual education, immersion education, second language learning, language policy, multiculturalism. The editor is particularly interested in ‘macro’ level studies of language policies, language maintenance, language shift, language revival and language planning. Books in the series discuss the relationship between language in a broad sense and larger cultural issues, particularly identity related ones. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

English-Medium Instruction at Universities Global Challenges

Edited by Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. English-Medium Instruction at Universities: Global Challenges/Edited by Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra. Multilingual Matters: 149 Includes bibliographical references. 1. English language--Study and teaching (Higher)--Foreign speakers. 2. Education, Higher--Evaluation--Cross-cultural studies. 3. Universities and colleges--Evaluation-Cross-cultural studies. 4. Language and education. 5. Second language acquisition. I. Doiz, Aintzane. II. Lasagabaster, David, 1967- III. Sierra, Juan Manuel. PE1128.A2E545 2012 428.00711–dc23 2012022012 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-815-5 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-814-8 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2013 Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster, Juan Manuel Sierra and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by the Charlesworth Group. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd.

Contents Contributors Glossary Foreword

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Introduction Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

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Part 1: The Development of English-Medium Instruction 1

English-Medium Instruction at a Dutch University: Challenges and Pitfalls Robert Wilkinson

3

Part 2: Language Demands of English-Medium Instruction on the Stakeholders 2

Acknowledging Academic Biliteracy in Higher Education Assessment Strategies: A Tale of Two Trials Christa van der Walt and Martin Kidd

3

Language Demands and Support for English-Medium Instruction in Tertiary Education. Learning from a Specific Context Phil Ball and Diana Lindsay

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Part 3: Fostering Trilingual Education at Higher Education Institutions 4

Linguistic Hegemony or Linguistic Capital? Internationalization and English-Medium Instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong David C.S. Li

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English as L3 at a Bilingual University in the Basque Country, Spain Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

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Introducing English-Medium Instruction at the University of Lleida, Spain: Intervention, Beliefs and Practices Josep Maria Cots

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Part 4: Institutional Policies at Higher Education Institutions 7

Implicit Policy, Invisible Language: Policies and Practices of International Degree Programmes in Finnish Higher Education Taina Saarinen and Tarja Nikula

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8

Englishization in an Israeli Teacher Education College: Taking the First Steps Ofra Inbar-Lourie and Smadar Donitsa-Schmidt

151

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Educating International and Immigrant Students in US Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges Ofelia García, Mercè Pujol-Ferran and Pooja Reddy

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10 A Critical Perspective on the Use of English as a Medium of Instruction at Universities Elana Shohamy

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Part 5: Final Considerations 11 Future Challenges for English-Medium Instruction at the Tertiary Level Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

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Contributors Phil Ball is a materials writer and teacher-trainer based in the Basque Country, Spain. He taught Phonetics and Linguistics at the University of Deusto (Spain) for several years before moving into materials writing and teacher-training for the Basque Government and then for the Federation of Basque Schools, and has been closely involved with their successful multilingual project ‘Eleanitz’. He has also worked in England, Peru, Oman and Qatar. He works on language and pedagogy courses for the University of the Basque Country, and has written a series of CLIL textbooks for the Basque schools’ social science syllabus (studied in English). Josep Maria Cots earned his PhD in English Philology at the University of Barcelona in 1991. He is a professor (chair) in the Department of English and Linguistics of the University of Lleida, where he teaches English language and applied linguistics. He has carried out most of his research in the field of applied linguistics, focusing on applied discourse analysis, foreign language teaching and learning, multilingualism, and intercultural competence. He is the project leader of a research group on internationalisation and multilingualism in higher education, including researchers from three different universities and supervises several PhD dissertation projects. Aintzane Doiz is Associate Professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain, where she teaches English language and applied semantics in the PhD program of the Department of English and German studies, Translation and Interpretation. Her research interests are focused on the fields of cognitive semantics, contrastive linguistics and applied linguistics. Her latest research includes multilingualism in higher education and the acquisition of an L3 in CLIL. She is part of the research group ‘Language and Speech’. Smadar Donitsa-Schmidt is the head of the re-training teachereducation unit at the Kibbutzim College of Education (Israel). She lectures at the college’s English teacher-training program on language assessment, second language acquisition theories and research methodology. Her latest research focuses on second language teaching and learning processes and teacher-training programs and policies.

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Ofelia García is Professor in the PhD programs of Urban Education and of Hispanic and Luso–Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (USA). She has been Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and Professor of Bilingual Education/TESOL at The City College of New York. Among her recent books are: Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective; Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Vols. I & II (with J. A. Fishman); Educating Emergent Bilinguals (with J. Kleifgen); Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times (with L. Bartlett); Negotiating Language Policies in Schools (with K. Menken). She is the Associate General Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Her website is at www.ofeliagarcia.org. Ofra Inbar-Lourie heads the Unit for Teacher Education at the School of Education at Tel Aviv University (I srael). She lectures in the language ˙ education programs on language education department and the teacher assessment, curriculum design and English teaching. Her current research interests include language policy, specifically with regard to native and nonnative language teachers, programs for young language learners, teachers’ language use, and language assessment literacy. Martin Kidd (Centre for Statistical Consultation, Stellenbosch University, South Africa) does statistical consultation work in a wide variety of fields spanning Biostatistics, Food Sciences, Chemometrics, Sport Sciences, Social Sciences and Biometrics. His current research interests include Artificial Intelligence techniques and statistical learning techniques for data mining, Structural Equation Modeling, Chemometrics and statistical analysis of Likert scale data by developing a specific distribution for Likert scale data. David Lasagabaster is Associate Professor at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain. His research interests include second/ third language acquisition, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), attitudes and motivation, and multilingualism at pre-university and university levels. He has published widely in international journals, books and edited books. Among others, he has co-edited Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts: Language Use and Attitudes (Multilingual Matters, 2007); CLIL in Spain: Implementation, Results and Teacher Training (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); and is co-author of Plurilingualism and Interculturality at School (Horsori, 2010). David C.S. Li obtained his BA in English in Hong Kong (1982), MA in Applied Linguistics in Besançon, France (1984), and PhD in Linguistics in Cologne, Germany (1991). Trained in general linguistics, he has since developed a keen interest in social aspects of language learning and use

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in multilingual settings. In addition to contrastive aspectology, he has published in World Englishes and Hongkong English, code-switching in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and EFL learners’ difficulties and error-correction strategies. His research was supported by various grants, including two Competitive Earmarked Research Grants. Diana Lindsay is a teacher, teacher trainer and materials writer based in the Basque Country, Spain. She has also lived and worked in Africa, the U.K., Italy, China and Qatar. In the Basque Country, she has worked in teacher education and project design with the British Council, the Basque Government, the University of the Basque Country and the Federation of Ikastolas (Basque-medium schools). She is co-author of a number of projectbased and CLIL school materials and is currently in charge of the language and pedagogy development courses offered by the University of the Basque Country’s Vice-rectorate of Plurilingualism. Tarja Nikula is Professor of applied language studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and the head of the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS). Her research interests include discourse-pragmatics of classroom interaction in CLIL and EFL classrooms, the relationship of multilingualism and language education, and the problematics of content and language integration, a theme also pursued in a research project ‘Content and language integration: towards a conceptual framework’, funded by the Academy of Finland. Mercè Pujol-Ferran, a native of Catalonia (Spain), is Professor in the Language and Cognition Department at Hostos Community College, CUNY (USA), where she teaches ESL and Linguistics courses. Mercè does research on the acquisition of English by immigrant Latino students and on XIX century Catalan female poetry. Mercè’s latest publication (2009) is a book in Catalan: El Més Bell Rebrot de L’Esbart de Vic: Obra Poètica Completa de Mercè Font i Codina (1867–1900), Sèrie Monografies/ 26, Patronat d’Estudis Osonencs, Vic, Barcelona. Pooja Reddy, PhD in Second Language Acquisition, is a Research Associate at the Human Development Lab in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (USA), where she designs the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks for educational games on cell phones for children in rural and urban slums in the developing world. Her research focuses on literacy and biliteracy development among children whose educational settings are characterized by multilingualism and poverty. She has taught English as a second or later-acquired language to students from pre-kindergarten to university undergraduates in India, Japan, and the United States.

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Taina Saarinen has studied Finnish and European higher education policy since the early 1990s. She holds a PhD from the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in applied language studies, and has specialized in the discursive construction of higher education policies. Her current research interest is language education policy, and especially the links between higher education internationalization and language education. Her recent articles deal with discursive construction of ‘quality’ in Finnish and European higher education, the use of textual methodologies in higher education policy studies, and the invisibility of language in Finnish internationalization policies for higher education. Elana Shohamy is a professor and chair of the Language Education program, School of Education, Tel Aviv University (Israel). Her research and writings focus on a variety of topics related to language assessment, language policy and linguistic landscape in a critical perspective and addressing issues of multilingualism (language conflicts, co-existence and rights). Her recent authored and edited books include: The Power of Tests (Longman 2001); Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches (Routledge, 2006); Encyclopedia of Language and Education: Language Testing and Assessment (ed. w/N. Hornberger, Springer, 2008); Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, (ed. w/D. Gorter, Routledge, 2009); and Linguistic Landscape in the City (ed. w/E. Ben Rafael & M. Barni, Multilingual Matters, 2010). She is the editor of the journal Language Policy and the winner of the ILTA lifetime achievement award, 2010. Juan Manuel Sierra is Associate Professor of Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. He has published on CLIL, second and third language acquisition, foreign language teaching methodology, curricular design and multilingualism. His work has appeared in books, edited books and in various national and international refereed journals. He is co-author of Plurilingualism and Interculturality at School (ICE/Horsori, 2010) and has recently co-edited the volume Content and Foreign Language Integrated Learning: Contributions to Multilingualism in European Contexts (Peter Lang, 2011). He is currently a member of the international research project The effect of multilingualism and internationalization at the tertiary level in collaboration with researchers from the University of Lleida (Spain) and Cardiff University (UK). Christa van der Walt (Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa) trains English language teachers and has introduced a module in multilingual education in the secondary school teacher certification programme. Her research interests are focused on the teaching and use of English in multilingual contexts, with specific focus on learning in bi- and

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multilingual contexts and the role of teachers’ and learners’ code switching in classrooms. The development and use of bi- and multilingual teaching and learning materials flow logically from this interest. She is also interested in the emergence of South African varieties of English and their use in education. Robert Wilkinson works as senior teacher at Maastricht University Language Centre (the Netherlands). He has been concerned with Englishmedium instruction since the mid-1980s. He organized the first conferences in Europe on Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education in 2003 and 2006, with a follow-up in 2013. He has given training courses in LSP in several countries, such as Spain, Greece, Hungary and Russia. Previously he worked in France, Scotland and the former Czechoslovakia.

Glossary CEFR CLIL EAP EMI ESHE HEIs ICT LoLT LOTEs NS NNS PBL SLA

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Content and Language Integrated Learning English for Academic Purposes English-medium instruction European Space for Higher Education Higher Education Institutions Information and Communication Technology Language of Learning and Teaching Languages other than English Native Speaker Non-Native Speaker Problem-Based Learning Second Language Acquisition

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Foreword When I gave my first series of university lectures, on Albert Camus’ L’Étranger, in Glasgow University in 1975, I did so in French. The decision had nothing to do with internationalisation: the five hundred students taking notes were all native English speakers, and nearly all born and bred in Scotland. Nor was there a university or departmental policy on the medium of instruction, still less a theoretically informed debate on why and how to teach through a foreign language: it was and remains a peculiarity of higher education teaching that so many practitioners are untrained in teaching, whatever the language. Simply, as Armstrong and Hare (1993) noted 20 years later, there was live discussion of whether ‘the integration of language and content’ brought ‘improvement in the students’ command of the practical language’ which outweighed ‘the perceived danger of diluting the intellectual level of the content study’ (Armstrong & Hare, 1993: 114). Like many of my colleagues, I believed it did, and intuitively adopted many of the strategies (slow delivery, use of synonyms and periphrasis, repetition) which have now been codified. The debate between language and content learning continues, although the challenge which then faced British Modern Language departments is now an issue across every discipline and every continent. But today the language of higher education is English. Across the world, the unifying effect of globalisation and the development of a competitive market in higher education have led universities to adopt policies of internationalisation, although, as Doiz et al. (this volume) show, policies and processes of internationalisation vary across national and institutional contexts. Within Europe, the Erasmus programme has achieved the de facto internationalisation of thousands of campuses across the continent, and, despite Europe’s commitment to multilingualism, has probably, in tandem with the Bologna Process, accelerated Englishization. And if, even today, some lecturers find themselves, as I did, relying on intuition rather than training as they deliver courses in a language which is neither their mother tongue, nor that of many of their listeners, nor yet the means of communication of the city and country beyond the campus gates, we now have a much firmer grasp of the phenomena which the pioneering Maastricht conferences have called Integrating Content and Language in xiii

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Higher Education or ICLHE, and which in cross-sector contexts is typically known as Content and Language Integrated Learning, or CLIL. English-medium instruction or teaching is more than a subset of CLIL. There are powerful ideological, social, pedagogical and professional rationales for adopting almost any language as the vehicle of university instruction. But the spread of CLIL in schools, and the worldwide policy of English as a first foreign language at primary and secondary level, make its adoption in tertiary education the most cost- and hassle-free choice. Furthermore, the inexorable global dominance of English across a majority of linguistic domains makes it the inevitable preference in the specific and influential domain of academe. The high social and intellectual status which is attached to university teaching and research, and participants’ involvement in international networks, have led to fears of domain loss. In other words that, as English strengthens its hegemony over knowledge production and dissemination, local and national languages will become restricted to less prestigious contexts of use, and their very existence may be threatened. Such concerns, and the inequities which they create, among others for non-native writers and for migrants, are appropriately voiced by several contributors to this book, but, as David Li (this volume) points out, they remain a worry, principally for academic linguists and language policymakers, while students see English more fundamentally as ‘an indispensable asset or tool for anyone aspiring toward upward and outward mobility’. This fascinating collection of detailed studies from Africa, America, Asia and Europe focuses more on policy than on the linguistic details of Englishmedium university instruction. In so doing, it throws new light on the multiple reasons for adopting English, which the review by Wilkinson (this volume) identifies as increasingly economic. The drivers for embedding Englishization within a broader internationalisation policy range from institutional concern with world university rankings, where the proportion of international students and academic staff are both a direct criterion and an indirect measure of status, through a desire to participate in international exchanges, to a wish to provide graduates with the skills necessary for employment. Altruism has certainly not disappeared, but the impulse to help students from developing countries is hugely outweighed by the financial motive to recruit fee-paying students. The countries where higher education is available at a nominal fee are becoming ever fewer, as the cost of tuition moves from the tax-payer to the beneficiaries or their sponsors. Two critical features of the rationales for implementing English-medium instruction emerge both from this book and from the burgeoning research

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literature on Englishization of universities. One is competition – to attract fee-paying international students, gifted teachers and researchers, and the most talented postgraduates to enhance the university’s reputation and the country’s workforce. More than one chapter illustrates the fact that competition operates too at the national level, where a more ‘international’ institution or faculty can draw in more and better qualified recruits. The second feature which emerges from a number of the closelytextured studies assembled here, and which bring a rare historical light to bear on decision-making and policy implementation, is that university Englishization is not the kind of imperialist global movement which the more extreme conspiracy theorists suggest. The societal changes instead reflect the cumulative impact of a myriad local discussions at departmental or faculty level, comprising false starts and experiential adaptation, and whose prime movers are motivated above all by local contexts and domestic concerns. Whilst there are shared anxieties about training opportunities, professional identities or the quality of English-medium teaching, this collection also uses a range of methodologies to explore different geographical contexts, whether monolingual, bilingual or multilingual, and to bring out above all the diversity of the expanding phenomenon known as Englishmedium instruction. Jim Coleman The Open University, UK

Reference Armstrong, N. and Hare, G. (1993) Integrating content and context: cultural competence, authentic materials and audience design. In J.A. Coleman and A. Rouxeville (eds) Integrating New Approaches: The Teaching of French in Higher Education (pp. 113–132). London: Association for French Language Studies/Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research.

Introduction Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

Globalisation has become a ubiquitous concept and one which is prone to overuse in the higher education sector. At the tertiary level, globalisation is closely linked to internationalisation, a multifaceted process defined as ‘the policies and practices undertaken by academic systems and institutions – and even – individuals to cope with the global academic environment’ (Altbach & Knight, 2007: 290–291). One of the more tangible outcomes of internationalisation is the implementation of foreign language study programmes at universities (e.g. the implementation of foreign language study programmes in Europe, in accordance with the European Commission’s 2004–06 action plan to promote multilingualism and language diversity in language learning). Yet, reality indicates that it is English which is preeminent and has become the main foreign language that is used as a means of instruction at universities in Europe and worldwide. According to a study undertaken by Wächter and Maiworm (2008), over 400 European Higher Education Institutions provided a total of more than 2400 programmes taught entirely in English in 2007, which represents a remarkable 340% increase on the 700 Bachelor courses and Master’s programmes taught in 2002. This is a trend that can be observed worldwide. The aim of this book is to provide critical insights into the Englishmedium instruction (EMI) experiences which have been implemented at a number of universities in the following countries: China, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain and the USA, characterised by differing political, cultural and sociolinguistic situations. What emerges from the volume is the immense diversity of EMI experiences, as in some contexts (the European countries and Israel) English is used as a foreign language (EFL), in others (Hong Kong and South Africa) English is the second language (ESL), and in some others (USA) English would be encompassed in the so-called inner circle (Kachru, 1982). Despite this diversity, there is an obvious connecting thread throughout the chapters: the effects of EMI on the many different spheres of higher education and how EMI impacts on xvii

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the ecology of languages in every single university, irrespective of the context. The volume also reflects on the consequences of EMI as an attempt to gain visibility, and as a strategy in response to the need to become competitive in both national and international markets. The pitfalls and challenges specific to each setting are analysed, and the pedagogical issues and methodological implications that arise from the implementation of these programmes are also discussed. Last but not least, the book looks at the sensitive issue of how the academic communities at some bilingual universities come to terms with introducing English as a third language. The methodological approaches adopted vary from chapter to chapter and include both qualitative studies and large-scale quantitative studies. This volume will serve to advance our awareness about the strategies and tools needed to improve EMI at tertiary levels, and demonstrate the need to conduct further medium- and long-term research on this topic. The book is organised in five parts. In Part 1, Robert Wilkinson provides an overview of the development of EMI over 25 years at one of the pioneering European universities, namely at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The small original programme showed promise, and was successful enough to lead to many additional programmes being offered in English. Ten years later the innovative faculty decided to cease teaching in Dutch and became an English-medium faculty, with other faculties following to a greater or lesser extent. Using the experiences of Maastricht University as an example, Wilkinson focuses on the diverse reasons for introducing EMI, the challenges posed to curriculum and course design, how academic staff from different disciplines and English support staff collaborated, and their efforts to assure quality. He reflects on the issues raised, through a prism of economics, sociology and politics, and considers how they might impact other countries, other cultures and other institutions. Part 2 addresses language demands of EMI on stakeholders and includes two contributions. In Chapter 2 Christa van der Walt and Martin Kidd deal with the South African context, where all universities are expected to have a language policy in which one of the African languages (one spoken widely in the region where the institution is located) is targeted for corpus planning. While English is used as a language of learning and teaching at most universities, the idea is that African languages should also be developed and introduced. At historically Afrikaans universities, English is used alongside Afrikaans for teaching and learning purposes and seems to be replacing Afrikaans in many cases. The question posed by the authors in this chapter is whether an English-reading comprehension test with a summary in

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Afrikaans (the home language of some of the students) will improve performance on the test. To control for the effect of the summary, an English summary was also included while some students did not receive a summary at all. The study reveals that the summary decreased the difference between the language groups and helped to improve Afrikaans students’ performance, showing that the addition of material in the home language is indeed helpful. However, not all students benefited from the summary and there are a number of reasons why this may be the case. The study concludes with suggestions for teaching practices to capitalise on this specific kind of bilingual testing. In the third chapter Phillip Ball and Diana Lindsay centre on the demands that the new English-medium courses are making on university teachers, and by further implication, the demands made on their students. They consider the issue surrounding the question of language levels, and which levels are deemed appropriate by the university authorities to enable a teacher to teach through the medium of English. These authors also report on the incentives and support that are officially offered to the lecturers to tempt them into making the switch. They consider the lecturers’ major linguistic concerns and challenges of teaching their subject areas in English, comparing these views to some of the realities observed in both the lecture and seminar contexts. A related concern is that lecturers tend to worry about their own linguistic shortcomings, while possibly neglecting the methodological implications of how best their students can develop as learners. Part 3 is titled ‘Fostering trilingual education at HEIs (Higher Education Institutions)’ and encompasses two contexts, China and Spain. In Chapter four David Li deals with trilingualism in Hong Kong. Being a former British colony, Hong Kong is now a Special Administrative Region of China and a bustling knowledge economy. Its manpower-needs require a high level of competence in English and Chinese, the latter consisting of the regional vernacular Cantonese, and the national language Putonghua (Mandarin) in which standard written Chinese is based. Since both Chinese varieties are just as important as English in Hong Kong, the postcolonial language policy came to be known as ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’. For Cantonese-dominant students, however, neither English nor Putonghua is easy to learn. This chapter outlines the main parameters behind the design of HEIs language policy in Hong Kong, and discusses how they address the language needs and concerns of the key stakeholders. In Chapter 5 Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra present the case of the University of the Basque Country. At this university

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the recipients of English-medium programmes are students who have to deal with English as a third language (L3), since this is an officially bilingual university in Basque and Spanish. With this in mind, data were gathered concerning students’ views on the use of English as a medium of instruction at university and its purported impact on the minority language, Basque. The participants were 608 undergraduates who completed a questionnaire. Specifically, this chapter seeks to attain a better understanding of multilingualism in HEIs by gathering the opinions and beliefs of local and international undergraduate students with regard to the following issues: the presence of foreign/international students; the role of foreign languages and foreign language learning; EMI; the impact of English on Basque and, finally, the role to be played by a minority language such as Basque in a multilingual university context. In Chapter 6 Josep Maria Cots explains how universities in Catalonia, in their process of adaptation to the new European Space for Higher Education, have begun to introduce communicative skills in English as a generic competence in most degree-course programmes. English is presented as a lingua franca whose adoption is a must for universities if they want to take an active role in the global academic and scientific markets. However, attempts to introduce EMI are not free from tensions in a highly sensitive bilingual academic environment in which Catalan and Spanish do not always co-exist harmoniously, and in which there is very little experience in language teaching and learning outside the language departments. Cots focuses on a specific university in Catalonia to analyse the place of English in the official discourse of the university vis a vis the language ideologies and practices of teaching staff with experience in EMI. He explores the extent to which, within a discourse of multilingualism, English is referred to through metaphors such as a ‘killer language’, ‘lingua franca’ or ‘identity language’. He also analyses the beliefs and practices of teaching staff in connection with the introduction of English as a language of instruction. Part 4 comprises of four contributions that deal with institutional policies at HEIs. In Chapter 7 Taina Saarinen and Tarja Nikula analyse the relationship between internationalisation policies and practices in Finnish higher education, such as the role language has played in the past and present internationalisation policy of Finnish higher education, students’ and teachers’ realities as EMI participants in Finnish higher education and how policies affect educational practices. The data consist, firstly, of text documents such as higher education policy documents and internationalisation strategies, language and internationalisation strategies of universities and polytechnics, degree descriptions for international degree programmes and

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practical instructions for students and staff. Discourse analysis is used to come to an understanding of how the policy for EMI is articulated in Finnish higher education. Secondly, interviews and questionnaires conducted with teachers and students illuminate to what extent their experiences met their expectations. Chapter 8 by Ofra Inbar-Lourie and Smadar Donitsa-Schmidt takes the reader to the Israeli context. Although the medium of instruction in academic institutions in Israel is Hebrew, academic proficiency in English is mandatory since most of the course readings are in this language. Lately, there has been an increasing top-down demand in various academic institutions to employ EMI in certain programmes or individual courses due to its global appeal. This trend is meant to serve two purposes, to attract people from abroad to come and study in Israel and to increase local students’ level of English proficiency. The chapter describes the ‘Englishization’ phenomenon in academic institutions in Israel in light of the perceived threat of English to the hegemony of Hebrew and the role of Arabic, an official language that is excluded from academic studies. This is followed by the findings of a research study which focused on a group of students who chose to take part, for the first time, on a course taught in English. The research explored their motivations for participating and tried to better understand their experience during the course, their difficulties while studying and their perceptions regarding the pros and cons of the Englishization experience. Chapter 9 depicts the role of EMI in the USA. Ofelia Garcia, Mercé Pujol-Ferrán and Pooja Reddy explore the overarching question regarding the role of English and multilingualism in US universities that increasingly serve international students, as well as immigrant students. The following questions are considered: (a) How have US universities adapted to the changing student body at American universities?; (b) How are English and languages other than English (LOTEs) being used socially and academically by students and faculty, both intra- and inter-ethnically? And what are the issues that emerge from this use?; (c) How is English being taught to students who need English language development? How does this impede (if at all) participation in other core academic areas?; (d) Is there a role for languages other than English in the academic lives of these students? What are the different views regarding this? To examine these questions, the chapter provides two case studies of two very different institutions. The first is a large global research university and the second is an urban community college, both in the USA. Drawn from author participation in the two universities, as well as interviews with selected faculty and students, the case studies provide a rich description of the changing role of English and LOTEs

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in US universities. By contrasting how these two institutions face the demands of the different undergraduate students, the authors attempt to theorise the role that English and multilingualism play in the social and academic fabric of US universities of the 21st century. In the last chapter of Part 4 Elana Shohamy provides a critical view of EMI. According to this author, and without taking anything away from the strengths of EMI programmes, a number of problematic issues have been overlooked in the quick adoption of the approach. The author raises three main issues. The first one has to do with the achievement of academic content through EMI when students are not fully familiar with the language of instruction. The second issue relates to the difficulties that minority – indigenous and immigrant – students face when their home language is different than the national language of most people and consequently study content via a third language, English. The situation results in major inequalities and lower achievements in tertiary education. The third issue concerns assessment, as monolingual test types are still the single alternative in these programmes, defying the bi/multilingual discourse that is taking place in the classroom. This can be of paramount importance given that the various contents are being processed while employing and relying on other languages. How these approaches lead to discrimination and the lack of language rights are the focus in this critical chapter. In the final part the editors gather the main issues dealt with in the previous chapters and put forward some reflections for future developments of EMI in an attempt to advance understanding of the impact of EMI in higher education. The main questions to be addressed are: What is the role of EMI in the internationalisation process? Are university students proficient in English to cope with EMI? Can both language and content be integrated successfully? What successful practices are there? Last but not least, we would like to thank all the contributors for their willingness to participate in this volume. Their expertise and dedication have made our editing job an exciting and enriching venture which has significantly contributed to our better understanding of such a complex reality as EMI. We hope the readers find our effort worthwhile.

References Altbach, P. G. and Knight, J. (2007) The internationalization of higher education: Motivations and realities. Journal for Studies in International Education 11 (3/4), 290–305. Kachru, B. (1982) The Other Tongue: English across Cultures. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois. Wächter, B. and Maiworm, F. (2008) English-Taught Programmes in European Higher Education. The Picture in 2007. Bonn: Lemmens.

Part 1 The Development of English-Medium Instruction

1 English-Medium Instruction at a Dutch University: Challenges and Pitfalls Robert Wilkinson

Introduction English-medium instruction (EMI) has become commonplace in many institutes of higher education in countries where English is not the native language. This is a contemporary feature of the higher education space in Europe and elsewhere. Almost every institute seems compelled to offer programmes through English, whether at postgraduate level (Master’s) or at undergraduate level (Bachelor’s). The expansion of EMI has been driven by economic, social and political forces, and sometimes even educational. The advent of ranking organisations has accelerated the trend, by establishing criteria against which institutions can be compared. Consistently in such rankings, universities from the United States and Britain fill the top places. Between institutions, the rankings have generated an atmosphere of competitiveness between institutions, which may have been only negligible in the past. Senior administrators pay great attention to the rankings, whatever the basis for the criteria, and note with pleasure or anxiety the relative ranks of their own institute and those with which they most wish to compare, i.e. their assumed competitors. The administrators wish to see their institution attain and maintain a relatively high place in the rankings. To do so, they seem subject to an unconscionable desire to emulate the top-ranking universities by doing what those universities do well, and doing it better if at all possible, and this seems to entail doing it in English. Academic research is an important part of the rankings, and thus it needs to be read and rated in the best possible journals for the widest international readership; hence research too has to be published primarily in English. Students, together with the staff, are the fundamental core of a university. Without students there is no university. Universities want the best students. Sourcing excellent students, however, can no longer be limited to 3

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the first language (L1) area: in many cases there are simply not enough excellent domestic students to meet the wishes of the national universities. The institutions are therefore striving to attract such students from other countries, and in many cases that will mean enticing students through EMI programmes. However, it may be questioned whether this trend towards increasing EMI is good, and if so, who actually benefits. On the other hand, it is worth considering whether there are ‘losers’, and if so, what they are losing. In one perspective, higher education may be seen as fixed: there is a fixed number of institutions and fixed number of students. Thus what one institution gains, another loses. However, this treats education as a zero-sum game, in which for every winner, there is a loser. Yet, the size of education can itself get bigger. It is non-zero-sum in that there can be more ‘winners’ than ‘losers’. This chapter then looks at the challenges EMI poses and what advantages or disadvantages it conveys. The example of one Dutch university, Maastricht, is used by way of illustration. The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 sketches the origins of EMI at Maastricht University. It is a story that unfolded gradually over nearly two decades, and I was a key player in the events.1 Section 3 looks more broadly at the reasons for introducing EMI, with specific focus on European institutions. Section 4 examines selected consequences of EMI for the society, the students and the institution. Section 5 concludes with reflections on the implications for the future student, the future of higher educational institutions, and cultures and languages other than English (see also Li in this volume).

The Early Story of the English-Medium Instruction at Maastricht University In the mid-1980s a small Dutch university decided to open a first-degree programme in International Management. After an initial phase in Dutch, the programme would be taught mainly in English with special components delivered in French and German. The four-year programme led to a ‘doctorandus’ degree in economics, the equivalent of today’s master’s degree. The initial intake of students was small, yet almost doubled every year so that by the third year over a hundred students were following the programme at Maastricht University. Prior to the start of the programme, concern was expressed about the ability of Dutch students to follow programmes in English, in particular whether students with high-school English would be adequately equipped. It was decided to test all potential applicants to the programme. This was

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possible as it did not concern entry to the university but to a specific ‘track’ within the economics curriculum. Under Dutch law entry tests other than the school-leaving diploma were not permitted. Thus, during the initial Dutch phase almost all students interested in following the International Management ‘track’ in English took a voluntary screening test in English. Students with low scores were advised not to join the track. Psychometric analysis of the test showed good discrimination for the total score and the writing score, but not so for the scores on the other sub-components (reading comprehension, syntax, punctuation) (Foster & Wilkinson, 1991). The students joining the programme seemed to be those with a better ability in English. Moreover, there had been few reports of students having difficulty coping with the programme because of language. However, the same could not be said of the French and German components. Students were also tested in these languages, but less rigorously. Yet observations, supported by student feedback, showed that the students felt seriously limited in their ability to participate at a sufficiently high academic level in French and German. Secondary-school French and German were inadequate. Moreover, some of the courses were delivered in Liège (Belgium) and Aachen (Germany), where quite a different instructional approach to learning was applied. Additional cultural barriers were encountered. Non-Dutch students transferred to the programme after the initial Dutch phase. Students with French or German as their L1 could speak English, but not the other language, and thus they were exempted from courses in that language. This meant a degree of inequity in how different students were treated. Since major investment in language training was not acceptable, the upshot was that the French and German economics components ceased, although some language training in these languages continued. Besides the screening test, which had initially helped to ensure the entry of linguistically competent students to the International Management track in economics, other means were employed to ensure the quality of the English in the programme in the first years. Alongside the content courses there were English skills training courses, which focused principally on the productive skills of writing and presentations. However, some of the skills courses were content and language integrated courses, notably in statistics and accounting. In these courses team teaching was the norm, with the statistics or accounting teacher discussing each meeting with the English teacher beforehand and afterwards to ensure agreement on purpose, accomplishments, learning tasks, and classroom management (see also Ball & Lindsay, this volume). In addition, every week for the first two years content tutorials were monitored by an English teacher, who would observe

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two or three tutorials every week and give feedback and advice to the students in the last quarter of an hour, occasionally intervening at other times too. Feedback to the content teacher was usually provided privately afterwards. Furthermore, many of the content staff made use of the opportunity to seek the advice of an English teacher on their materials and intended tasks in advance. To some extent this enabled the written instructional language to be more closely tailored to the linguistic abilities of the students, as well as facilitating the redesign of some tasks so that language development also formed part of the goals. The leader of the English team was also a member of the Faculty programme committee. The close involvement of the English staff in all aspects of the programme gave the English team an insightful overview of the first two years of the programme, identifying whether there was an observable development in language skills in addition to the measured development in content. It also enabled the English team to see which parts of the programme meshed well and which did not, as well as to observe whether some components were linguistically more challenging than others, and whether there was a mismatch linguistically in the order of the components. These inputs allowed the programme to be continually tweaked to ensure as optimal a delivery as the circumstances allowed. It is not claimed that the English team’s input was the only factor of influence on the programme’s design and success, but it was a contributory factor. By the early 1990s, at a time of great enthusiasm about the idea of Europe (e.g. the Maastricht Treaty of 1992), student numbers in International Management had risen to over 200 in the initial year. The first graduates too had been eagerly offered jobs. European and international trends fuelled the demand for Europe-centred English-taught economics and business graduates. This impelled Maastricht University to start with International Economic Studies in both a Dutch and an English version, and International Business, which would be taught only in English from the very start. The number of students enrolling in these EMI programmes may have surprised the administrators. Since additional testing at entry was not permitted, it was decided not to continue with the screening test. The thinking may have been that weaker students would drop out anyway, whether due to language or content: that was a traditional purpose of the academic first year. Administrators would have deemed the advent of English-medium programmes a success in view of the large enrolment and the numbers of non-Dutch students registering. The success at Maastricht did not go unnoticed as universities elsewhere in the Netherlands also began to introduce EMI programmes in business and

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economics, notably Groningen, Rotterdam (Erasmus), Nijmegen and Tilburg. Moreover, the success in business and economics also prompted other disciplines in Maastricht to introduce English-taught components in their programmes, notably in Arts and Culture and in Psychology, but also in the European Law School at the Law Faculty. Medicine and Health Sciences were not immune as both brought in some components in English during the 1990s, mainly with an eye to facilitating exchanges. The growth of EMI at Maastricht continued apace with a decision made by what is today the School of Business and Economics to abandon offering programmes in Dutch: so many more students were already enrolling for the English variants or for the English-only programmes, that delivering courses and producing materials in two languages became an unnecessary cost burden. The rapid application (in 2002) of the Bologna Declaration to Dutch higher education meant many institutions had to rethink their curricula, and several, like Maastricht, opted to deliver more programmes in English, with an eye to student mobility and diploma portability. Maastricht’s School of Business and Economics opted to reorganise their range of programmes, whereby the International Management programme was closed down along with various components subsumed in International Business or in International Business Economics. Programmes such as European Studies and European Public Health began. This brief overview of the development of EMI at Maastricht University reveals an emphasis in the early stages to ensure the quality of the language both as a means of instruction and as a learning goal itself. The close involvement of language staff in the establishment of programmes demonstrates the realisation by the programme initiators from the start that poor language ability could jeopardise the whole programme. Later, as concerns about language declined, the English specialists began to occupy a role as support staff, mainly providing academic writing training. Their role in advising the content staff on both the practicalities of EMI teaching and materials design declined. The scope of the English specialists’ role would seem to be inversely related to the recruitment of international content staff whose academic careers have mainly been conducted in English.

Reasons for Introducing EMI and its Development Over the past quarter of a century there have been many differing reasons why an institution decides to offer EMI programmes. A large pan-European study by the Academic Cooperation Association (Wächter & Maiworm, 2008) summarises nine different reasons for the introduction of EMI programmes. Three reasons dominate: to attract international students

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who would not enrol in a programme in the domestic language; to make domestic students fit for the global or international market; and to sharpen the profile of the institution in comparison to others in the country. Research-oriented universities felt that it was important to introduce EMI to secure the research base by attracting future PhD students. Wächter and Maiworm (2008) reported that they were surprised that the altruistic motive to provide high-level education for students from the Third World plays such a strong role. Other motives play a smaller role: to attract foreign students to become part of the workforce of the country; to counterbalance the lack of enrolment of domestic students; to enable specialised courses to run despite insufficient numbers of domestic students; and to improve the income base of the institution. The questionnaire survey had asked respondents (institutional coordinators for the Erasmus programme and EMI programme directors) to rate each of the nine reasons. Wächter and Maiworm (2008) do not indicate whether the respondents could add other reasons. In their earlier study, Maiworm and Wächter (2002) reported similar motives, although they subsumed several reasons under the heading ‘to attract foreign students’. One of these reasons listed was competitive survival: some universities may not be able to survive without recruiting foreign students. One motive reported in 2002, but not in 2008, was the development of new degree programmes. In contrast, the profiling motive was not mentioned in 2002. In their Nordic study, Hellekjaer and Westergaard (2003) allowed respondents to add reasons. The responses differ somewhat from Wächter and Maiworm (2008), although the principal reason is the same: to recruit international students. Hellekjaer and Westergaard (2003) also found that assisting developing countries was an important reason, perhaps reflecting the longstanding Nordic contributions to development aid. Two closely related reasons concern the nature of the programme: EMI courses were established as part of international exchange programmes, and to promote intercultural exchange. Slightly different from Wächter and Maiworm (2008), Hellekjaer and Westergaard (2003) report that some programmes were established explicitly to recruit domestic students. Although a less frequent reason, this suggests that the demand was perceived as coming from the students, rather than being ‘imposed’ by the institution, as implied by Wächter and Maiworm (2008). The last reason reported by Hellekjaer and Westergaard (2003) is to promote language learning goals. This was the least frequent motive, but it is noteworthy that it appears at all. Language learning motives do not feature in Wächter and Maiworm (2008). Wilkinson (2005a, 2008a) reported five different groups of motives for establishing EMI programmes: practical; survival; financial; idealist; and

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educational. The motives change over time according to the circumstances affecting the university. In the case of Maastricht University, the reasons advanced over the past 25 years can be categorised according to five phases of development (Table 1.1). The initial phase from 1987 can be seen as a cross-border period: at this time, the motives were practical – to profit from geographical location (on the political border with Belgium and Germany, and the linguistic borders of Dutch, French and German); idealist – to promote multilingualism (the initial programmes had components in English, French and German, and later even elements in Spanish and Italian); educational – to establish new educational programmes, thus explicitly avoiding an attempt to ‘convert’ an existing Dutch programme into an EMI one. The second phase from 1991–92 can be labelled as one of rapid expansion and Europeanisation, coinciding with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty: the principal motives at this time were practical – recruiting international and exchange students; survival – the home market was too small or too saturated; and educational – to establish new educational programmes. The third phase from 1995 can be called one of consolidation in which existing programmes were broadened; the motives at this time

Table 1.1 Phases of English-medium instruction (EMI) at Maastricht University, and motivations for expansion Cross-border Europeanisation Consolidation Globalisation Phases → 1991 1995 2002 Motivations ↓ 1987 recruitment Practical geography recruitment (student (international & expertise) exchange students) internationaliIdealist multilingualism sation-athome Educational new pronew programmes new programmes grammes Survival home market profiling profiling too small/too institution institution saturated as bilingual as international Financial cost of bilingual options

Monetisation 2007 recruitment (money)

profiling institution (rankings) recruitment (bring in money)

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comprised survival – to profile the institution as bilingual, in that during this phase the university decided to become a bilingual Dutch and English institution; idealist – to promote internationalisation-at-home, as local students would learn alongside students from many other countries and cultures; and financial – the cost of bilingual options in Dutch and English was beginning to weigh heavily on budgets, with the result that it would be easier to offer just one version, EMI. The fourth phase from 2002 can be considered as rapid expansion and globalisation across the university, with new EMI programmes beginning in many faculties and especially at Master’s level, coinciding with the implementation of the Bologna Declaration and the introduction of the euro. The motives during this phase become practical – to recruit student expertise (the idea of attracting excellent students from all over the world begins to emerge); survival – to profile the institution as an international university; and educational – to establish new degree programmes. The fifth and current phase from 2007 may be viewed as monetisation, as the value of the whole educational programme offered internationally begins to be seen in monetary terms. Thus a dominant motive during this period is financial and practical – to attract students who bring in money from outside the European Higher Educational Area. The survival motive of profiling the institution continues, especially as a result of growing attention to the ranking lists. The financial and survival motives have begun to acquire increasing importance as the effects of financial changes in the education sector begin to have an impact. This is apparent in the strengthening of links with industry and of alumni involvement. It would seem that during this phase idealist and educational reasons to provide EMI programmes play a less important role. It is noteworthy that, unlike the Nordic countries, the idealist motive of assisting developing countries played only a minor role in the establishment of EMI programmes at Maastricht University. This is not to say that a degree of this nature of idealism does not exist (there is a longstanding organisation at the university which stimulates two-way exchange and educational development aid, and a special scholarship fund was established after the 2004 tsunami for students from the stricken countries), but it has not played a role in establishing EMI programmes. One notable exception is the Master of Health Professions Education, which is explicitly aimed at capacity building in developing countries. It is thus clear that the motives for establishing EMI programmes are dynamic and reflect the phase during which programmes are set up. Increasingly, survival and financial motives are likely to dominate, as institutions are subject to growing competition from all over the world. Students are

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very mobile, and the availability of programmes in English is likely to stimulate their mobility. Funding will come under strain, if taxpayers begin to question the wisdom of paying for the education of international students. These considerations bring us to the consequences of EMI and the critical issues arising from the rapid growth of such programmes over the past two decades.

Consequences of EMI: Critical Issues Loss of domain for the L1 The advent of EMI programmes has generated criticism, particularly from those who see the increasing number of programmes as indicating a loss of domain for the L1 (see for example Ammon, 2008, on German’s decline in academic domains and Doiz et al., this volume). In this view the increasing encroachment of English in public and private life is perceived as an impoverishment of the linguistic diversity (e.g. Phillipson, 1992, 2003). Some researchers have demonstrated the preference in the treatment accorded to English in higher education and the corresponding inequitable treatment of the L1 (e.g. Brock-Utne, 2007). Indeed, similar arguments about domain loss are also voiced in the Netherlands and Belgium (e.g. Janssens & Marynissen, 2005; Melis, 2010), where there are concerns that domain loss in higher education would spread to other social spheres through loss of functionality in the L1, that an English-only higher education may lead to reduced creativity as the L1 ceases to be used (Janssens & Marynissen, 2005: 254) and that graduates may find their employability limited if they cannot handle their academic learning in their L1 (Melis, 2010). Domain loss seems to be a bigger issue in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, Flanders, than in the Netherlands, perhaps because Flemish academics recall the long history of an academia dominated by French. However, domain loss is not such a simple phenomenon, according to BruttGriffler (2008: 65–66). She views the current dominant role of English as a consequence of the rise of the nation-state, and thus the challenge facing languages today comes principally from the hegemony of the nation-state. Janssens and Marynissen (2005) also ask the question of whether taxpayers would be willing to continue to fund academic research if they cannot enjoy the outcomes in their L1. It raises a series of ethical issues about national government funding for higher education: Should a government fund educational programmes that may lead to its national language being excluded from the practice of specific academic domains? Should a government fund educational programmes that attract many, if not most students from other

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countries, especially if these countries are equally wealthy? In contrast, the Danish government appears currently unconcerned, but is aware of the danger of Danish suffering domain loss to English in high-status contexts (Denmark.DK, 2011). In the case of the Netherlands, it could be that EMI represents simply another option for trading. The Dutch economy has long been heavily dependent on trading, and the global market in higher education is no different. Dutch universities have to compete worldwide, as if in an endeavour to replicate the success of the Dutch hold on the world flower market. In this view, domain loss for Dutch could be an unintended by-product of EMI established for mercantilist reasons. Domain loss is a critical national concern, in that it entails an entire academic discipline no longer being available in the L1 at a national level. It is less of a concern at the level of the individual institution. A single university offering its education as EMI programmes is less likely to be attentive to domain loss if its switch to EMI increases its attractiveness to students, strengthening thereby its revenue stream, and perhaps widening the recruitment pool of well-qualified potential academic staff. It is doubtful if domain loss played any role in the decision at Maastricht University to cease to offer its economics and business programmes in Dutch and focus solely on EMI in these disciplines, a decision that was indeed strengthened by the implementation of the Bologna structure in 2002. Correspondingly, only limited thought at the university was given to offering new programmes in Dutch: first-degree programmes in European Studies and European Public Health, for example, were offered solely in English, with scant attention to the evident opportunities to use many other languages as input to these programmes (it is true that documentation is sometimes suggested in other languages, yet students by and large only read the English texts). Bucking this trend, however, one new first-degree programme in the sciences was offered in Dutch, Molecular Life Sciences, although most of the literature is in English. The subsequent Master’s programme is solely in English. At the individual institution level, any concerns about L1 domain loss will be brushed aside by the successful implementation of EMI programmes in faculties. The EMI programmes at the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht are deemed successful in that they have led to increased recruitment, especially of non-Dutch students (around 60% of the intake), recognition of quality by international accreditation bodies (AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA), and high places in national and international ranking lists (SBE, 2011). This success has led other faculties to try to emulate the School by implementing their own EMI programmes. Similarly, domain loss is unlikely to be uppermost in the minds of students who seek to position themselves on an increasingly international

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job-market (van Rietbergen, 2011). Students will be more interested in the nature and quality of the programme they choose to study as well as the quality of the teaching. The following subsections look at aspects of curriculum and course design, collaboration between academic content staff and language staff and the assurance of quality.

Curriculum and course design Many factors affect course design, for example factors concerning the rationale or philosophy, learning goals, content selection, teaching and learning methods, learner factors including motivation and learning context (I have discussed these in more detail in Wilkinson, 2005b). Here the focus is on what content is selected and how that content is delivered. In these two ways in particular, the implementation of EMI impacts on the curriculum design. Selection of content depends on whether the programme itself is new or a conversion from an existing L1 programme, whether the disciplines are by nature nationally culturally determined (e.g. history, health care) or relatively independent of national culture (e.g. physics, biochemistry, mathematics), as well as on the choices made under rationale and learning goals. The following examples are all from bachelor’s programmes at Maastricht. In the case of a new programme such as in European Public Health, a clear choice was made to focus on international public health themes, issues, institutional frameworks, and practices, exemplified by organisations such as the World Health Organization, European Union, and the European Observatory for Health Systems and Policies. Critical comparison was an important goal, whereby the practices of one country would be compared to other countries, for example the epidemiology, treatment and prevention of tuberculosis. The broad thematic sweep of the programme enables students to get a grasp of public health in Europe, without particularly probing the public health in any one country in depth. In contrast, the Economics programme is a case of conversion from an existing programme. It did not need changes in the economic principles but more in the examples used: gradually local Dutch examples were replaced by international examples or by examples from well-known multinational firms. Yet, sometimes localness was retained, but the locality shifted to a different country, provided there was sufficient information available in English. In such cases, it was not so much the localness that was of interest, but the principles applying in the example. European Studies began as a new programme after the implementation in 2002 of the Bologna Declaration. By its very nature it obliges students to

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fathom the history, philosophy, politics, sociology, economics and law underpinning the current structure of the European continent. The courses confront students with national perspectives of European developments from which they attempt to deduce overarching themes and principles. Clearly culture plays a critical role, as does language. Developing a second language is a necessary part of the skills training in the second and third years, often with a view to study abroad later in the third year. However, as with European Public Health, it is the broad sweep that is uppermost; the programme does not intend students to delve into the details of any one state or nation. Students do not need knowledge of a second language to master the content of the programme, although it may help. Students may well also read sources in their L1 and relay their findings to other students through English. Thus there would be scope for a multilingual approach, even though the core content is almost solely in English. In contrast, a programme such as Knowledge Engineering is relatively independent of language, involving a combination of ICT, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and computer science. In essence, the programme could be provided in any instructional language. However, with a view to student recruitment it is solely in English and attracts students from a variety of countries and backgrounds. The four examples illustrate content choices induced partly by EMI. In two cases, the choice is made for broad themes and issues that affect many different countries and cultures, leaving any in-depth study of a single culture to the student. There is no explicit demand on the students to seek source material in a language other than English. In the two other cases, the focus is on general theories, principles, and applications irrespective of the national context in which the theories or principles are applied. That is not to say that the context is unimportant; rather, that one context could easily be replaced by another. At the bachelor’s level at least, it seems that programmes strive for a sound grasp of breadth and generalities of assumptions, theories, and principles, with the task placed on the student to determine the extent to which these apply in any particular context. It is, as it were, as if the narrowness of depth that one might expect in an L1 programme has been replaced by a shallower breadth. The approach is also determined by the characteristics of the students enrolling. With a majority of non-Dutch students coming from a wide range of countries, although most from Germany, the breadth approach is understandable as it serves inclusive goals: students do not need to fear being excluded because of either culture or L1. However, this entails side-stepping the opportunities of a multicultural and plurilingual approach that could have been adopted.

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How the content is delivered has a critical impact on the success of a programme. Issues have been raised in many studies about the quality of the language of the teaching staff and that of the students (e.g. Airey, 2004; Hellekjaer, 2005; Klaassen, 2001; Sercu, 2004; Vinke, 1995). What may be called traditional education, comprising mainly of lectures, puts pressure on the lecturing staff to perform well in a language that more often than not is not their L1; pronunciation problems, lack of clarity and an inability to elaborate and improvise have been reported as particular problems facing the lecturers (Klaassen, 2001; Vinke, 1995; Wilkinson, 2005c; see also Ball & Lindsay, this volume). Students may find that listening to lectures does not enhance their own productive competences (writing and speaking) in the subjects of study. For this reason, a student-centred approach has been argued (e.g. Wilkinson, 2005b, 2008b) as important for the helping both academic staff and students. Student-centred learning offers scope for effective EMI course design primarily because it places the emphasis on student responsibility for what is learned, how it is learned, and when it is learned (Gibbs, 1999). It is held that by so emphasising responsibility for their own learning, students themselves are stimulated to become more effective learners. Students are thus responsible for planning their own learning, determining how and when they interact with teachers and other students and for researching and assessing their own learning (Cannon, 2000). Nevertheless, while student-centred learning may promote effective learning, the converse may also apply simultaneously: that effective learners take responsibility for their own learning. The form of student-centred learning applied at Maastricht University is problem-based learning (PBL). PBL may be defined as any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning, where before students learn some knowledge they are given a problem, and where the problem is posed so that students discover they need to learn some knowledge before they can solve the problem (see e.g. Schmidt, 1983, 1993). PBL has been described in detail elsewhere (e.g. van Til & van der Heijden, 1998). The approach is held to be appropriate for language development too (Wilkinson & Geerligs, 1994; see also Wood & Head, 2004). PBL (and other student-centred approaches) may promote learning in EMI because students are active in using language (defining, describing, explaining, accounting for, differentiating, etc.); students are in charge of their own learning; problems can be pre-designed both to elicit content knowledge and to activate and develop language competences; collaborative learning allows mutual help during the PBL process; productive tasks in PBL allows assessment of content and language; and there is limited reliance on

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staff language ability. The last is particularly important, because the linguistic competence of the staff can be a reason for ineffective course implementation (Hellekjaer & Wilkinson, 2001). However, the advantages of student-centred learning approaches in developing both content and language do not mean that students’ language competences will develop: they can also stabilise (or fossilise) if everyone around them is using the same variety. In contrast, this may strengthen the development of ELF (English as a Lingua Franca, Dewey & Jenkins, 2010; Seidlhofer, 2001, 2003). Moreover, as Klaassen (2001) has emphasised, effective teaching behaviours are probably more important for fostering learning than staff having a high competency in language.

Collaboration between content and language staff Students have expectations about the quality of EMI: they expect to learn the content for which they have enrolled, and they expect their language competences to improve; they expect the content staff to speak and write reasonably good English. However, the role of the content staff in EMI programmes is principally to stimulate students to learn the subject matter; they will rarely see their role as one of developing the students’ language ability, although they are best placed to develop the students’ knowledge of the language of the subject (Jacobs, 2007). Instead, this role will be delegated to language staff (see Cots, this volume for team teaching). Students may have language weaknesses, and they are unlikely to be familiar with the academic literacies required to successfully achieve their degree. To help learning in these respects, the language staff will monitor, support and instruct the students. However, to do so effectively requires a sufficient knowledge of the content curriculum and thus collaboration with the content staff is essential. How that collaboration is structured can vary from highly integrated team-teaching, as exemplified in the example given above of the early years of the International Management programme at Maastricht, to parallel or adjunct teaching, where the language support is provided separately from content courses, although the disciplinary content information used in the language support will derive from collaboration with content staff. The trend over time at Maastricht University has seen a move from a broad approach in the initial years of a new programme, in which both language development and literacy skills (e.g. academic writing) were the goals, to a narrow approach largely concerned with the literacy skills in academic writing as programmes bed down. Once a programme has become established, the language competencies of the students enrolling are treated as adequate (i.e. sufficient to succeed in the programme), and thus

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additional language training can be treated as a luxury and so dispensed with. The support from language staff becomes reduced to the essentials that students do not possess before entry and that the content staff either do not feel equipped to train or would have to do so at the expense of their primary content role. The essentials are viewed as developing academic writing competencies, and occasionally professional skills such as presentations. In recent years new EMI programmes at the university have tended to mirror the limited collaborative approach of the School of Business and Economics, and focus almost exclusively on academic writing in English. The opportunities for full collaborative development as in the 1980s (see also Jacobs, 2004) have not been pursued.

Assurance of quality It is important for the institutional management and the academics responsible for any educational programme to pay close attention to the quality. Although quality covers a very wide range of aspects, including buildings, resource and learning facilities, reception and administrative services, more attention is focused on the courses themselves, teaching materials and teaching approaches either at institutional or individual level. Additionally, in the case of EMI programmes where many students may come from other countries, living and social aspects may play a decisive role. Moreover, students will be interested to know about the career prospects after the EMI programme. Administrators in particular will judge a programme in part on its degree of success in attracting and continuing to attract students. For programmes, quality assurance is guaranteed by internal evaluation procedures which may include student evaluation, as at Maastricht. In addition, quality is assured by the national visitation committees and ministry appointed quality bodies, but increasingly also by international accreditation bodies such as EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development with its EQUIS scheme). Students, however, are likely to pay attention to rankings, especially local rankings (e.g. the Dutch Keuzegids or Elsevier in the case of Dutch students, or CHE in the case of German students). Students also are concerned about the quality of the teaching staff. In the case of EMI, they will be concerned about three aspects in particular: disciplinary competence, teaching competence and language competence. Disciplinary competence will by and large not differ from the requirements that would be in place for teaching through the L1, as will teaching competence. In the latter case, the Netherlands is gradually developing a national

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system to guarantee teaching quality, known as BKO (Basiskwalificatie onderwijs [Basic teaching qualification]) (VSNU, 2011).2 Language competence for EMI, which does not form a part of the BKO, has long been a concern of students, to the extent that some universities, Delft for example, have instituted testing for all academic staff. However, while student complaints have been noticeable during the early years of EMI programmes, these seem to decline as students adjust to accents, studying and discussions in English. Vinke (2010) and de Bot (2011) have both recently summarised the findings of academic research regarding EMI, including slightly different studies in their reviews. After an initial negative effect on understanding, no long-term effect has been found, no effect on learning outcomes and even signs of a positive effect on the learning process (which Vinke suggests may be due to the students’ increased concentration). EMI, however, seems to have a slight negative impact on the academic teacher’s teaching quality, although there seems to be no relation between this and student outcomes (Vinke, 2010). De Bot (2011) finds similar outcomes, with academic staff remarking that teaching EMI costs more time and is more tiring. The quality of the students’ English was related to the amount of time in English, which suggests that partial EMI programmes, where only some courses are given in English, may be less beneficial to the students’ language competences as they have been shown to be less beneficial to content learning (Jochems et al., 1996; see also Wilkinson, 2005c). Students’ attention is drawn to the teacher’s lack of linguistic fluency and flexibility and above all to pronunciation: relatively minor pronunciation problems (according to educational experts) can elicit strong negative reactions from students (de Bot, 2011). The research findings suggest that language issues may in fact be a temporary problem in EMI, at least in countries such as the Netherlands.

Conclusion However, even if the EMI curricula are well designed, even if there is good collaboration between content staff and language staff, resulting in generally good quality of the programmes, issues still arise concerning the economic, social and political desirability of EMI in higher education (see Shohamy, this volume). The economic perspectives can be seen at an institutional level, but also at individual and national levels. At the institutional level, as has been indicated earlier, economic reasons are in part the motivating factors for establishing EMI, and this may be increasingly the case as national educational budgets come under strain. Institutions may feel an expanding need to recruit students from abroad, and in most cases they will do so through

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English. In mass multicultural, multilingual communities, it is easier for institutions to attract students through English rather than any other language: the institutions do not want to have the expense of teaching the language first. At the individual student level, the motivation to study through English is not primarily one of language: a student will be motivated by the quality of the education, but the idea of that quality may be perceived through the opportunity of multiple perspectives to be garnered from being in a multicultural environment. Students may thus perceive an EMI programme as one in which many cultural perspectives regarding the issues of the discipline studied can be gained without the need to acquire a variety of languages. Thus they achieve at little cost multiple benefits, albeit filtered through one single language, English. To study their chosen programme, students need to possess a sufficiently good command of English, and thus English is an expected competence prior to study. For many students it is not necessarily the case that their English competences improve during their studies, even though they may acquire the additional skills in using the language they already know and acquire the specialist vocabulary. In this respect the risk of language fossilisation represents a disadvantage for the student. EMI may entail that English is not an added value; rather, it is a commodity that you have or can acquire from any reasonably competent source. Indeed, it may be, as Grin (2002) has argued, that English may not be financially the most profitable language to learn. This might suggest that if a student already has a relatively good knowledge of English, he or she may be better off studying elsewhere through the medium of a different second language, such as French or German, Spanish or Russian, Chinese or Arabic. Over time, EMI programmes may not bring significant career benefits to their graduates, as a result of increasing competition from other graduates, including graduates from other educational centres elsewhere in the world, such as Asia. Career prospects may lessen, especially salary (a serious consideration if students have built up considerable debt to fund their studies). Thus students will need to differentiate themselves in a variety of ways to secure their economic future, especially if their abilities to demonstrate their educational attainments through their L1 are curtailed because they have acquired everything in English, and they have not developed their L3 or L4 sufficiently. The economic effect of EMI nationally is likely to be felt first at the level of funding and taxation. It is already questionable to what extent a nation’s taxpayers are willing to fund the education of foreign students. The unease that such a question generates may in future be extended to other students who are not studying through the L1, especially if the national perception is that the L1 is losing prestigious domains to English. If

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this is the case, then institutions would have to look harder than they already do for alternative sources of funds, such as from industry or alumni. Additionally, institutions should examine the contribution EMI graduates make to economic welfare. It is quite complex to take all the costs into account, since such a study would have to discount the initial educational investments made in other countries, which could in fact be seen as a subsidy for EMI. The study would include the costs of the institution providing the education, and of the locality to provide the necessary additional services to incoming students and staff. The benefits would have to be calculated in terms of additional income and jobs created by the advent of EMI in a locality. However, account would have to be taken of mobility, by calculating the loss to the economy of students who move away temporarily or permanently, as well as the gains of incoming students who remain. The foreign students at Maastricht University are said to contribute heavily to the local economy, but detailed research is lacking. Politically and socially, EMI programmes may generate increasing controversy in that graduates will belong to an elite who are well paid, communicate regularly through English with international colleagues, discuss matters of global significance, in a way that differentiates them from the others of society. The division between this growing elite and the rest needs attention, and institutions should take counterbalancing action. There is a need to maintain good relations with the local community. For example, car parking is already a local irritant in Maastricht. The large numbers of German-registered cars are found parked in residential areas where parking is free and thus displacing local residents’ vehicles. This causes resentment and has led to vandalism against German cars. Similarly, there is a risk of ghettoisation as students from similar cultures group together and distinguish themselves from other cultural groups. This can lead to exclusion practices, often unwittingly, whereby students of other cultures can feel excluded from the social space. It has long been observed at Maastricht that outside the classes and lectures Dutch students congregate together and speak Dutch, German students do the same and talk German. Currently, the university is aiming to stimulate the speaking of English at all times during breaks and in coffee corners. Some may see this as another example of domain loss. Centrally, the university is also organising so-called ‘Mix and Mingle’ events in an attempt to get students to socialise across cultures and across faculties and schools. However, despite the popularity (students always like subsidised parties), it is debatable the extent of the effect of such actions on students’ natural inclinations. People are more likely to communicate in their strongest language they can use with the people around, which will be their L1 if everyone around speaks it.

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Institutions offering EMI programmes that attract large numbers of foreign students are not immune to national issues, such as immigration and culture. They have to adapt to the ebb and flow of politics, if only to ensure that their positive contributions are highlighted and the negative sides (e.g. domain loss, diminution of cultural diversity) are downplayed. Institutions cannot afford to become too divorced from their national base. Yet at the same time, it may be national governments who themselves have provoked a context in which EMI programmes are likely to flourish. The most widely learned foreign language in schools in the European Union is English, and it is currently the most widely known language across Europe, according to a European Commission survey (European Commission, 2006). Moreover, results in the Commission’s survey show conflicting opinions about the ideals of multilingualism, in that 77% think English is the most useful language to learn, and that 70% agree that Europeans should be able to speak in a single common language, while at the same time 50% agree that Europeans should speak their mother tongue plus two foreign languages (44% disagree) (p. 55). It would appear that most Europeans do not actually practice what they hold: only 28% speak two foreign languages (p. 9). Students may then be following simple economic motivations, and opting to undertake international learning in the language their own countries have best equipped them for. As domain loss for the L1 increases and the most prestigious functions of communication are carried on in English, the eminent Dutch political scientist Abram de Swaan (2000) has surmised that there may come a time when people begin to neglect their L1, and parents cease to teach it to their children. As a consequence, according to de Swaan (2000) in his Schumann lecture posted on his website, collective cultural capital becomes lost and the ‘totality of texts in that language becomes inaccessible’. De Swaan (2000) concludes that this situation will not arise so long as ‘governments remain alert and citizens continue to do what they have always thoroughly enjoyed: to talk about everything they like with everyone they choose to in the tongue they speak best, their own.’ In this light, universities have to take a very long view in weighing up whether our children, and our children’s children, will thank them for the educational decisions they are making and implementing today.

Notes (1) It is unfortunate that the story of the development at Maastricht University has never been formally recorded. It would be instructive for other institutions. (2) Most Dutch universities explain how they are implementing this system on their websites, e.g. University of Groningen: http://www.rug.nl/uocg/professionalisering/ cursussenrug/basiscursussen/index?lang=en

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References Airey, J. (2004) Can you teach it in English? Aspects of the language choice debate in Swedish higher education. In R. Wilkinson (ed.) Integrating Content and Language: Meeting the Challenge of a Multilingual Higher Education (pp. 97–108). Maastricht: Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Ammon, U. (2008) Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache: Wie lang nog? [German as a scientific language: how much longer?]. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.) English in Academia. Catalyst or Barrier? (pp. 25–43). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Brock-Utne, B. (2007) Language of instruction and research in higher education in Europe: Highlights from the current debate in Norway and Sweden. International Review of Education 53 (4), 367–388. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2008) Intellectual culture and cultural imperialism: implications of the growing dominance of English in academia. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.) English in Academia. Catalyst or Barrier? (pp. 59–72). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Cannon, R. (2000) Guide to Support the Implementation of the Learning and Teaching Plan Year 2000. ACUE, University of Adelaide. De Bot, K. (2011) Taalvaardigheid en kennisoverdracht [Language skills and knowledge acquisition]. NUFFIC Annual Conference, Amsterdam, accessed 30 April 2011. http://www.nuffic.nl/nederlandse-organisaties/docs/evenementen/jaarcongres-2011/ presentaties-en-verslagen/presentatie-rijksuniversiteit-groningen.pdf De Swaan, A. (2000) Why this is in English (and not in German, nor in Dutch). Schumann Lecture, Maastricht University, accessed 5 June 2011. http://www. deswaan.com/engels/uk_index.htm Denmark.DK (2011) English no threat to Danish. Post on the Official Website of Denmark, 20 April 2011, accessed 2 June 2011. http://www.denmark.dk/en/ servicemenu/News/Culture-News/EnglishNoThreatToDanish.htm Dewey, M. and Jenkins, J. (2010) English as a lingua franca in the global context: Interconnectedness, variation and change. In M. Saxena and T. Omoniyi (eds) Contending with Globalization in World Englishes (pp. 72–92). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. European Commission (2006) Europeans and their Languages. Brussels: Eurobarometer 243, accessed 2 June 2011. http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/doc631_en. pdf Foster, S.F. and Wilkinson, R. (1991) Development and uses of a language screening test for business students. In C. Braecke and H. Cuyckens (eds) Business Communication in Multilingual Europe: Supply and Demand (pp. 127–138). Antwerp: UFSIA and ENCoDe. Gibbs, G. (1999) Assessing More Students. Oxford: Oxford Brookes University. Grin, F. (2002) Using language economics and education economics in language education policy. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, Language Policy Division, accessed 23 September 2005. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/grinen.pdf Hellekjaer, G.O. (2005) The Acid Test: Does Upper Secondary EFL Instruction Effectively Prepare Norwegian Students for the Reading of English Textbooks at Colleges and Universities? Oslo: University of Oslo. Hellekjaer, G.O. and Westergaard, M. (2003) An exploratory survey of content learning through English at Nordic universities. In C. van Leeuwen and R. Wilkinson (eds) Multilingual Approaches in University Education: Challenges and Practices (pp. 65–80). Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers.

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Hellekjaer, G.O. and Wilkinson, R. (2001) Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in higher education: An issue-raising workshop. In F. Mayer (ed.) Language for Special Purposes: Perspectives for the New Millenium. Vol. 1 (pp. 398–408). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Jacobs, C. (2004) The integration of academic literacies into the tertiary curriculum: creating discursive spaces. In R. Wilkinson (ed.) Integrating Content and Language: Meeting the Challenge of a Multilingual Higher Education (pp. 162–177). Maastricht: Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Jacobs, C. (2007). Integrating content and language: whose job is it anyway? In R. Wilkinson and V. Zegers (eds) Researching Content and Language Integration in Higher Education (pp. 35–47). Maastricht: Maastricht University. Janssens, G. and Marynissen, A. (2005, 2nd ed) Het Nederlands Vroeger en Nu [Dutch in the Past and Now]. Leuven: ACCO. Jochems, W., Snippe, J., Smid, H.J., and Verweij, A. (1996) The academic progress of foreign students: study achievement and study behaviour. Higher Education 31, 325–340. Klaassen, R. (2001) The International University Curriculum. Challenges in English-Medium Engineering Education. Delft: Delft University of Technology. Maiworm, F. and Wächter, B. (2002) English-Language-Taught Degree Programmes in European Higher Education. Bonn: Lemmens. Melis, L. (2010) Nederlands, Engels, . . . concurrende of complementaire onwijstalen in het hogere onderwijs? [Dutch, English, . . . competing or complementary instructional language in higher education]. Paper at seminar, ‘Het Nederlands bedreigd?’ [Dutch threatened?], Vlaamse Academici Afdeling Brugge, accessed 2 June 2011. http://vva.vvb.org/teksten.html#NEDERLANDSBEDREIGD Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. London and New York: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2003) English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London and New York: Routledge. SBE (School of Business and Economics) (2011) Website, accessed 3 June 2011. http:// www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/Faculties/SBE.htm Schmidt, H.G. (1983) Problem-based learning: rationale and description. Medical Education 17 (1), 11–16. Schmidt, H.G. (1993) Problem-based learning: an introduction. Instructional Science 22 (4), 247–250. Seidlhofer, B. (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: The case for English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 11 (2), 133–158. Seidlhofer, B. (2003) A concept of international English and related issues: From ‘real English’ to ‘realistic English’? Strasbourg: Council of Europe, Language Policy Division, accessed 15 April 2011. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/seidlhoferen. pdf Sercu, L. (2004) The introduction of English-medium instruction in universities. A comparison of Flemish lecturers’ and students’ language skills, perceptions and attitudes. In R. Wilkinson (ed.) Integrating Content and Language: Meeting the Challenge of a Multilingual Higher Education (pp. 547–555). Maastricht: Universitaire Pers Maastricht. Van Rietbergen, T. (2011) Universitair onderwijs was vroeger veel slechter dan tegenwoordig [University education was much worse in the past than today’s]. Volkskrant, 12 January, accessed 2 June 2011. http://opinie.volkskrant.nl/artikel/show/id/7598/ Universitair_onderwijs_was_vroeger_veel_slechter_dan_tegenwoordig

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Van Til, C. and van der Heijden, F. (1998) PBL Study Skills: An Overview. Maastricht: Maastricht University/Datawyse. Vinke, A.A. (1995) English as the Medium of Instruction in Dutch Engineering Education. Delft: Delft University of Technology. Vinke, A.A. (2010) Onderwijskwaliteit en voertaal. Een vergelijkend onderzoek [Educational quality and instructional language. A comparative study]. Symposium Beter Engels of Beter Nederlands? Taal in het hoger onderwijs. Antwerp, accessed 2 June 2011. http://vlaandereneuropa.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/10-T-DianaVinke. ppt VSNU (2011) Dossier basiskwalificatie onderwijs, accessed 5 June 2011. http://www. vsnu.nl/Beleidsterreinen/Lopende-dossiers/Basiskwalificatie-Onderwijs.htm Wächter, B. and Maiworm, F. (2008) English-Taught Programmes in European Higher Education. The Picture in 2007. Bonn: Lemmens. Wilkinson, R. (2005a) Taming the beast: institutional strategies for the implementation of English-language-taught programmes. Paper presented at ACA Language Policy Seminar ‘Between Babel and Anglo-Saxon Imperialism? English-taught programmes and language policy in European Higher Education’, Brussels, 30 September 2005. Wilkinson, R. (2005b) Effective design in integrated content and language learning: factors, challenges, opportunities. In J. Alam (ed.) Faculty Academic English. Proceedings of Sixth Annual Symposium (pp. 2–16). Ankara: Bilkent University. Wilkinson, R. (2005c) The impact of language on teaching content: views from the content teacher. Paper at the ‘Bi- and Multilingual Universities – challenges and future prospects’ conference in Helsinki 1–3 September 2005, accessed 1 June 2011. http:// www.palmenia.helsinki.fi/congress/bilingual2005/presentations/wilkinson.pdf Wilkinson, R. (2008a) English-taught study courses: principles and practice. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.) English in Academia. Catalyst or Barrier? (pp. 169–182). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Wilkinson, R. (2008b) Locating the ESP space in problem-based learning: English-medium degree programmes from a post-Bologna perspective. In I. Fortanet-Gomez and C. Räisänen (eds) ESP in European Higher Education. (AALS 4) (pp. 55–73). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wilkinson, R. and Geerligs, T. (1994) Language teaching for specific purposes within a problem-based curriculum. In S. Barrueco, E. Hernández, and L. Sierra (eds) Lenguas para Fines Específicos (III). Investigación y Enseñanza (Proceedings of Alcalá LSP Conference 1993) (pp. 13–28). Alcalá de Henares, Spain: Universidad de Alcalá Servicio de Publicaciones. Wood, A. and Head, M. (2004) ‘Just what the doctor ordered’: The application of problem-based learning to EAP. English for Specific Purposes 23 (1), 3–17.

Part 2 Language Demands of English-Medium Instruction on the Stakeholders

2 Acknowledging Academic Biliteracy in Higher Education Assessment Strategies: A Tale of Two Trials Christa van der Walt and Martin Kidd

Introduction South Africa has 11 official languages but their use in education still reflects the country’s apartheid past. Although children are entitled to education in their home language, African languages are used only in the first three years of schooling while English and Afrikaans (to a lesser extent) are used at higher levels of education. This means that for the majority of school and university, students’ education needs to be accessed in a language in which they may not have developed adequate proficiency for academic study. At so-called HAUs – Historically Afrikaans Universities1 – English is increasingly used alongside Afrikaans to provide access to higher education for students who completed their schooling in English. At one such HAU, Stellenbosch University, different models of bilingual education are used, depending on the proficiency of lecturers and the size of classes. Big classes can be divided and lectures offered separately in English and Afrikaans. Smaller classes are often characterised by code switching between English and Afrikaans; a type of dual medium, immersion model. These modules follow the so-called ‘T option’, where lecturers code switch and materials have to be in both languages (see van der Walt, 2006 for a full description of this context). Lecturers have developed a range of strategies to deal with this situation, including Afrikaans summaries of English material, bilingual study notes and bilingual PowerPoint presentations. Test and examination papers are always provided in both languages, and students have the choice to write in one and/or the other depending on their own ability and arrangements made with the lecturer. 27

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Although this situation may appear peculiar to Stellenbosch University, the use of more than one language in higher education lecture halls is not unique to South Africa or Africa. The increasing mobility of higher education students worldwide means that lecturers have to use English (mainly) to accommodate a few international students, while sharing a home or community language with the majority of students (see Söderlundh, 2008). An increasingly multilingual student body is a challenge not only for students but also for lecturers, who need to take language proficiency, in terms of reading comprehension as well as academic writing abilities into account when they teach and assess.

Academic Literacy in Multilingual Contexts A series of articles in Wilkinson et al. (2006) details the problems with assessment in higher education environments where multilingual students increasingly use English as a language of learning and teaching (LoLT). In such environments language proficiency and academic success are intertwined and classroom practices are de facto multilingual, either overtly in the form of code switching and translation activities or covertly when students translate materials or study by making summaries and notes in a language that is not the LoLT. In the case of the participants in this study the classroom practices are overtly multilingual. The term multilingual is used in this chapter to refer to students who use more than one language for learning and social purposes, and such languages may not coincide with the dominant LoLTs. In this chapter the reference is to second year students at Stellenbosch University where Afrikaans is used alongside English to varying degrees. Even classes that claim to be exclusively in Afrikaans or English will incorporate both languages because lecturers generally answer questions in the language in which they are posed. As indicated above, lecturer-generated materials (for example PowerPoint slides) and study notes are usually bilingual, often to help with the understanding of English textbooks. Since they are located in a multilingual society, all South African universities have multilingual students and staff despite the fact that only English or, to a lesser extent, English and Afrikaans, are official LoLTs. All South African universities are also committed to developing a regional African language in an effort to formalise the academic use of such languages (see Cots; Doiz et al.; Li, this volume, for multilingual language policies at university level). There are many directions that research in multilingual academic contexts can take, for example:

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• • • •

29

the way in which bi/multilingualism develops in academic environments (see Li, this volume); the influence that languages have on each other; the way in which concepts are accessed when two languages are available; and the influence of biliteracy, specifically Afrikaans-English biliteracy, on performance in academic contexts.

The concern in this chapter is with the last point, that is, the way in which bi/multilinguals use the languages at their disposal to deal with a reading comprehension test that includes both languages. If multilingual education settings want to build on the language resources that students bring to the classroom, concrete steps need to be taken to include such resources in a way that corresponds to arguments put forward by researchers like Grosjean (2001) and Cook (2006). Jessner (2008: 357) calls their view of bi/multilingualism a ‘holistic’ view, because they argue that the bi/multilingual mind processes language in a unique way: rather than seeing languages as operating separately, Grosjean (2001) prefers to use the term ‘language mode’ to characterise the continuum along which bi/multilinguals activate languages at specific times and for specific purposes. By asking ‘balanced’ bilingual students to provide evidence of their ability to function cognitively in only one language, an incomplete picture is presented of such students’ academic competence. For the same reason two separate tests of academic language proficiency will not give a very clear picture either of the way in which bilinguals access two languages to complete an academic task. It must be emphasised that the languages involved here, i.e. Afrikaans and English, are structurally similar, which can be seen as increasing the chances of both being activated and used for academic purposes. Lecturers often voice the concern that students do not understand textbooks and academic articles, and their solution is often to summarise and/or paraphrase these texts in the other language. The question in this chapter is whether a summary in one language can be shown to increase comprehension in another language under controlled, quasi-experimental conditions. In this particular context bilingual proficiency is seen, therefore, as the ability to actively use more than one language when reading and processing text. In the sections that follow, the discussion will focus on the concept of academic biliteracy, the experimental design followed in this study and the conclusions that can be drawn from the results.

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Academic Biliteracy At the higher education level, where students across the world are increasingly required to use English as a LoLT, the link between language proficiency development (as one of the goals of academic support courses) and improved academic performance is not demonstrated easily. Leibowitz (2004: 49), for example, points out that language proficiency, while being necessary, is not a sufficient pre-condition for academic literacy, yet students in academic language support programmes do improve their academic performance, as reported by, for example, Weideman and Van Rensburg (2002). The focus of such programmes, however, seems to be almost exclusively on the development of academic language skills in English (or other high status languages). With reference to EAP (English for Academic Purposes), Pennycook (1997: 267) criticises the field by requiring, as an integral part of an EAP curriculum, ‘a critical understanding of English and its relationship to discourses of science, technology and education, as well as its role as national and international gatekeeper’. Academic support practitioners need to ask and seek to answer questions about the extent to which students are able to transfer first language academic literacy to another language in an effort to ‘give space to our students’ cultures and histories’ (Pennycook, 1997: 267), and to acknowledge existing academic literacies. In multilingual environments, where students and lecturers use more than one language to communicate and to produce learning materials, these issues become more complex. As Ascher (1990) indicates, ‘we do not yet know how to measure the extent to which one of the languages of a bilingual student influences the other, or even how to describe bilingual competence’. Jessner (2008) uses the term ‘multicompetence’ to characterise the degree to which multilinguals (particularly people who use more than two languages) access and use the languages at their disposal, but indicates that much work needs to be done in this area. The incorporation of overtly bi/multilingual tests in academic environments seems a long way off, not least of all because ‘[t]his will take a paradigm shift in many fields as demographic information about bilinguals, if given at all, is often only described as a potentially debilitating condition for native-like performance in English’ (Ransdell et al., 2006: 738). Jessner (2008: 362) mentions multilingual assessment specifically as an area on which future research needs to focus. In the project described in this chapter the concern is with students who developed enough proficiency in Afrikaans and English (either of which was also the LoLT at secondary school level, as indicated in the introduction) to

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attend a higher education institution in South Africa. They are already in their second year of academic study, they have successfully completed a first-year module in English and Afrikaans and they are accustomed to lecturers’ code switching and use of English and Afrikaans study materials in the form of textbooks and lecturer-generated notes. They have developed a degree of academic biliteracy which enables them to understand academic English and Afrikaans. For the purposes of this chapter these students are regarded as participating in a multilingual education context in the sense described by Hornberger (2009: 198) who states that ‘[m]ultilingual education is in its essence an instance of biliteracy “in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing”’ (in the last part of the quotation she cites herself in an earlier publication). In an attempt to capture the interplay among languages, Hornberger (1989) proposes the ‘continua of biliteracy’ model which she revisits in 2000 and 2009 and to which various authors respond in a tribute to her work (Hult & King, 2011). The model will not be discussed in detail here but it is important to mention that its original intention was not to serve pedagogical purposes only. Its strength lies in the fact that it ‘offers a framework in which to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings’ (Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000: 96), and it is intended as a heuristic tool that aids investigations into complex multilingual settings and practices. The model proposes four aspects that encompass each other, from development which is ‘nested’ (Hornberger & SkiltonSylvester’s term, 2000: 96) within content, which is in turn nested in media, which is encompassed by contexts. Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester’s (2000: 96) intentions for the use of the model are wide-ranging, since these four aspects are determined by intersecting relationships: Specifically, it [the model] depicts the development of biliteracy along intersecting first language–second language, receptive–productive, and oral–written language skills continua; through the medium of two (or more) languages and literacies whose linguistic structures vary from similar to dissimilar, whose scripts range from convergent to divergent, and to which the developing biliterate individual’s exposure varies from simultaneous to successive; in contexts that encompass microto macro-levels and are characterised by varying mixes along the monolingual–bilingual and oral–literate continua; and (as revised here) with content that ranges from majority to minority perspectives and experiences, literary to vernacular styles and genres, and decontextualised to contextualised language texts.

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When we apply the model to characterise the participants and their context in this study we can say the following: • •

• •

•

In terms of the context, students are used to encountering Afrikaans and English in their academic practices. In terms of their language proficiency it can be said that these students had passed a first-year module in English and Afrikaans. They can therefore be described as a mix of home and additional language users of English and Afrikaans who have productive proficiency (orally and in writing) in English and Afrikaans – in short, bilinguals. We can say that these languages have a similar structure and both use the same script. At the university where this study is situated, students have the option to indicate that they use both languages as home languages, probably indicating simultaneous acquisition. However, in this study all the participants identified themselves as home language speakers of one of the two languages, from which one could infer that they are probably successive bilinguals. In terms of the academic texts that students encounter, it can be said that they are mostly ‘decontextualised’ in a typical, academic way.

Hornberger’s (1989 and 2007) model therefore allows us to describe the intersecting relationships that may have an impact on the participants’ biliterate development, and on academic content, media and the particular context. Although one could take issue with the fact that the model is variously presented also as a framework and a depiction (which means that model can be seen as more prescriptive, a framework as more of a guideline and a depiction an indication of status quo), Hornberger’s (1989 and 2007) conceptualisation of the complexities of multilingual students in multilingual educational settings creates awareness of how different aspects interact and it demonstrates the ways in which the different elements intersect and encompass one another. Seeing Hornberger’s (1989 and 2007) continua of biliteracy from an academic literacy perspective creates the possibility of integrating recent insights from this area of study into the continua of biliteracy model. The increasing use of more than one language in higher education institutions certainly necessitates such an attempt not only, for example, in Europe, where increased higher education student mobility exerts pressure for programmes to be offered in English, but also in the context of this study. Ransdell et al. (2006: 738) remark that ‘[e]ven research reports not geared to the study of bilingualism will increasingly need to consider language

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experience because more university students in America and elsewhere are bilingual’. In line with Street’s (2011) argument where he links the continua of biliteracy to his own work, it becomes possible (in this particular context) to link the perspective of academic literacy as situated practice (Barton & Hamilton, 2000) and, in doing so, to illuminate the way in which academic biliteracy development is ‘nested’ in bilingual content and media (in terms of code switching and bilingual study materials) as well as context (the multilingual nature of this particular setting). To give more credit to the perspective of situated practice, the context, in the case of academic biliteracy, should be made more specific by referring to the various biliteracy practices (as a more precise description of context) to frame the way in which biliteracy is developed and the content and media presented at this particular university. The continua of the biliteracy model, with a focus in the outer layer on situated academic practices, creates the space for thinking about other ways in which African languages can be incorporated in content, media and academic biliteracy development. Since students who use African languages may have encountered them as LoLTs at secondary school level (mainly in the form of code switching practices, see Setati et al., 2002), their oral proficiency in the language can be exploited by moving through oral participation in group discussions (biliteracy development) to the generation and use of bi- and trilingual terminology lists and study materials (biliteracy content and media). Within a social theory of literacy (and therefore academic literacy and biliteracy) the use of home or community languages alongside the powerful LoLT(s) acknowledges firstly, that literacy practices ‘are the social processes which connect people to one another, and they include shared cognitions represented in ideologies and social identities’ (Barton & Hamilton, 2000: 7–8) and secondly, that such languages facilitate the development of an academic identity that is not alienating (Canagarajah, 2002: 37).

Design of the Study It is not a simple matter to conceptualise a test that would demonstrate increased reading comprehension as a result of the effective use of a language other than the one in which the reading text appears. This is the case because, generally speaking, studies on the use of more than one language in educational contexts integrate knowledge from diverse and specialised areas of research. Even in reading comprehension research, Brantmeier’s (2002) meta-analysis of reading comprehension research shows that, despite many studies on the topic, her ‘detailed examination of some L2 reading strategy studies conducted beyond the elementary level demonstrates the difficulty

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in making generalizations about L2 reading strategies’ (Brantmeier, 2002: 13). Currently, research on reading comprehension assessment, particularly in terms of activating top-down and bottom-up processing skills, needs to be integrated with research on the way in which bilingual proficiency is measured. Studies on reading comprehension in a language that is not the home or community language of students often veers off into the assessment of proficiency in a second language, rather than examining the way in which a home or community language may support reading comprehension. For example, in her overview of reading research in multilingual settings, Bernhardt (2003) describes (and ascribes to) a research tradition that is willing to acknowledge learners’ home or community languages but with the purpose of improving literacy and reading comprehension in English: the possibility of explicitly including other languages in print form is not mentioned as a mediating strategy. From a multilingual perspective, a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism (Daller, 2011) conceptualises the measurement of bilingual proficiency as a process whereby the dominance of one of the languages is determined. Once more, the focus is not on the simultaneous use of both languages. Therefore, for the purposes of this project, it was accepted that top-down reading strategies are necessary to gain entry into an English text, facilitated by a summary (at the start of the reading text) in Afrikaans (for some Afrikaans students) and in English (for some English students). Top-down strategies were then supported by bottom-up strategies in the form of word and sentence level simplifications of scientific language in the summary (see the more detailed discussion below). For the purposes of the experiment conducted in this study, a reading comprehension test that had been trialled on first-year students at three historically Afrikaans-speaking universities was used. The test was originally developed with a view to assessing the level of academic literacy of newly-enrolled first year students. These ‘Tests of Academic Language and Literacy’ (TALL) are developed collaboratively twice a year and the products are then piloted and refined two years before the actual implementation date. The construct of the test and the application of the results are described extensively by Van Dyk and Weideman (2004). The test usually starts with a reading comprehension section. The text is chosen from popular scientific journals (in this case Scientific American) and care is taken to choose texts that have a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score2 of approximately 11.0 (in this case, 10.9), which means the test is close to school-exit level (Grade 12). Learners normally write the test before they start the final school-exit examination. Questions on academic

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vocabulary are based on the extended version made by Coxhead (2002) of Paul Nation’s academic wordlist (Coxhead, 2002). Because of the focus of this project, only the reading comprehension part of the full TALL test was used. This amounted to 30 multiple choice items (access to the test is restricted and it was released for a limited time for this study. Unfortunately it cannot be made available for readers to critically evaluate the text, test and summary). The hypothesis that drives the study was that the use of an Afrikaans summary would improve the scores of Afrikaans home language speakers on the English reading comprehension test. As indicated above, two summaries were generated on the text, one in Afrikaans for 50% of the Afrikaansspeaking students. To control for the presence of the summary as an aid to comprehension (irrespective of the language), a second, English summary was provided to 50% of the English-speaking students and the test without a summary was provided to the rest of the class (English and Afrikaans speaking students). The summary was developed by using simpler or everyday words for the scientific vocabulary used in the text, for example using exactly the same for uniform and hardening for vulcanised. An attempt was also made to write in simple sentences, avoiding the passive voice. For example, in the text a sentence reads: Natural rubber for tennis balls is vulcanised – chemically treated to set stiffness and durability – in a process similar to that for fabricating tyres. The summary reads: . . .part of the manufacturing process involves hardening the rubber. The Afrikaans summary followed the same principles. The text and summaries were presented to two Afrikaans-speaking and two Englishspeaking colleagues to determine whether the summaries did indeed simplify the text. On the basis of their responses small revisions were made. The test was conducted twice. During Trial 1 students noticed that the test format differed for students with different language backgrounds and asked the research assistant (who was helping me to distribute the tests) for a test with a summary. The research assistant complied. As a result the research participants were not evenly divided between those with a summary and those without. The results were analysed statistically but since it was thought that the uneven numbers may skew the results, the test was tried again (Trial 2) with another group of students, two years later.

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When the test was distributed among the students, no mention was made of the summary. For Trial 2 the students were seated according to their home or preferred study language (English or Afrikaans) and 50% of each group received a test with a summary: an Afrikaans summary for 50% of the Afrikaans-speaking students and an English summary for 50% of the English-speaking students. The rest of the group received only the text so that the effect of the summary as well as the language of the summary could be determined. It must be emphasised that what students (with a summary) saw in front of them was a test with an instruction to ‘read the summary and then the text’, followed by an Afrikaans/English summary and then the text, which was in English. The challenge for the research participants was to recognise that the summary was meant to facilitate comprehension of the scientific article. In those versions of the test that included a summary an extra multiple choice item was added halfway through the test. The question was separated visually from the rest of the test and read as follows: STOP WORKING FOR A MOMENT: 16. Think about this comprehension test. How much did the summary at the beginning help you to understand the text? (a) (b) (c) (d)

I didn’t pay much attention to it. It made little difference to my understanding. It made a difference to my understanding. It helped a lot.

NOW CARRY ON AGAIN! The purpose of this question was to make students think deliberately about the use of the summary and for the statistical analyst to subsequently link their answers to their actual performance on the test. Participants completed the test in a module that develops English language proficiency for education students in the course of a normal 50-minute period, which is similar to the time they had to complete the whole TALL test (i.e. the comprehension test plus other sections of the test). The researcher was not a lecturer in the course but distributed the tests and observed participants completing it. There were no questions for clarification but in Trial 1 students did not all finish the test because of the confusion with the distribution of the tests. For that reason statistical analyses focused only on the items that students completed. The second time round all students finished within the 50-minute period.

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Results The number of students who completed the test is relatively small: •

•

In Trial 1, 119 students participated: 83 Afrikaans-speaking students (70%), 34 English-speaking students (29%), one student who used both and another who indicated that German is her home language. As a result of the problem of distributing the test, 26 Afrikaans and 25 English-speaking students did not receive a test with a summary and 57 Afrikaans and 9 English-speaking students received a test with an Afrikaans and an English summary respectively. It was this unevenness that led to the test being attempted with another group under more carefully controlled circumstances. In Trial 2 there were 85 students with Afrikaans-speaking students forming the biggest group (61, i.e. 71%) and English-speaking students making up the rest (24, i.e. 28%). This is not representative of the university population which includes more English-speaking students, approximately 35%, with Afrikaans-speaking students at around 50% (see http://www.sun.ac.za/university/Statistieke/statseng.html for more information). The two groups were split fairly evenly between those who had the summary (31 from the Afrikaans-speaking group and 11 from the English-speaking group) and those who did not (30 from the Afrikaans-speaking group and 13 from the English-speaking group).

The results on the test as a whole showed home language users of English performing significantly better on the test. In Trial 1 Afrikaans speakers scored an average of 6% lower than the English-speaking students. In Trial 2, which was more carefully controlled (see Figure 2.1), English-speaking students scored, on average, 9% higher than the Afrikaans speakers. Despite the unevenness in the distribution of tests during Trial 1, students’ performance on the test with the summary was similar for both trials. When the influence of the summary was brought into the equation, an upward tendency (which was not statistically significant) was noted when the Afrikaans group completed the test with the aid of a summary. However, they were still below the average performance of the English speaking students (with and without a summary). In Trial 1 the Afrikaans group with a summary performed 4.5% better than the Afrikaans group without a summary. In Trial 2 (Figure 2.2) the Afrikaans group with a summary scored 4.2% on average higher than those without a summary. The English speaking group with the English summary did not do better: in Trial 1 (where their numbers were very small) they scored 2% below the

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Figure 2.1 Performance on the test in terms of home language (Trial 2)

average for the English group without a summary and in Trial 2 (where they were more evenly distributed) they scored an average of 60.8%, which was 6% lower than the average for English-speaking students without a summary. Figure 2.2 shows the performance of students in Trial 2, by language and the presence of the summary. It has to be emphasised that the differences between groups with a summary and those without were not statistically significant and are thus reported as trends. The ‘a’ and ‘b’ in Figure 2.2 indicate which averages differ significantly: when one letter is the same for two averages, there is no significant difference. For the ‘yes’ group (i.e. with a summary) we can report a trend: the difference is not significant because there is only an ‘a’ above each average. For the ‘no’ group (i.e. without a summary) there is a significant difference, as indicated by the ‘a’ vs. ‘b’. Consequently, a further trend that can be seen in Figure 2.2 was that the difference between English and Afrikaans students who did not receive summaries was larger than the difference between English and Afrikaans students who did receive summaries.

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Figure 2.2 Results of correlation between home language and performance with and without a summary (Trial 2) Table 2.1 Student perceptions of the usefulness of summaries Item A B C D

Wording I didn’t pay much attention to it It made little difference to my understanding It made a difference to my understanding It helped a lot

Result Trial 1 23% 33% 33% 11%

Result Trial 2 14% 47% 26% 12%

There were no significant differences between Afrikaans and English speaking students.

The answers to question 16, where both English and Afrikaans students had to reflect on the usefulness of the summary (see Table 2.1), were ambivalent for Trial 1 but a more pronounced majority chose alternative B in Trial 2, which may explain the small difference in scores.

Discussion The format of a bilingual test can take on endless permutations: the text could be in English and the questions could all be in Afrikaans, or the whole text could be translated, or only technical vocabulary items could be trans-

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lated and so on. The motivation for inserting only a summary relates to the purpose of the study, which was to test the hypothesis that a summary in the home language would improve students’ comprehension of a text in the other LoLT, resulting in a better performance on a reading comprehension test in that language. This is common practice at the institution where this study was conducted and, although there was a tendency (in both trials) for the Afrikaans-speaking students to perform better with the summary, the improvement was not statistically significant. In this particular study there are mainly two areas where problems with support in the home language can arise: firstly, in the summary format, and secondly, in students’ familiarity with home language support in texts. It could be that the summary enabled top-down processing and simplified the gist of the text, but that the link between lexical items, e.g. vulcanising in the text and hardening in the summary, was not obvious. For bottom-up processing to be effective in terms of the test, a more direct link between technical terminology and an explanation in Afrikaans may have been more useful. Since students were doing the test in pen and paper format, translations of terms may have been more useful in the margin directly opposite the word, rather than in the summary at the top of the page. If students were writing the test at a computer, an explanation in the form of a hyperlink may have provided more direct guidance. The fact that the summary decreased the difference between the language groups and helped to improve Afrikaans students’ performance shows that the addition of material in the home language is helpful but that this format may not be a particularly useful one. Students probably have to be taught how to use a summary for overview purposes or to activate content schemata. The use of simplified vocabulary in the summary was intended to familiarise them with the topic, thereby making the technical text more accessible. Although the instruction at the top clearly asked that they Read the summary and then the text ‘Uniform variety’ carefully, then answer the questions that follow, students may have gone into a kind of ‘testing mode’ where they scanned the text and tried to find the answers with the least amount of reading. The investigation tested the hypothesis that a summary in the home language would improve scores on a reading comprehension test where the text and test items were in their other LoLT. Within the limits of this investigation it can be said that Afrikaans students made some use of their home language knowledge to improve their understanding of the text. The fact that English students did not improve their scores means that the mere presence of a summary was not the factor that influenced performance: the presence of a home language summary aided performance on the test to some extent for Afrikaans-speaking students.

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It is clear that the size of the group and the results prevent any generalisations. The outcome of the study requires further investigation, preferably using more qualitative investigations into students’ experiences and strategies while completing such tests.

Conclusions We regard the development of bi/multilingual tests as the next step in what Moll calls a sociocultural approach to instruction, where bi/multilingual education ‘addresses broader social and academic issues than simply learning English, remedial instruction, or basic skills’ (Moll, 2007: 273). In multilingual academic contexts it seems as if the development of bilingual strategies and the overt inclusion of one language (in this case Afrikaans) to support meaning making in a high status LoLT (in this case English) can contribute to a better understanding of scientific texts if assessment practices are supported by teaching practices that show how students should use a home language summary to gain entry to an academic text in another language as well as legitimise the use of other languages in the classroom in the way foreseen by the continua of biliteracy approach. At Stellenbosch University (which is not unique in this regard), where three languages are explicitly managed through a language policy and implementation plan (see Cots, Li, this volume), it is important that problems with academic literacy not be seen simply as a problem with English or Afrikaans, which is still used as a LoLT. Increasingly academic departments are finding space for the other regional language, isiXhosa, by developing subject glossaries in Economic and Management Sciences, Law and Mathematics. Incorporating multilingual support material in everyday classroom practice and in assessment will be the next challenge since this study clearly shows that merely having resources available does not mean that they will be used optimally. The use of bi/multilingual materials needs to become part of situated biliteracy practice in teaching and assessment. Hornberger’s (2007) concept of the continua of biliteracy within the language ecology model ‘situates biliteracy development in relation to the contexts, media, and content in and through which it develops’ (Hornberger, 2007: 182). The context of the University and its commitment to diversity and to the maintenance and development of regional languages keeps the ‘ecological policy space’ (Hornberger, 2007: 188) available for improved performance by students, thereby emphasising bi/multilingualism as academic resources, rather than stumbling blocks to success. Although the project described here targeted students who can be regarded as biliterate, the results are important for all multilingual environments where students

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have to use a language other than their secondary school or home language for learning in higher education.

Acknowledgement This study was conducted as part of a project titled ‘English in multilingual contexts’, funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Notes (1) These universities are introducing programmes in English to provide more opportunities for all South Africans to have access to higher education and therefore they are referred to as ‘historically Afrikaans’ since they do not use Afrikaans exclusively as a language of learning and teaching. (2) The Flesch-Kincaid grade level score is a tool readily available in MSWord. This is primarily a readability score that uses the formula: (0.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – 15.59 where: ASL = average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences) and ASW = average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words). The formula scores text on a US grade level. If the score is between 7 and 8, a 7th grader (more or less advanced) should be able to read it. South Africa follows the system of grades R – 12 (K – 12 in the USA) which makes the Flesch-Kincaid grade level score more or less comparable to South African grade levels.

References Ascher, C. (1990) Assessing bilingual students for placement and instruction. ERIC/CUE Digest No. 65. New York: ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education. (ERIC Identifier ED322272), accessed 5 September 2011. http://bern.library.nenu.edu.cn/upload/ soft/003/004/5026.doc Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (2000) Literacy practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton and R. Ivanič (eds) Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context (pp. 7–15). New York, NY: Routledge. Bernhardt, E. (2003) Challenges to Reading Research from a Multilingual World. Reading Research Quarterly 38 (1), 112–117. Brantmeier, C. (2002) Second language reading strategy research at the secondary and university levels: Variations, disparities, and generalizability. The Reading Matrix 2 (3), 1–14. Canagarajah, S. (2002) Multilingual writers and the academic community: Towards a critical relationship. English for Academic Purposes 1 (1), 29–44. Cook, V. (2006) Linguistic contributions to bilingualism. In J. Altarriba and R.R. Heredia (eds) An Introduction to Bilingualism: Principle and Processes (pp. 245–264). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Coxhead, A. (2002) The academic word list: a corpus-based word list for academic purposes. In B. Kettemann and G. Marko (eds) Teaching and Learning by Doing Corpus Analysis. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora, Graz 19–24 July, 2000 (pp. 73–89). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

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Daller, M.H. (2011) The measurement of bilingual proficiency: Introduction. International Journal of Bilingualism 15 (2), 123–127. Grosjean, F. (2001) The bilingual’s language modes. In J.L. Nicol (ed.) One Mind, Two Languages: Bilingual Language Processing (pp. 1–22). Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Hornberger, N.H. (1989) Continua of biliteracy. Review of Educational Research 59 (3), 271–296. Hornberger, N.H. (2007) Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy. In O. Garcia and C. Baker (eds) Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader (pp. 177–192). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hornberger, N.H. (2009) Multilingual education policy and practice: Ten certainties (grounded in Indigenous experience). Language Teaching 42 (2), 197–211. Hornberger, N. and Skilton-Sylvester, E. (2000) Revisiting the continua of biliteracy: International and critical perspectives. Language and Education 14 (2): 96–122. Hult, F.M. and King, K.A. (eds) (2011) Educational Linguistics in Practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Jessner, U. (2008) Multicompetence approaches to language proficiency development in multilingual education. In J. Cenoz and H.H. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 6: Knowledge about language (pp. 355–363). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. Leibowitz, B. (2004) Becoming academically literate in South Africa: Lessons from student accounts for policymakers and educators. Language and Education 18 (1), 35–52. Moll, L.C. (2007) Bilingual classroom studies and community analysis: Some recent trends. In O. Garcia and C. Baker (eds) Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader (pp. 272–280). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A. (1997) Vulgar pragmatism, critical pragmatism and EAP. English for Specific Purposes 16, 253–269. Ransdell, S., Barbier, M-L. and Niit, T. (2006) Metacognitions about language skill and working memory among monolingual and bilingual college students: When does multilingualism matter? The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9 (6), 728–741. Setati, M., Adler, J., Reed, Y. and Bapoo, A. (2002) Incomplete journeys: code-switching and other language practices in Mathematics, Science and English language classrooms in South Africa. Language and Education 16 (2), 128–149. Söderlundh, H. (2008) Language practices in Swedish higher education: Results from a pilot study. In H. Haberland, J. Mortensen, A. Fabricius, B. Preisler, K. Risager and S. Kjaerbeck (eds) Higher Education in the Global Village (pp. 97–102). Roskilde: Roskilde University. Statistical profile, Figure 5: Enrolments according to home language and year, accessed 30 August 2011. http://www.sun.ac.za/university/Statistieke/statseng.html Street, B. (2011) New literacy studies and the continua of biliteracy. In F.M. Hult and K.A. King (eds) Educational Linguistics in Practice (pp. 59–67). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Van der Walt, C. (2006) University students’ attitudes towards and experiences of bilingual classrooms. Current Issues in Language Planning 7 (2 & 3), 359–376. Van Dyk, T.J. and Weideman, A.J. (2004) Switching constructs: On the selection of an appropriate blueprint for academic literacy assessment. Journal for Language Teaching 38 (1), 1–13. Weideman, A.J. and Van Rensburg, C. (2002) Language proficiency: Current strategies, future remedies. Journal for Language Teaching 36, 152–164. Wilkinson, R., Zegers, V. and Van Leeuwen, C. (eds) (2006) Bridging the assessment gap. In English-Medium Higher Education. Bochum: AKS-Verlag (Series: Fremdsprachen in Lehre und Forschung (FLF); Band 40.

3 Language Demands and Support for English-Medium Instruction in Tertiary Education. Learning from a Specific Context Phil Ball and Diana Lindsay

Introduction English-medium instruction (EMI) in tertiary education is a significant growth area, with over half of the world’s international students being taught in English, and universities offering an increasing range of courses in this language (Graddol, 2006). EMI at the tertiary level in the Basque Country is a fairly recent phenomenon, with the first Multilingualism Programme (MP) dating from the academic year 2005–2006. The University of the Basque Country (UBC) felt that by offering courses primarily, though not exclusively, in English, they would set in motion a series of long-term objectives: to attract a greater number of foreign students to the university, offer continuity for Basque students whose scholastic experiences had already included CLIL-oriented approaches (Content and Language Integrated Learning), allow students greater access to academic source material in their subjects, and increase their subsequent possibilities in the labour market. The policy mirrors the growing tendency, post-Bologna (1999) and post-millennial, for higher education in general to become increasingly internationalised. With greater student mobility and a concomitant increase in the financial and administrative provision required to accommodate these changes, an increased offer of English-medium programmes as part of this development has been inevitable, given the current status of English as a lingua franca in so many areas, not merely the academic field. The developments also echo, to some extent, the general alignment of Spanish tertiary 44

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education with the basic tenet of the Bologna Declaration (1999: 4) which emphasized ‘. . .the creation of the European area of higher education as a key way to promote citizens’ mobility and employability and the Continent’s overall development’ (The Bologna Process–Towards the European Higher Education Area). In this chapter we will examine the nature of the EMI courses at the UBC, but mainly with regard to the support offered to the staff who teach there. We will explore the demands that they are making on university teachers, and by implication the demands made on their students. We will also consider the issue of the language levels deemed appropriate to enable a tertiary-level teacher level to operate through the medium of English, describe the incentives and support that are offered to the teachers in order to encourage them to make the switch, and read the views of the teachers themselves. What do they consider to be the major concerns and challenges with regard to teaching their subject areas through English? Are their concerns excessively related to linguistic shortcomings yet insufficiently focused on methodological issues? Is there a preoccupation with their teaching, but a lack of awareness as to how best their students can develop as learners, operating through the medium of English? What are the demands placed on students following these programmes, and what support is needed and offered to facilitate EMI? Finally, we will outline some of the further issues that arise in our particular context with a view to drawing general implications about EMI, irrespective of the context. These will include linguistic and pedagogical demands made on the teacher in a range of situations, the scaffolding and support the students may need, and the issues of assessment and standards.

EMI at the University of the Basque Country In its first year (2005), the MP offered a total of 16 courses in a foreign language. By the 2009–2010 academic year a total of 144 courses were taught/offered in English or French at the UBC, a minority of which ran through the entire academic year (see Doiz et al., this volume for further information about EMI at the UBC). The majority were compulsory or optional courses based on specific areas within the year’s course descriptions, ranging from a small number of contact hours (10) to something more substantial, with awarded credits ranging from three to 18. For example, in the Faculty of Architecture in San Sebastián, the optional course ‘The Meaning of Density in Urban Design’ was offered as a 15-hour programme worth six credits, whose structure entailed six hours of lectures and a

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further nine described as a ‘practical workshop’. In the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao (The Higher Technical School) the course ‘Fundamentals of Material Science’ was an exclusively lecture-based subject which ran through the entire academic year and which accrued 10.5 credits. Despite the lack of social and semiotic weight that English experiences in the Basque Country, and despite the fact that this would appear to be undergoing changes (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006), in the scholastic context it would appear that both the social pressures to improve proficiency in a third language and an implicit conformity to the 1995 European Council Resolution on the implementation of plurilingual societies have resulted in a variety of important long-term projects in which students are introduced to English at much earlier ages (three or four in the Basque Country) and where they are provided with a greater number of contact hours throughout their school careers by dint of successful CLIL-based programmes. Results suggest that the learning and the teaching of English have undergone significant improvements, in both quantitative and qualitative terms (Lasagabaster & Ruiz de Zarobe, 2010; Ruiz de Zarobe et al., 2011). In terms of quantity, the adoption of CLIL-oriented programmes has meant that students at school have been exposed to a greater range of discourse (in the main academic) and are approaching tertiary education with more subjectrelated competences than was previously the case. In qualitative terms, and we will be subsequently examining this aspect in some detail, the challenges that teaching through another language inevitably suppose have forced staff to consider new methodological approaches. Teachers understand that ‘assumptive’ teaching (Clegg, 2011) can no longer be practised, since in very simple terms, you cannot teach the same conceptual material to a native speaker in the same way as you can to a non-native speaker. This statement requires some analysis, and an interesting by-product of these programmes has also been a greater awareness of teaching in the Basque mother-tongue (Muñoa, 2011).

UBC support for EMI teachers With a view to developing the EMI offered at the university and supporting its EMI teachers, the Vice-rectorate of Basque and Multilingualism has focused on three areas (other vice-rectorates, faculties and departments have also organised courses and support for their specific teaching staff, but in this chapter we will concentrate on the involvement of the Vice-rectorate of Basque and Multilingualism). The initial focus was the commissioning of an accreditation test: TOPTULTE (Test of Performance for Teaching at University Level through the Medium of English – Ball & Lindsay, 2005) to benchmark

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the C1 level deemed necessary for candidates to teach their subject (or parts of it) through the medium of English at university level. Secondly, courses focused on the teachers’ linguistic needs have been offered on the three campuses that make up the UBC, and thirdly, courses have been offered to teachers already teaching in English within the MP, providing them with the opportunity to focus on the pedagogic issues that arise when teaching in a CLIL-oriented context.

TOPTULTE In order to teach through Basque at the university, a certain linguistic level is stipulated and a language qualification is required – relating to level C1 on the Common European Framework (Council of Europe, 2001) – where ‘C’ belongs to the Proficient User category. Consequently, in terms of institutional and political coherence, teachers without formal qualifications in English equivalent to a C1 or a C2 level need to undergo an accreditation test (TOPTULTE). We will look in more detail in the Needs Analysis section at the constituents of a tertiary-level teacher’s linguistic repertoire, but in basic terms a teacher must possess the confidence to deliver a lecture in the target language, to be accurate to the extent that he/she is understood on both a discourse and phonetic level, and be able to interact spontaneously with the students in either a lecture or a smaller seminar context, and also in more informal discourse situations.

Language focus support courses For teachers who already possess the requisite level (C1) and are maybe about to embark on EMI, a short, three-day intensive support course is offered which focuses on prioritised language needs related to oral presentation skills and pronunciation. These short courses culminate in a brief lecture by each participant which must conform to the criteria discussed and practised during the three days. The content includes a range of considerations, from physical ones such as body language and eye contact, the use of visual aids such as PowerPoint, suprasegmental issues of intonation, stress and enunciation, segmental ‘exponential’ rules of how to pronounce high-frequency academic lexis correctly, through to the appropriate use of discourse markers and subordinators. For potential EMI teachers, whose general language levels require further improvement, longer courses, (30 hours over 10 weekly three-hour sessions) are offered. The title of these courses, ‘Teaching Your Subject in English: Improving your Language and Teaching Skills’ explicitly adds an

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important element of methodology into the content, with presentation skills again to the fore. The content departs from the basis of language improvement, but goes on to exemplify the variety of issues that confront a teacher both inside and outside the classroom. The course not only focuses on issues similar to the intensive version described above, but it also moves into areas such as email communication in English, the writing of administrative letters and their conventions, the writing of abstracts and summaries for academic papers, and the particular language and conventions in English that are involved in the writing of course outlines, both for the web and for printed versions. According to informal feedback forms collected on the courses, a high percentage of teachers showed interest in this content, and admitted to feelings of insecurity when faced with these tasks as a part of their everyday roles – simple enough in their native language, but affected (often subtly) by a complex combination of differing academic conventions, plus the linguistic and cultural factors inherent to English. The methodology employed by the tutors on the course is based on the principle of loop-input (Woodward, 1988), where the tutors demonstrate and practise the concepts through techniques and methods that are then discussed as possible additions to the participants’ own repertoires. Almost a third of the course is devoted to pronunciation, where teachers are encouraged to see English as a system with a limited set of exponential rules which they can then apply to the process of their own self-improvement. They are introduced to the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), and encouraged to apply supra-segmental rules of English stress to the general lexis that occurs across academic discourse with the highest frequency. English pronunciation of Latinate vocabulary (easy to identify, easy to mispronounce) is explained and practised, and teachers work on a variety of prosodic considerations related to lecturing through English. The usual discovery on this course has emphasised the fact that although it may be mildly annoying for a native speaker to hear the word ‘Photosynthesis’ defectively pronounced, it is unlikely to interfere with comprehension. However, in our experience the most commonly mispronounced English word, by Spanish speakers, is the word ‘the’, a far greater problem in sentential/phonological contexts.

English medium pedagogy courses A third type of course, first offered in the academic year 2010–2011, is entitled ‘Classroom Practice and English-Medium Pedagogy’ with a far more explicit focus on pedagogical and methodological issues. The course of 24 hours, divided into eight weekly sessions, is offered to teachers already teaching through English. The principal objective of the course is to focus

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the participants on a particular aspect of their existing EMI practice, perhaps a problematic issue, perhaps one insufficiently developed, and to require them to carry out a small-scale project throughout the duration of the course. Sessions alternate between input from the tutors and on-going feedback on the progress of the project from the participating teachers. The participants must produce a sample of materials specifically for the purpose of the project, and also present the results, observations and reflections of the experience at the end of the course, as a formal presentation to their course colleagues. This presentation is also assessed by the course tutors by looping the oral-presentation criteria discussed on the course back into the final act. The criteria are usually three-fold: • • •

Content: the organisation of, the clarification of the issues, the logical order of the presentation and the ability to synthesise. Language: accuracy of expression, apposite choice of language, prosody. Engagement with audience: maintaining audience interest, intonation, stage signallers, body language, empathy, question forms, etc.

The eventual focus of each of these particular courses will always be determined by the nature of the group, since teachers from a variety of disciplines are thrown together in a potentially interesting mix. Depending on experience, academic subject, language competence (which will always be varied) and specific pedagogic interests, the focus of the reflection on a classroom-based issue constitutes a wide remit. On the courses taught, issues as wide-ranging as promoting learner engagement and participation, assessment and feedback, clarifying concepts in the target language, adapting tasks and reading strategies were all explored. Tutors were also invited to observe the teachers’ lessons, although this was not a compulsory aspect of the course. These issues were also given a framework during the input sessions, where the participants were encouraged to form a consensus on broader educational issues such as the key competences, the importance of student participation and communication, and other process-led paradigms. The course ‘Classroom Practice and English-Medium Pedagogy’ is of particular interest because it emphasises the importance of the relationship between teaching and learning, and in so doing it brings to tertiary education a welcome and explicit focus on in-service training. Pedagogic skills have not, in the past, been a prerequisite to a successful university career and advancement. However, learning in a language other than the mother tongue, particularly at advanced conceptual levels, demands a focus on methodology and practice that it is more difficult to ignore. EMI teachers, as shown in class discussion, feedback forms and surveys, are becoming increasingly aware of this issue.

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The Demands of EMI on University Teachers Teacher perceptions As well as examining the content of the courses offered to UBC teachers, which is based on a needs’ analysis from the tutors’ perspective (the authors of this chapter), it is worth examining the issue of what non-native (English) speaking teachers (NNS) think they need in order to become more efficient practitioners. In order to collect the teachers’ own perceptions regarding the demands of EMI – both on the teachers themselves and their students – a short questionnaire was sent to teachers involved in EMI during the academic year 2010–2011. Forty-four teachers replied from 18 different faculties on the three campuses. The questionnaire (Ball & Lindsay, 2011) consisted of 22 items. The first section was descriptive/informative. The second section consisted of questions about the demands of EMI on the university teacher ranging from aspects such as ‘Covering the programme’ and ‘Working with smaller groups (seminars, lab work, etc.)’ to ‘Using English for administrative tasks’ and ‘Pronouncing English comprehensibly’. The third section covered the demands of EMI on the university student. The answers were rated on a five-point scale with open options provided for further comments.

The importance of pronunciation One of the demands most highly rated by the teachers as ‘difficult’ (55%) or ‘very difficult’ (15%) was pronunciation. This preoccupation with the prosodic aspects of oral delivery would seem a perfectly normal concern, given a normal teaching framework of lectures, transmission of information and the ‘provision’ of a body of pre-packaged knowledge. Concerns of pronunciation, enunciation and general comprehensibility are inevitable when a professional is required to act in a public forum, faced with an audience whose abilities in these areas may be equal or superior. The concern about pronunciation felt by the teachers has been confirmed by other studies on perceptions of NS and NNS teachers in the Basque Country. Lasagabaster and Sierra (2002) found that Basque university students (albeit in the context of language lessons) preferred NNS teachers in areas of grammar and strategies, but NS teachers for ‘pronunciation’. But the notion of native speakers as default models is surely on the wane, and as far back as 1992, Phillipson labelled this issue ‘the native speaker fallacy’ (Phillipson, 1992). Crystal (1997) estimated that for 80% of the world’s users of English, the

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language was not their L1. The percentage has surely increased, and with the ELF movement (English as a Lingua Franca) arising from Jenkins’ work on the lingua franca core (Jenkins, 2000), the whole issue of native-speaker models has been called into question, within the new parameters of English as an International Language (EIL). Kenworthy’s widely-read ‘Teaching English Pronunciation’ (1987) advocated an approach based on Abercrombie’s notion of ‘comfortable intelligibility’, a phrase which would seem a perfect fit for the differing circumstances of EMI pedagogy, particularly in the context of tertiary education. Although students may say they prefer a native model for pronunciation, the evidence suggests that while being occasionally frustrated by the lexical and phonic idiosyncrasies of their Basque teachers, it is the methodological abilities (or otherwise) of the teachers that were rated as far more important by the students in the facilitation of their learning. The following observations are worth quoting, from a survey of foreign students’ impressions on studying EMI courses at the UBC between 2005–2009.1 − − − − − − −

‘There are times when she doesn’t know words, but she generally just asks us and we tell her.’ (Student 8) ‘There’s a little bit of a barrier but for the most part we understand because now the communication lines are open.’ (Student 116) ‘He needs to work on his pronunciation, but it’s really that the classes are too laid-back. There’s not enough structure.’ (Student 28) ‘Not enough short group activities. Too much theory, not enough practice.’ (Student 73) ‘You understand it better when you’re actually doing it yourself.’ (Student 139) ‘The best classes were the ones where we had real-life case studies.’ (Student 23) ‘The simulation project helped me to understand far better than the lectures.’ (Student 97)

Besides, when teachers are presented with a wider range of issues than the merely phonetic for consideration, particularly ones that relate to a more process-led paradigm of teaching, then the prosodic concerns, whilst still present, become simply one among a whole range of perhaps more important considerations – particularly with regard to the facilitation of learning. For example, the final item on the questionnaire (Ball & Lindsay, 2011) asks the teachers if they feel the need for further help to improve their ‘language competence’, their ‘pedagogic competence’, or both. 44% of the sample felt they needed more help exclusively with language (32% with a ‘strong yes’)

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and 33% exclusively with pedagogy (only 8% with a ‘strong yes’). Additionally, 18% of the sample opted for support in both categories. The conclusion that one might derive from these albeit raw figures, is that although language-support issues still outweigh pedagogic ones (in crude binary terms), the latter aspect appears to be making some headway in terms of the overall percentage concerns.

Tutor perceptions Although prosodic aspects of teaching are given considerable weight in the language focused courses mentioned above, these aspects were left out on the EMI pedagogy course and time is dedicated to what tutors felt were key issues in a CLIL context, including: − − − − − − − − − − − − − − −

Lecturing to larger groups: staging and signposting Clarifying specialist terminology Questioning techniques and dealing with questions Checking understanding CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) Working with smaller groups/tutorials Classroom management Activity/Task Design and activity variety Helping students deal with texts Maintaining interest/attention Stimulating student participation Beginning and ending sessions Use of multi-media Continuous assessment and feedback (formal and informal) Testing – high versus low language risk: how to be fair We will highlight a few of these issues.

Lecturing The transmission of information is clearly a necessary element of any form of teaching, but the meaning of the noun ‘lecture’ can no longer be limited to the idea that one person speaks (the most common verb-noun collocation is ‘To deliver a lecture’), and that a large audience listens (and takes notes). A random search from online definitions provides: An exposition of a given subject delivered before an audience or a class, as for the purpose of instruction (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lecture)

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where the word ‘exposition’ implies, at the very least, that the onus is on the teacher to perform, as opposed to interact. The very term ‘lecturer’, of course, denotes an academic rank in both the United Kingdom and the USA, but its use as a default term for an ‘academic who also teaches’ appears to be in decline, with the word ‘teacher’ becoming increasingly common. This tendency in the varieties of both American and British English was highlighted almost 20 years ago (Ramsden, 1994), and is unlikely to have gone into reversal. This would appear to be significant in terms of pedagogical implications. In order to appreciate what these implications constitute, even experienced teachers (in the L1) will react with interest to such considerations as Staging and Signposting in the aforementioned list. The very notion of discourse markers is unlikely to have been an explicit and recognised part either of a teacher’s performance repertoire or of his/her development as an efficient presenter of key information. A native speaker will use them instinctively (in lesser or greater measure), since their role in meaning–focus and maintenance of attention is crucial. But an L2 speaker is unlikely to possess the same repertoire of ‘signalling’ discourse (which can range from Firstly/However to Let me put it in another way and This is the most crucial step of the process) and is also less likely to employ supra-segmental elements such as stress and intonation, features which are more automatised in the English-speaker’s performance and which tend to accompany such signalling language. Help in both identifying and making these features more salient were deemed helpful on the course, but the consideration of discourse markers is merely a small brick in the edifice of CLIL, where the practice of ‘assumptive’ teaching (Clegg, 2011) is transformed into a new awareness of the need to focus more carefully on the intimate relationship between teaching and learning. In short, the teacher can no longer assume (for purely linguistic reasons) that students understand the content of a course. CLIL, which emphasises ‘the support of output and the guiding of input’ (Kelly, 2010: online interview), was born in the scholastic context but is entirely relevant to tertiary practice. This is clear from both the closed and the open responses to the aforementioned survey carried out amongst EMI teachers in the UBC. With regard to the nine ‘demands’ and the five-point scale very easy to very difficult, the practice of Lecturing to large groups was rated from very difficult/ quite difficult by 80% of those teachers to whom the question was relevant. By contrast, 90% of those teachers to whom it was relevant considered working with smaller groups (seminars/lab work etc.) as a teaching format that is very easy/quite easy. It is clear, therefore, where the teachers think their priorities lie, in terms of their own EMI training, but the definition of what

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they understand as ‘easy’ might require further examination. Easy for them, or easy for the students?

Student participation ‘Stimulating student participation’ covers a wide variety of issues. On the surface, the most obvious distinction between lecturing to large groups and working in smaller seminar-based formats (most courses require both) is that the latter entails more student participation or intervention – ‘speaking’ as the skill is traditionally described in language-teaching discourse. But university teachers in the Basque Country, many of whom were weaned on a diet of non-participative lecturing, need to be convinced of the benefits of student talk with regard to cognition. Why get students talking, especially in a language which is not their mother tongue? And what does this ‘speaking’ consist of? It is not the remit of this chapter to answer these questions, since they have been dealt with extensively in other academic contexts, but merely to point out that as a component of the EMI pedagogy course, the very salience of the issue of ‘speaking’ brought in its wake a whole host of educational considerations, some of which were subsequently trialled by the participants on this initial version of the course. Taking on Swain’s hypothesis of comprehensible output (in Swain & Lapkin, 1995) and the concomitant idea that a learner is unconvinced that he/she has assimilated a concept until he/she ‘has expressed it’, Swain’s trinity of functions, ‘Noticing’, ‘Hypothesis testing’ and ‘Metalinguistic reflection’ all find echoes in CLIL-based practice and competence-building. Indeed, in the near future, it is difficult to see how any of the Key Competences (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2006) and their various curricular manifestations can be fulfilled without the development of speaking skills, either as core or transversal components. In a lecture context, more limited student participation can be useful to simply break up the monologue and shift the focus – referred to as the ‘change-up’ (Middendorf & Kalish, 1996), but in smaller group forums a whole set of considerations is brought into play, such as classroom management (a phrase almost entirely absent from the discourse of tertiary education), activity variety, questioning techniques, group dynamics, task design, continuous assessment – to name but a few. The shift in format, in an L2/L3 situation, radically alters the classroom considerations. What are we going to talk about? How are we going to talk about it? Why are we going to talk about it? When? The ‘wh’ considerations become inherent to the effective

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management of a class. As Cummins noted (2001: 68), academic talk ‘is likely to require at least as much cognitive processing as writing an essay on the same topic’. Some hours of the course are also dedicated to questioning techniques, and the impact question types have not merely on students’ ability to participate but also on cognition. Binary notions in questioning techniques such as safe/threatening, open/closed, display/referential were illustrated and discussed. University teachers, however experienced, cannot be expected to master these situations, having received no formal pedagogic training. Besides, they are far from easy considerations for those that have. One project on the EMI Pedagogy course chosen by a participating teacher was entitled ‘Observing the possible effects of manipulating the group dynamic’ during a task-based project on Robotics.

Processing written texts Part of the EMI pedagogy course is also dedicated to looking at how to help students in EMI classes. One such demand is the difficulty of assimilating often dense and lengthy authentic texts, written to an academic discipline-specific target audience, but characterised by a complete absence of the types of ‘caretaking’ language that can be exercised in oral discourse where the target audience is NNS. This uncomfortable paradox – that an understanding of English facilitates the range of sources to which a student can gain access (many academic disciplines use English as their lingua franca) but that the information, when in textual form, may be technical, dense, complex and often lengthy, is one that concerned university teachers. Students are encouraged to maximise their use of English-medium sources, but many key ‘iconic’ texts for certain subjects, particularly in the social sciences, are compulsory reading and must be understood. The teacher’s perennial instruction, satirised by the course participants as ‘Take this away, read it for homework – to be discussed on Monday’ was re-considered, and replaced by suggestions that ranged from simple reading-strategy techniques such as text-sharing (one student is responsible for a certain section of text, and ‘reports’ on its significance in the following session to another student), jigsaw readings, information-gap strategies, lead-ins (reading the text but taking into consideration a series of pre-considered aspects) to more general ‘text-breakdown’ strategies which are often employed as default techniques in language teaching, such as ‘top-down’ processing and other schematabased considerations which focus on lay-out, visuals and textual structure.

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Assessment Regarding assessment, and in response to the question ‘Have you encountered other areas of difficulty in your EMI?’ one teacher wrote: I feel that students taking courses in a foreign language should be treated differently when assessing how well they are doing. I put most of my effort into providing them with formative assessment . . . Overall I am worried about the fairness of the assessment criteria. The contents are exactly the same, as are the learning objectives, but in terms of competences and skills, I believe that different criteria of assessment should be applied. (Teacher 32) The assessment types and criteria that are applied to NNS students is an issue of some debate, but a crucial one nonetheless (see also Shohamy’s reflections about assessment in EMI courses, in this volume). Students study identical content and pursue the same conceptual and procedural objectives, but in the majority of cases do not possess the same linguistic armoury as their NS counterparts. The question of ‘fairness’ cited by the teacher above is relevant to both summative and continuous assessment formats. Indeed, in the survey to UBC teachers, where they were asked to rate certain categories of difficulty for their students, an overwhelming 88% of the respondents rated ‘Writing in English’ as ‘Quite difficult’, a figure that would seem to tally with the 74% of respondents who considered ‘Preparing exams’ for these same students as ‘Very Difficult’ or ‘Quite Difficult’. Without probing further, one might conclude that the teachers are unconvinced of the fairness of their summative examinations, given the problems of language demand. If an exam requires a substantial and open written response from an NNS candidate, then not only are the assessment criteria more difficult to rationalise and apply, but the marker must consider to what extent the language demand enables or disables the candidate’s ability to demonstrate his/her understanding of the question. The language (English in this case) must be considered the vehicle of expression, but it cannot itself be independently assessed. The antithesis of a demanding question (in linguistic terms) is a multiple-choice feature, with pared- down language and simple binary responses, such as ‘True/False’. Awareness of these factors, and balancing the language-concept demands form another major feature of the course. Glancing at outlines for EMI courses offered in the academic year 2009– 2010 on the three main UBC campuses, the assessment criteria were extremely varied. Some descriptions are cited below:

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Economics: A multiple choice test at the end of the teaching period which will represent 100% of the final grade. You can earn a maximum of 10 points on the final. Extra credit: On occasion I will hand out problems for you to solve at home. I will then collect answers to these problems at the beginning of the following class session. If you get a problem correct, you will earn an extra 0.25 points, which will be added to your final grade obtained on the multiple-choice test above. You can earn a maximum of 2.0 points in extra credit points.

Marketing: A) Final exam, accounting for eight points of the final grade. B) Presentations, case studies, active participation during the lectures, or further activities developed during the lectures or as homework accounting for up to 3.5 points. A portion of the final grade for this course consists of participation points. It is the student’s responsibility to earn participation points during the session by actively participating in class activities, discussions and presentations.

Chemistry: Theoretical exam: 70% of the final grade. Practical exam: 15% of the final grade. Laboratory protocol: 10% of the final grade. Professional report: 5% of the final grade. Continuous assessment is also a prominent topic in CLIL-related circles, because the extension and encouragement of student intervention cannot then be divorced from the teacher’s consideration of a student’s overall performance. A task-based course which demands group work, cooperation, decision-making, oral and written presentations and possible peer assessment cannot have as its culmination a summative examination which constitutes 100% of the final mark. The reliability of the test may be perfect, but its validity is questionable. The problem arises where the teacher must decide on the percentage balance between summative and continuous, and how to develop reliable measures for assessing students’ task performance during the course. These issues are essentially the same in an L1 context, but the sensitivity of the balance, allied to the design of the rubrics necessary to

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assess the skills, makes this area a complex one for teachers who have undergone no formal training. The aforementioned aspect of linguistic fairness is equally relevant, as are the ways in which the teacher chooses to provide feedback (written, oral or both) and to what extent this feedback can complement the mark/grade awarded, and also act as formative information for the student to move on. Giving satisfactory and effective feedback in a foreign language is far from simple. Among the participants’ chosen projects for the EMI pedagogy course in the UBC was one entitled, ‘How to transmit more efficient formative feedback’, based on a term-long ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) project on which the students were engaged, working in small groups in which each member had been handed specific roles.

Overall Advantages and Disadvantages However, EMI teachers do not always consider the new pedagogic scenario as universally problematic. In our survey, the practising teachers were first asked whether they considered the advantages of teaching their subject(s) in English to outweigh the disadvantages. Although this may appear to be a leading question (since one assumes that those engaged in EMI teaching are committed to the cause), the possibility exists that some are regretting their choices. 96% of the respondents chose ‘Totally’ [advantageous] or ‘Yes’. In the open space below where respondents were invited to explain their response, the reasons chosen were generally focused on both teacher and student: − − − − − −

‘I get extra motivation when I teach in English.’ (Teacher 17) ‘There was no reduction in the quality of the content taught and learned, while the students improved their communication skills in English.’ (Teacher 40) ‘The groups are usually quite small, which is advantageous. . .’(Teacher 6) ‘It’s a reduced number of students, and they usually turn out to be the brightest and most motivated ones.’ (Teacher 16) ‘Having students from different countries brings a greater diversity of cultures, values and ways of doing/seeing things.’ (Teacher 21) ‘There is a positive self-selection towards the English groups. . .’ (Teacher 12)

Several teachers in the UBC complain that there is currently a lack of incentives to encourage them to take up EMI teaching, by which they mean training, time to prepare materials, possible native-speaker support (editing,

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advising, checking) and resources. Comments often included complaints regarding a lack of ‘recognition’ at the greater pressure that EMI exerts on time and resources, and a lack of visibility as to the courses on offer. Some comments as to disadvantages were: − − − −

‘The biggest disadvantage has been the need to prepare a large amount of new material in English.’ (Teacher 35) ‘Preparing the lectures requires extra effort. . . .this is not recognised by the university.’ (Teacher 31) ‘One problem is the different levels of English in the class. Some are brilliant, whereas some can hardly speak at all.’ (Teacher 8) ‘The main disadvantage is lack of time.’ (Teacher 28)

Conclusions and Recommendations ‘All teachers are teachers of language’ (Bullock, 1975), but the implications of this rather frightening phrase, as if subject teachers were suddenly expected to don language hats and teach concepts that are alien to them, can be more easily assimilated in courses like those at the UBC, where the teacher is not asked to change identity but to merely consider the impact that language and discourse might have on his/her area. It is clear from feedback that teachers at the UBC appreciate the opportunity to get together with colleagues from other disciplines and to discuss and practise issues that combine discourse awareness with their own language improvement and an increased awareness of methodological possibilities. Besides, the student feedback is clear: pronunciation is important, but what really matters is methodological awareness. If training courses continue to be offered, or if more are made available, then patterns and consensus are more likely to emerge as to both their content and their timing. University teachers, unlike their school counterparts, do not have set timetables which begin in September and then continue inexorably until June. Certain periods of the academic year are more propitious for intensive courses, whereas programmes such as ‘Classroom Practice and English-Medium Pedagogy’ (taught over 10 consecutive weeks) might be better taught over a longer period with negotiated time-gaps that allow the participants to carry out more substantial and detailed projects. Several teachers mentioned benefits that they feel have accompanied their experiences so far, both in terms of their professional development and sense of personal challenge (Doiz et al., 2011). The future is very probably a multilingual one. With the advent of new curricula based on the key competences, EMI pedagogy, or CLIL-oriented approaches in general, may come to be regarded, in the not-too-distant future, as standard practice.

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Notes (1) Access to the survey is restricted and was released only for this study.

References Bullock, A. (1975) Bullock Report. A Language for Life. London: HMSO. Ball, P. and Lindsay, D. (2005) TOPTULTE: Test of performance for teaching at universityl through the medium of english. Unpublished manuscript. Ball, P. and Lindsay, D. (2011) Questionnaire on English medium instruction in the EHU/ UPV. Unpublished questionnaire. Cenoz, J and Gorter, D. (2006) Linguistic landscape and minority languages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1), 67–80. Clegg, J. (2011) Teaching and Learning in two languages in African classrooms, Comparative Education 47 (1), 61–77. Council of Europe (2001) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Online document. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp Coxhead, A. (2000) The Academic Word List, accessed 24 June 2011. http://www. victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/ Crystal, D. (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cummins, J. (2001) Negotiating Identities. Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society. Los Angeles: Californian Association for Bilingual Education. Doiz, A., Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (2011) Internationalisation, multilingualism and English-medium instruction: The teachers’ perspective. World Englishes 30, 345–359. European Commission (1999) The Bologna Process. Towards the European higher education area. The Bologna Declaration Online document. http://ec.europa.eu/ education/higher-education/doc1290_en.htm European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (2006) Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning. Official Journal of the European Union. Brussels: European Union. Graddol, D. (2006) English Next. Plymouth: British Council. Jenkins, J. (2000) The Phonology of English as an International Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kelly, K. (2010) Webpage, accessed 2 May 2011. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ think/articles/interview-keith-kelly Kenworthy, J. (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation. London: Longman. Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (2002) University students’ perceptions of native and non-native speaker teachers of English. Language Awareness 11 (2), 132–142. Lasagabaster, D. and Ruiz de Zarobe, Y. (eds) (2010) CLIL in Spain: Implementation, Results and Teacher Training. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Middendorf, J. and Kalish, A. (1996) The national teaching and learning forum. Volume 5, Number 2. Online document. http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9601/v5n2.pdf Muñoa, I. (2011) ‘CLIL as a catalyst of change’ In ‘ Cutting Edge – the interface of quality issues in CLIL – insights into key questions and issues – selected contributions from CLIL 2010: Towards Excellence’. Online document. http://issuu.com/eleanitz_ project/docs/clil-as-a-catalyst-for-change Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Ramsden, P. (1994) Current challenges to quality in higher education. Innovative Higher Education 18 (3), 177–187. Ruiz de Zarobe, Y., Sierra, J.M. and Gallardo del Puerto, F. (eds) (2011) Content and Foreign Language Integrated Learning: Contributions to Multilingualism in European Contexts. Bern: Peter Lang. Swain, M. and Lapkin, S. (1995) Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate. Step towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics 16, 371–391. Woodward, T. (1988) Loop Input: A New Strategy for Trainers. Canterbury: Pilgrims.

Part 3 Fostering Trilingual Education at Higher Education Institutions

4 Linguistic Hegemony or Linguistic Capital? Internationalization and English-Medium Instruction at the Chinese University of Hong Kong David C.S. Li

Introduction The global spread of English has disrupted the local language ecologies of multilingual societies to different extents. English is now virtually the preferred language of natural sciences regardless of the scientists’ language background, as shown in its preference in presenting and publishing research findings. Business subjects and economic sciences are following this trend. The higher the level of study (e.g. doctoral level), the more heavily dependent university teachers and researchers are on English terminologies. How does an international university cope with the language needs of its staff and students? International universities, which are by definition multilingual, are clearly in need of a coherent language policy, although as Phillipson (2009) has pointed out, this is an area where more research is badly needed (see, e.g. Cots, 2008). Phillipson (2009) considers the offering of courses (exclusively) in English at different European universities a pandemic rather than a panacea, a trend which is almost like a reflex reaction of university administrators and academics to the forces of internationalization. It gives English an unprecedented status and its native speakers undue advantages, with the disruption of the local language ecologies as a consequence. 65

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This chapter provides an interpretive review of the controversies surrounding the language of instruction policy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) since 2004. Being one of the eight government-funded tertiary or higher education institutions (HEIs) in Hong Kong, CUHK is unique in that the use of Chinese as the principal language of instruction is enshrined in the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance when it was officially founded in 1963. The controversies in the past few years were triggered by the university management’s decision to offer more courses across a wide range of disciplines in English. The tensions created by the societal needs for both Chinese (the vernacular Cantonese and written Chinese) and English will be discussed with a view to addressing the question ‘to what extent the predominance of English in higher education is viewed as hegemony or linguistic capital’, and whether English constitutes a threat to the local and regional vernacular Cantonese. The body of data collected for this study includes primarily published reports and monographs, press materials, and extensive commentaries produced by staff, students and alumni of CUHK in the form of e-forums which are downloadable from the internet. It is hoped that this chapter will have some reference value to other researchers, in Hong Kong and beyond, who are confronted with a similar task of formulating their own language policy for their HEI (see also Cots, Doiz et al., and van der Walt & Kidd in this volume for further discussion on linguistic strains in other multilingual HEIs).

Biliteracy and Trilingualism: HKSAR’s Language-in-Education Policy With over 7 million inhabitants (January 2011) living on a land space of barely 1054 square kilometers (425 square miles; Hong Kong Tourism Board, 2011), the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Over 95% of the population is ethnic Chinese, with the majority – about nine out of 10 – having Cantonese as their usual (home) language. For over 150 years until 30 June 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony. Headed by a British Governor supported by a relatively small number of officials from Britain, successive colonial governments relied on a group of bilingual Chinese elite supported by bilingual civil servants for its day-today administration. English was the sole official language until 1974, when Chinese became a co-official language after a strong bottom-up social movement. Until the late 1950s, Hong Kong thrived on entrepôt trade. In the next two decades, a strong manufacturing sector became the lifeline of the

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local economy. From the early 1980s onwards, as the manufacturing base gradually moved up north across the Chinese border in search of cheaper labour, the main economic activities began to take another turn towards those characteristic of a knowledge-based economy. Among the most vibrant sectors are banking, investment and finance, imports/exports, telecommunications, transport and logistics, tourism, hotels, restaurants, insurance, retail trade, and real estate services. Another important development in the 1980s was China’s gradual transformation from a self-secluded communist state to an increasingly exportoriented economy. Under this open-door policy, the Beijing government was able to steer the poverty-stricken nation toward political stability and navigate an uncharted and hitherto unheard-of policy called ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’. From the economic point of view, this policy has produced impressive results by any standard. Revenues were generated to drive the Four Modernizations in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. By 2001, the Chinese economy was firmly integrated into the global economy, as witnessed by her accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Beijing Olympics 2008, and the World Exposition 2010 two years later, were two global, landmark events which did much to showcase China’s leadership in sports and socioeconomic accomplishments in a new century. In February, 2011, China overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy as measured by its gross domestic product. The rise of China as a major player in world politics and the global economy has considerable implications for Hong Kong’s manpower needs. Given that cross-border business opportunities and transactions with non-Cantonese-speaking mainlanders take place increasingly in Putonghua (Mandarin), pragmatically-minded Hong Kongers have little choice but to expand their linguistic repertoire to include at least some Putonghua (Poon, 2010). In April 2009, six pillar industries for future development were identified by a Task Force on Economic Challenges (TFEC), namely: testing and certification, medical services, innovation and technology, cultural and creative industries, environmental industries, and (international) educational services (GovHK, 2009). In addition to being seen as crucial for Hong Kong’s sustained vitality and further development, these six industries have one thing in common: they all require a fairly high level of proficiency in English, Putonghua (Mandarin) and written Chinese, in addition to Cantonese. The above local and regional socioeconomic developments have an important bearing on the manpower needs of this self-styled ‘Asia’s World City’, including the needs for languages. English is regarded by Hong Kongers

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as an important form of linguistic capital, which is precious for sustaining the economic vitality of this former colony (Morrison & Lui, 2000). Putonghua (Mandarin) is no less important, given its status as the national language of China, and the lingua franca among ‘dialect speakers’ in Greater China (Li, 2006). Both languages are generally looked upon by local parents as indispensable assets as their children struggle to climb up the social ladder.

Access to Tertiary Education in Hong Kong: Minimal Requirements for English Given the stake of biliterate and trilingual abilities in Hong Kong’s manpower needs, it is not surprising that huge amounts of government funding in language education are invested in education, from primary to tertiary (Miller & Li, 2008; cf. Lin & Man, 2009). Competition for a place in one of the eight government-funded tertiary or HEIs is fierce. Until September 2012, the success rate in terms of government-funded university places is capped at 18%. One of the major challenges is the English language (Lin, 2008; Poon, 2009); successful applicants are required to have attained grade E or above in the Advanced Supplementary (AS) Level subject ‘Use of English’, which is roughly equivalent to an overall International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 5.5 to 6.0, and which corresponds more or less with the lower end of B2 level in the Common European Framework of Reference (IELTS homepage).

The Chinese University of Hong Kong: A case study of university bilingual policy Founded officially through legislation in 1963, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (hereafter CUHK) was established to cater for Chinese middle school leavers’ aspirations for post-secondary education, especially those who were recent arrivals from mainland China seeking refuge in Hong Kong in the late 1950s. They had too little knowledge of English to be qualified for a place at the English-medium Hong Kong University, the only university in colonial Hong Kong at that time. CUHK was originally a federal university with only three member colleges: Chung Chi, New Asia, and United. By 2011, after expansion and development for over four decades, CUHK has evolved into a comprehensive university with nine colleges, 62 academic departments and eight faculties, offering a great variety of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes,

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including Ph.Ds. In 2011–12, CUHK is ranked 151 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Of the eight government-funded HEIs, CUHK is unique in that it has a statutory mandate to teach through the medium of Chinese: It is declared that The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in which the principal language of instruction shall be Chinese, shall continue to (i) assist in the preservation, dissemination, communication and increase in knowledge; (ii) provide regular courses of instruction in the humanities, the sciences and other branches of learning of a standard required and expected of a University of the highest standing; and (iii) stimulate the intellectual and cultural development of Hong Kong and thereby to assist in promoting its economic and social welfare. (Clause (e), Preamble of The Chinese University of Hong Kong Ordinance, cited in Report of the Committee on Bilingualism, 2007: 7, emphasis added) To this day, this fine detail continues to be felt in the Chinese name of the university: 中文大學, literally ‘Chinese-Language University’. In practice, however, English is quite often used in many disciplines other than Chinese and Chinese Culture, Chinese History, and Chinese Philosophy. Until 2004–05, the language of interaction in lectures, tutorials or laboratory sessions at CUHK was left more or less to the teacher and students at will. This is partly evidenced by the analysis of survey data on the language of instruction in 2004–05, which were collected by the CUHK Registry upon the request of the Committee of Bilingualism. It was found that: For instance, in science and engineering subjects, English was generally used for all forms of teaching and learning, except laboratory sessions where Chinese was more widely used. For medical studies, while English was used for lectures, tutorials, reading materials, assignments and examinations. Cantonese was also used during clinical sessions and individual supervision. For the Hotel and Tourism Management courses, lectures were mainly conducted in English, but English, Cantonese and Putonghua were used during internship. (Report of the Committee on Bilingualism, 2007: 12, emphasis added) Whereas English appeared to be more consistently used in medical studies, in other disciplines from science and engineering to hotel and tourism management, English is not used exclusively. What remains unclear, which was apparently not addressed by this survey, is the extent of codealternation between English and Cantonese (and possibly other Chinese

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varieties as well) in class by the teacher and students. This point is crucial given the significant role of Cantonese in helping bilingual teachers to explicate to their students whatever technical concepts or theoretical constructs that are too complicated to be taught entirely in English (Flowerdew et al., 1998, 2000; cf. Li, 2011; Li & Tse, 2002). The laissez-faire practice of allowing teachers and students to use Chinese or English at will or, where necessary, to negotiate the most desirable language of instruction was at stake when, in 2004, the newly appointed CUHK Vice-Chancellor Lawrence Lau, a world-renowned economist, appealed for offering more courses in English as part of a grand vision and mega plan for the fifth decade (2004–2014) of the university, namely, to be recognized internationally for its excellence in research. Little did the former Chair Professor of Stanford University realize that such a visionary strategic re-positioning of CUHK as an international university shortly after he assumed office in July 2004 would trigger a prolonged dispute and partly emotionally charged debate between the university management on one hand, and quite a few academics, students and multifarious local and international networks of CUHK alumni on the other. Lawrence Lau’s vision, which came to be known as 求學自由行 (‘education without borders’), was conceived against two important government policy initiatives in the higher education sector. First, starting from 2005–06, all undergraduate degree programmes offered by the eight publicly funded tertiary institutions in Hong Kong would be open to over four million eligible Middle School leavers in Mainland China to apply. Second, to encourage local tertiary institutions to admit non-local (mainland Chinese and international) students, the Education Bureau (EDB) set up a matching grant of five million dollars (ca. US$0.6m) per tertiary institution. The funding could be used to attract bright non-local students to study in Hong Kong (e.g. scholarship scheme or student exchange). These goals were consistent with the Vice-Chancellor’s vision of promoting outgoing exchange and intercultural encounters with their non-local peers through internationalization which, in his view, was key to enriching students’ learning experience and broadening their knowledge horizons. From the Vice-Chancellor’s point of view, however, toward the goal of internationalization one obstacle had to be overcome: the language of instruction. This was seen as the root cause of two main problems. First, student exchange agreements, which tended to operate reciprocally on a one-on-one basis, would be difficult to sustain if incoming exchange students could not find enough English-medium courses to study. This in turn would affect CUHK students’ outgoing exchange opportunities. Second, without sufficient English-medium courses, CUHK would fail to

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attract bright students from other parts of the world, which would be an impediment toward enhancing CUHK’s global visibility to rival world-class universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale. Until 2004, the majority of the 8% of non-local students came from Putonghua-dominant students from Mainland China. To enhance CUHK’s appeal to English-speaking international students, therefore, several measures were proposed, including to increase the percentage of English-medium courses, and to urge CUHK students to make a greater effort to improve their English and Putonghua. Advances in these two fronts were seen as crucial toward CUHK’s strategic objective of increasing the percentage of non-local students from 8% (n=280) to 25% (n=700), targeting students in East Asia, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe in addition to Mainland China. The Vice-Chancellor made it clear that, far from undermining CUHK’s emphasis of and mission to promote traditional Chinese culture, CUHK would strengthen teaching and research in Sinology, promote Chinese culture by encouraging foreign students to study Chinese classics in translation such as ‘The Dream of the Red Chamber’, ‘The Three Kingdoms’ and ‘Journey to the West’. To assess whether there are enough resources within the university’s infrastructure to support the internationalization policy, in the fall semester of 2004–05, a directive was issued from the Vice-Chancellor’s office requiring department heads to indicate whether their academic programmes would be ready to admit non-local (Mandarin Chinese and international) students. If so, a number of logistical conditions pertaining to the language of instruction had to be met: (a) of the core courses in a degree programme, at least one group should be taught in English, including lectures, tutorials, and practice or laboratory sessions; (b) there should be enough English-medium electives for non-local students to choose from; and (c) for English-medium courses, the exam paper and other assessed activities must be in English. The directive emphasized that departments that did not wish to admit non-local students would not suffer from any cut in resources, and there was no intention to force departments or staff to switch the teaching medium to English. In response to this directive, most of the university programmes opted to admit non-local students. The Vice-Chancellor’s move toward internationalization triggered vehement opposition from various stakeholder groups, notably the Students

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Union, some academic and teaching staff, and the alumni, including many residing outside of Hong Kong. After students learned about the content of the directive, the Students Union wrote angry emails in part to alert their peers of the important policy issue, but also to query the legitimacy of the hastily executed language of instruction policy without any prior consultation with staff or students. It was dismissed as 偽國際化 (‘pseudo internationalization’), with the policy directive being handed down in an undemocratic, unreasonable and irresponsible manner. Some students ran a signature collection campaign using a big poster carrying the rallying slogan 哭中大 (‘Cry for Chinese U’), and within weeks collected hundreds of signatures denouncing ‘pseudo internationalization’. This campaign was later extended globally and obtained the support of over 800 signatories (as of 15 February 2005), including a few famous CUHK professors, scholars at mainland Chinese universities and CUHK alumni overseas. A few student activists vented their anger at the 2004 CUHK Graduation Ceremony, where a petition letter was addressed to the Vice-Chancellor in person in front of many news-hungry journalists. The university management was accused of deviating from the University’s founding principle, namely to sustain, develop and promote traditional Chinese cultural heritage and language, and violating the pledge as stated in the Preamble of the Chinese University Ordinance. It was further pointed out that since departments were only allowed to admit non-local students if sufficient English-medium courses would be offered, some departments did not dare to say no out of concerns that resources would be cut. An e-forum was set up on the CUHK Intranet, giving focus and coherence to the collective voices of the opposition. Some of the contributions were later put together in a monograph published by 中文大學校友關注大 學發展小組 (‘The Chinese University Alumni Concern Group on University Development’), or 校友關注組 (‘Alumni Concern Group’) in short. The monograph bears a satirical title: 令大學頭痛的中文 (‘That which causes headache to the University: The Chinese language ’, see University Alumni Concern Group 1, 2007). Two main arguments are put forward to denounce the ‘pseudo internationalization’ policy. First, over 90% of CUHK students are Cantonese-dominant local students; neither English nor Putonghua is their first language. Given robust research findings worldwide showing that learning is most effective when one is learning through their first language, a new policy which is biased toward using English as the medium of teaching and learning is counter-productive in that it creates learning problems for local students, stifles their intellectual interests, and violates their educational needs in Cantonese. Second, as a local publicly funded university, CUHK should first and foremost serve the needs of local

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students; accordingly it defies reason why CUHK should attract international students and accommodate to their language needs by artificially increasing the number of English-medium courses. A few contributions remind the reader of the tough battle back in the early 1970s during the colonial era, leading to Chinese being recognized as a co-official language in 1974. Many were worried that traditional Chinese values would be lost over time if Chinese should stop functioning as the default language of teaching and learning. In the long run, the so-called bilingual policy would in reality be lop-sided, resulting in English being valorized at the expense of Cantonese and written Chinese, with discrimination against using Cantonese (or other Chinese varieties) as a classroom language being an inevitable consequence. Such unexpected reactions on the part of students, staff and CUHK alumni prompted the university management to set up a Committee on Bilingualism in February 2005 to review the university’s language policy with specific reference to a concern raised by many, including the query, ‘whether higher education would experience “overdominance” of the English language, potentially resulting in the decline of the Chinese language in the face of diversification and internationalization of higher education’ (Report of the Committee on Bilingualism, 2007: 5). The Committee on Bilingualism was also tasked with making recommendations for change where appropriate, in keeping with the mission of bilingual education as follows: To be globally competitive, CUHK must acknowledge the importance of English as an international language. At the same time, the University must also honour its mission and re-affirm its commitment to the promotion of Chinese culture and language, as well as its dedication to the preservation and development of indigenous culture and language in Hong Kong. (Report of the Committee on Bilingualism, 2007: 6) The key, it would appear, is to address ‘how CUHK should position Chinese and English in teaching’ (Report of the Committee on Bilingualism, 2007: 5). After conducting five meetings and six consultations from 2005, the final report (October 2007) was submitted to the Vice-Chancellor, who according, to a press release, praised it for its ‘broad and long-term perspective’ and hailed it as ‘a set of forward-looking and strategic principles that align with the unique linguistic environment of Hong Kong’ that it offers. In the main, the Report recommends that ‘depending on the nature of the academic subject, the language used at lectures should be set by the boards of various departments’ (clause 14) following the principles laid out in clauses 14.1 to 14.4. Accordingly, culture-specific topics in Chinese – from

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Language and Culture to History and Philosophy – should be taught in Chinese (clause 14.2). In contrast, those topics which have a cross-cultural character, in particular the humanities and social sciences, may be taught in either Chinese or English (clause 14.3). Local topics with a clear focus on local society, politics and culture are better taught in the local language (clause 14.4). The boards of academic departments also have the discretion to exercise flexibility when deciding on the language of instruction for lectures, taking into account other factors such as ‘the language habits, the linguistic competence and the cultural background of the students and teachers, and has consulted the teachers concerned’ (clause 15). Of the four cardinal principles, the most controversial is clause 14.1: For courses that are highly universal in nature, with little emphasis on cultural specificity, and have English as the predominant medium for academic expression and publication (such as courses in the natural sciences, life sciences and engineering sciences), English should be the preferred language for lectures so as to facilitate direct and accurate articulation of concepts, and to be in line with international practice. The Report of the Committee on Bilingualism (2007) did little to placate its opponents’ criticisms of the ‘pseudo internationalization’ policy. Two months after the Report was published, Li Yiu Kee, a third-year student of Political Science, filed an application for judicial review of his alma mater’s bilingual policy, on the grounds that Chinese should be used as the language of instruction according to the 1963 Chinese University Ordinance. This turned out to be a long struggle. After four years and three legal battles, the same verdict was returned by the Court of First Instance (February 2009), the Court of Appeal (July 2010), and the Court of Final Appeal (September 2011), in that the Senate of the University has the autonomy and academic freedom ‘to control and direct the language of instruction’ subject to the Council’s monitoring, and that the Senate ‘is not restricted by any legal requirement that Chinese must be or remain the principal language of instruction’ (High Court rules in CUHK’s favour on Judicial Review, 9 February 2009). Meanwhile, the University Alumni Concern Group published a second monograph in 2008, entitled 立此存照 對中大校政的批評和建議 (‘For the record: Critique of and suggestions for the Chinese University management’, see University Alumni Concern Group 2, 2008), where the bilingual policy is the first of six university management issues thematized. In this second monograph, the university management is portrayed as trying to get rid of the Chinese language quickly.

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The row surrounding the CUHK bilingual policy presents an interesting case regarding two related questions: To what extent does the spread of English constitute a threat to the local language ecology and the ethnolinguistic vitality of the regional vernacular, Cantonese? And, is English dreaded for its global hegemony, or embraced for its empowering potential as a form of linguistic capital?

Discussion The controversies surrounding the bilingual policy of CUHK epitomizes the dilemma and tension between Chinese (referring to the vernacular Cantonese and written Chinese which is modeled on Putonghua/Mandarin) and English in this former colony. The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Lawrence Lau, who decided to step down in 2011 instead of seeking a second term of office, firmly believes that the internationalization of university education is a global trend, with competition for talent and resources getting more and more intense. As evidence, he cited the rapid expansion of English-medium courses at many universities in continental Europe (France and Germany) and East Asia (Japan and Korea). In his view, CUHK ran the risk of being marginalized if it did not follow suit. In one radio programme, Lau was quoted as saying: If CUHK does not position itself as an international university, if it cannot cultivate graduates who are conversant in Chinese (Cantonese and Putonghua) and English, and who possess a high level of cross-cultural awareness and intercultural competence, CUHK runs the risk of being marginalized for failing to attract talents and resources. English is the main language of academic exchange internationally, and so international universities cannot but valorize English. CUHK is no exception in this regard. (Reported in local daily Ming Pao, 17 February 2005; original in Chinese; my translation) Notwithstanding his well-intentioned vision, Lau clearly underestimated the dilemma his Chinese staff and students were facing. Hardly anyone would dispute the pragmatic value of English in tertiary education. It is the carrier of new knowledge and, for that matter, the increasingly preferred language of publication by intellectuals and researchers to whom English is not a first language. But it is another matter whether Chinese students of English are linguistically capable and sufficiently well-versed to ‘crack the code’ of their lecturers in order to benefit from cutting-edge knowledge in their field directly, without recourse to the vernacular, Cantonese. Except

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for a minority of students who are proficient in English, English as a medium of instruction is likely to be a challenge whether it is the first, second or foreign language of their lecturer. English-L1 lecturers with no awareness or training in delivering lectures to ESL/EFL students may speak too fast; their accent may not be easy to follow. On the other hand, the lectures of Chinese lecturers lecturing in English may not be any easier. In one e-forum on ‘English-medium teaching’, for example, many students expressed concerns about their professors’ and tutors’ English proficiency. The following are some examples (original in Chinese; my translation): Many professors’ English is very poor, what they speak cannot be called English, [you] can hardly follow what they say! Some tutors’ English is more difficult to understand than what they teach, listening to their English which is incomprehensible to them, and teaching what they themselves don’t understand, the whole class frowned [and felt frustrated]…. A similar reservation is shared by another student at master’s level, who was quoted as saying that some old [Chinese] professors felt ill-at-ease if they were to teach in English. Apart from problems pertaining to the use of English by some lecturers and tutors, there are also problems at the receiving end. In the e-forums, some CUHK students felt their unsatisfactory academic results were partly due to their proficiency problems in English. The following is an instructive commentary in Chinese-English mixed code (italicized words in original; my translation): I have studied [at CUHK] for three years, I write paper in English, follow tutorial in English, and attend lecture in English, but I don’t perceive any progress in my English. Another instructive example is adapted from a CUHK professor’s comments in an e-forum (discipline not mentioned). In one of his courses, due to the presence of a couple of non-Chinese students, the language of instruction was changed to English. This triggered an exodus of one quarter of the local students, while those remaining students would ask him questions in Cantonese before the two non-Chinese students arrived. He used this anecdote to exemplify one dilemma posed by internationalization and a challenge faced by many lecturers like himself. The dilemmas faced by different groups of stakeholders (university management, academic and teaching staff, Cantonese-dominant students,

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and multifarious networks of alumni cutting across different disciplinary areas and generations) are arguably rooted in the tension between Chinese and English at CUHK, which is unique in that it has inherited an institutional raison d’être of teaching through the medium of Chinese, which may be Cantonese, Putonghua, or any other Chinese ‘dialect’ depending on the lecturer’s preference. The choice of Chinese as the ‘principal language of instruction’ was not at all arbitrary when the Chinese University Ordinance was conceived in 1963. For over four decades, however, following the emergence of English as a de facto international language, this bilingual policy has been gradually eroded, to the point that Cantonese as a medium of teaching and learning can no longer be taken for granted. Those who are opposed to the Vice-Chancellor’s internationalization initiative as a proactive policy to admit more non-local students, tend to be those who see in the expansion of English-medium courses at CUHK as the onset of a downward path for using Chinese as a language of intellectualization, including understanding and producing knowledge, debating whose views come closer to truth or reality, conceptualizing theories, and appreciating miscellaneous objects and artefacts through the Chinese cultural lens. In essence, what is feared is a symbolic retreat of the Chinese language (Bourdieu, 1991) at a university which, to successive generations of its graduates and students, is known to have a heritage deeply rooted in Chinese language and culture. What the opponents of the internationalization initiative lament, is a projected loss of the symbolic values embodied and manifested in the Chinese language which, once lost for good when members of the CUHK community are no longer free to articulate their thoughts and views in Chinese, would risk triggering the loss of other Chinese-specific cultural, philosophical and aesthetic values and, consequently, the loss of Chinese identity. It is interesting however that such concerns, which are articulated strongly, sometimes emotionally, by CUHK activists, including students, teachers and alumni, do not seem to be shared by their counterparts in other HEIs where English-medium instruction (EMI) prevails, especially in disciplines which are ‘highly universal in nature’. In terms of scale, despite having generated a lot of media attention in the last few years, the ‘CUHK internationalization saga’ has remained very much a local – rather than societal – debate among various CUHK stakeholders. Several Google searches using miscellaneous keywords failed to yield any commentaries by academics from other local instructions showing concerns for using the Chinese language in university settings – unlike, for instance, in Denmark (see, e.g. Haberland, 2009; Preisler, 2009). One possible explanation is that other HEIs in Hong Kong do not have a ‘historical baggage’ of being bound by legislation to teach in Chinese (i.e., spoken Cantonese or other Chinese varieties, and written Chinese).

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As for the debate at an ideological level, whether the growing presence of English constitutes evidence of its institutional hegemony (especially in postcolonial societies like Hong Kong) or popular reception as a form of ‘linguistic capital’, the CUHK internationalization saga shows that both views are supported, but to different extents. There is no question that for many students and alumni of CUHK, a shift in language of instruction from Cantonese and written Chinese to English would represent a symbolic retreat and loss of Chinese as a source of intellectualization, especially in disciplines which have a ‘universal’ character. On the other hand, a relative lack of similar concerns or support for that stance by staff and students in other sister institutions beyond CUHK seems to suggest that English is considered, if tacitly, quite acceptable as a medium for teaching and learning purposes at the tertiary level. Such a stance is not difficult to understand. To the extent that English is widely perceived as an indispensable asset in terms of gaining access to higher education or the ranks of professionals, a mastery of English helps one gain upward and outward mobility, and the use of English as a medium for teaching and learning in higher education is generally perceived as a catalyst toward that goal. From a more pragmatic perspective, so long as no prescriptive language-of-instruction policy is in place, bilingual teachers could always switch to the students’ more familiar language if need be. This was more or less the policy before Lawrence Lau’s internationalization initiative was introduced. In this light, rather than irrational paranoia or aversion toward teaching through the medium of English, perhaps the opponents’ resistance to EMI could be interpreted as a concern for a loss of flexibility in addition to being a protest against the university management’s infringement of bilingual teachers’ rights for context-specific classroom language choice and use (Lin & Man, 2009). The ‘linguistic capital’ analysis is also consistent with and supported by other evidence. Perhaps the most obvious evidence is popular social criticism of the mother tongue (i.e. Cantonese) education policy implemented since 1998, with many parents who could afford it reportedly voting with their feet by sending their child to a boarding school in an English-speaking country or queuing up for a place in a local English-medium international school or ESF (English Schools Foundation) school. The Hong Kong SAR government, on its part, continues to invest huge amounts of ‘language enhancement’ resources into the education sector to boost students’ English proficiency at different levels, including the Workplace English Campaign (WEC), and the Common English Proficiency Assessment Scheme (CEPAS), whereby all graduating students taking the IELTS test are entitled to receiving full reimbursement of their test fees on condition that they agree to indicate in their transcript that they have taken the government-sponsored

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IELTS test (Miller & Li, 2008). Students may also seek additional tuition in one or more private tutorial centres such as Modern Education, British Council, Englishtown, and Wall Street Institute. The market success of these providers of English classes is partly reflected in flashy adverts that they put up in Chinese newspapers and train compartments, on TV, jumbo buses, and the internet. Inside miscellaneous means of public transport such as buses and trains, typically after school, one could often find an eager parent or caregiver trying to help a child with the spelling and/or meaning of English vocabulary words or simple sentences. All this is arguably due to the fact that, as Hong Kong has evolved into a knowledge-based economy, a threshold standard of English is required for gaining access to higher education and an increasingly multilingual workplace. No analysis of English popularly perceived as linguistic capital is complete without examining the role of the majority’s usual language, Cantonese, and how it relates to its speakers’ ethnolinguistic identity. With no less than 55 million speakers worldwide, mainly in the Pearl River Delta and diasporas mainly in North America, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand (Ethnologue, 2011; Lee & Li, in press), Cantonese is a vibrant regional vernacular whose vitality is sustained by its use in everyday communication and the electronic media, in miscellaneous artistic forms from movies and opera to Canto-pop and stand-up comedy. In addition, Cantonese is used as a medium of instruction from kindergarten to university in the two Special Administrative Regions, Hong Kong and Macao (but not in the rest of China). There is thus no question that the level of ethnolinguistic vitality of Cantonese is very high. All this helps explain why neither ‘domain loss’ (Haberland, 2005; cf. Ó Riagáin, 1997) nor the ‘discourse of endangerment’ regarding the continued well-being of Cantonese has attracted much attention beyond academia (but see Bauer, 2000; Li, 2000). Nor has there been any worry, beyond the ‘pseudo internationalization discourse’ among members of the CUHK community, of Cantonese/Chinese being rendered as an ‘incomplete language’ (Preisler, 2009). In short, while the six-year ‘CUHK internationalization saga’ has generated some concerns for linguistic hegemony among CUHK staff, students and alumni, for the rest of the local higher education sector, English is clearly embraced as a form of linguistic capital by all stakeholder groups (e.g. government, educationists from primary to tertiary, parents, students, etc.; Li, 2009b). The huge market demand for (good) English fuels the commodification of English, as is evidenced by burgeoning tutorial centers big and small, where a wide range of courses from pre-primary to adult education cater for the needs of learners at different levels.

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Regarding the (pseudo) internationalization debate at CUHK, and its impact on the tertiary education sector in general, one key question is ‘can English-medium courses be avoided?’ Given that Hong Kong positions itself as ‘Asia’s World City’, and so long as two-way staff and student exchange is seen as a natural part of the university’s routine teaching- and researchrelated activities, as well as direction of development, it is difficult not to have at least some courses to be taught through the medium of English, including Chinese history, Chinese culture, and Chinese philosophy targeting non-Chinese students. Not doing so would result in graduating ‘single-hoof horses’ – graduates who are well-versed in engaging others in their respective areas of expertise in Cantonese, but would be sluggish once the participant structure or discourse shifts to other languages to include English. This is arguably counterproductive relative to the goal of promoting and disseminating traditional Chinese culture. Where local, coursespecific language-of-instruction problems may arise due, for example, to the configuration of student mix and/or the lecturer’s preferred language, so long as the lecturer in question has the autonomy to decide how best to deploy his or her linguistic resources to meet the needs of specific groups of students; the actual give-and-take in the classroom need not be rigidly confined by the label ‘English-medium’ or ‘Chinese-medium’. Nor should it be a taboo if some Cantonese is used for sound pedagogical reasons in an English-medium course, or vice versa. We should trust the teacher with regard to language choice in their class, and teachers should be entrusted with the duty of teaching their course content effectively – in whatever (combination of) language(s) that, in their judgment, works most satisfactorily, pedagogically speaking. For content courses, beyond effective and inspiring delivery of course content, there should be no language-ofinstruction concerns that would come back to haunt the teacher (e.g. violation of university language policy; allegations for teaching in a hybrid language, and the like). Quite the contrary, all university teachers who face the language-of-instruction problem should receive support from the university. To mitigate resistance against the internationalization initiative, two areas of staff training are worth exploring: induction to effective bilingual teaching strategies, and training to help academic and teaching staff cope with and prepare for the challenges arising from teaching their specialized subjects in English (e.g. providing EMI training workshops). These would of course presuppose concerted efforts of one or more institutional support units to be tasked with looking after these areas of training as part of a truly well-conceived university bilingual policy.

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Conclusion In the last two decades, Hong Kong has gradually evolved into a knowledge-based economy, which depends for its success in no small measure on the language and communication skills of a multilingual citizenry. This is the background to the Special Administrative Region’s emphasis on biliteracy and trilingualism in its official language-in-education policy. While this goal post may sound lofty and not easy to attain for both linguistic and sociolinguistic reasons, there is no real alternative. One perennial problem is that for average Cantonese-dominant Hong Kongers, neither English nor Putonghua is easy to learn (Li, 2009a, 2010). The analysis of the CUHK internationalization saga above shows that, compared with other places where the spread of English is perceived by many local people and language policy makers as a threat to the vitality of local language(s) (see Cots, Doiz et al., and van der Walt & Kidd in this volume), Hong Kong is clearly different. Critical linguists may regard the policy-driven increase in the number of English-medium courses as evidence of yet another vindication of the global hegemony of English, but far more societal evidence points toward English being embraced as a form of linguistic capital which is crucial for sustaining the economic vitality of this former British colony, has great potential for enhancing the future prospects of university graduates, and the international standing of local universities. In terms of language functions assigned to Cantonese in society as well as its role in education, there is little evidence that the expanding role of English (highly marked) and Putonghua (just beginning) in higher education takes place at the expense of Cantonese (Li, 2009b). Rather, both languages are embraced as useful linguistic capital for Hong Kong students. One critical and crucial policy issue, as Bauer (2000) argues, is whether Cantonese will continue to be used as the medium of instruction for teaching Chinese subjects from pre-primary to tertiary levels – unlike elsewhere in Greater China (except Macau Special Administrative Region) where Putonghua is used as the medium of instruction. Once Hong Kong children are no longer taught to read Chinese texts in Cantonese, this would be the start of a downward path in its ethnolinguistic vitality among its speakers. As of today, there is some indication that the language of instruction for the Chinese Language subject at the primary and secondary levels will gradually shift to Putonghua, but there is as yet no mention of Putonghua replacing Cantonese as the language of instruction in other Chinese subjects. In the long run, however, this may well be the real battlefield where the defence against the loss of Cantonese and language shift will play out.

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References Bauer, R. (2000) Hong Kong Cantonese and the road ahead. In D.C.S. Li, A. Lin and W.K. Tsang (eds) Language and Education in Postcolonial Hong Kong (pp. 35–58). Hong Kong: Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cots, J.M. (2008) International universities in bilingual communities (Catalonia, Basque Country and Wales): A research project. In H. Haberland, J. Mortensen, A. Fabricius, B. Preisler, K. Risager and S. Kjaerbeck (eds) Higher Education in the Global Village (pp. 67–83). Department of Culture & Identity, Roskilde University. Ethnologue: Languages of the world (2011) Language Yue. Accessed 20 November 2011. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=yue Flowerdew, J., Li, D.C.S. and Miller, L. (1998) Attitudes towards English as the medium of instruction among Hong Kong Chinese university lecturers. TESOL Quarterly 32 (2), 201–231. Flowerdew, J., Miller, L. and Li, D.C.S. (2000) Chinese lecturers’ perceptions, problems and strategies in lecturing in English to Chinese-speaking students. RELC Journal 31 (1), 116–138. GovHK. (2009) Task force identifies 6 industries to be developed, news.gov.hk, accessed 23 July 2011. http://news.gov.hk/en/category/businessandfinance/090403/html/ 090403en03004.htm Haberland, H. (2005) Domains and domain loss. In B. Preisler, A. Fabricius, H. Haberland, S. Kjaerbeck and K. Risager (eds) The Consequence of Mobility (pp. 227–237). Roskilde University, Denmark: Department of Language and Culture. Haberland, H. (2009) English–the language of globalism? Rask. Internationalt Tidsskrift for sprog og Kommunikation 30, 17–45. High Court rules in CUHK’s favour on Judicial Review (9 February 2009) Chinese University of Hong Kong press release. Accessed on 20 November 2011. http://www.cpr.cuhk. edu.hk/en/press_detail.php?id=303&s=language of instruction Hong Kong Tourism Board, accessed 8 June 2011. http://www.discoverhongkong.com/ eng/trip-planner/hongkong-location.html IELTS homepage. Accessed 24 September 2011. http://www.ielts.org/home/researchers/ common_european_framework.aspx Lee, S. and Li, D.C.S. (in press) Multilingualism in Greater China and the Chinese language diaspora. In T.K. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie (eds) The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2nd edn). Blackwell. Li, D.C.S. (2000) Phonetic borrowing: Key to the vitality of written Cantonese in Hong Kong. Written Language and Literacy 3 (2), 199–233. Li, D.C.S. (2006) Chinese as a lingua franca in Greater China. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26, 149–176. Li, D.C.S. (2009a) Learning English for Academic Purposes: Why Chinese EFL Learners find EAP so difficult to master. In P. Martin and I.K. León Pérez (eds) Communicating Science: ESP Studies at the Outset of the 21st Century. Special issue of Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 59, 33–46. Li, D.C.S. (2009b) Towards ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’ in Hong Kong (SAR): Problems, dilemmas and stakeholders’ views. AILA Review 22, 72–84. Li, D.C.S. (2010) Improving the standards and promoting the use of English in Hong Kong: Issues, problems and prospects. In A. Feng (ed.) English Language Use and Education Across Greater China (pp. 95–113). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Li, D.C.S. (2011) Lexical gap, semantic incongruence, and medium-of-instruction-induced code-switching: Evidence from Hong Kong and Taiwan. In E.A. Anchimbe and S.A. Mforteh (eds) Postcolonial Linguistic Patches: Multilingual Communication, Language Policies and Linguistic Identities (pp. 215–239). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Li, D.C.S. and Tse, E.C.Y. (2002) One day in the life of a ‘purist’. International Journal of Bilingualism 6 (2), 147–202. Lin, A.M.Y. (2008) The ecology of literacy in Hong Kong. In A. Creese, P. Martin, and N.H. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd ed., vol. 9: Ecology of Language (pp. 291–303). New York: Springer Science. Lin, A.M.Y. and Man, E.Y.F. (2009) Bilingual Education: Southeast Asia Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Miller, L. and Li, D.C.S. (2008) Innovations in ELT curricula and strategies of implementation in Hong Kong SAR. In Y.H. Choi and B. Spolsky (eds) ELT Curriculum Innovation and Implementation in Asia (pp. 71–100). Seoul, Korea: Asia-TEFL. Ming Pao (17 February 2005). Lawrence Lau refutes misunderstanding of internationalization on the RTHK (Radio & Television Hong Kong) radio programme ‘Letter to family’ (original in Chinese: 劉遵義家書反駁國際化誤解). Morrison, K., and Lui, I. (2000) Ideology, linguistic capital, and medium of instruction in Hong Kong. Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development 21, 471–486. Ó Riagáin, P. (1997) Language Policy and Social Reproduction Ireland: 1893–1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Phillipson, R. (2009) English in higher education: Panacea or pandemic? Angles on the English-Speaking World 9, 29–57. Poon, A.Y.K. (2009) A review of research in English language education in Hong Kong in the past 25 Years: Reflections and the way forward. Educational Research Journal 24 (1), 7–40. Poon, A.Y.K. (2010) Language use, and language policy and planning in Hong Kong. Current Issues in Language Planning 11 (1), 1–66. Preisler, B. (2009) Complementary Language: The national language and English as working languages in European universities. Angles on the English-Speaking World 9, 10–28. Report of the Committee on Bilingualism. (2007). Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Accessed on 16 October 2011. http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/english/ bilingualism/downloads/cob-report-e.pdf Times Higher Education World University Rankings, accessed 20 November 2011. http:// www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400. html#score_OS%7Csort_region%7Creverse_false University Alumni Concern Group 1 (校友關注組1) (2007) 令大學頭痛的中文 (‘The Chinese language: a headache to the University’). Hong Kong: Chinese University Alumni Concern Group on University Development (中文大學校友關注大學發展 小組). University Alumni Concern Group 2 (校友關注組2) (2008) 立此存照 對中大校政的批評 和建議 (‘For the record: critique of and suggestions for the Chinese University management’). Hong Kong: Chinese University Alumni Concern Group on University Development (中文大學校友關注大學發展小組).

5 English as L3 at a Bilingual University in the Basque Country, Spain Aintzane Doiz, David Lasagabaster and Juan Manuel Sierra

Introduction This introductory section analyses the University of the Basque Country (UBC) in Spain in the light of the three models of internationalisation at university proposed by Chan and Dimmock (2008). The three models are presented in the following lines.

Internationalisation of Universities Altbach (2004: 6) has observed that ‘Globalisation cannot be completely avoided. History shows that when universities shut themselves off from economic and societal trends they become moribund and irrelevant.’ Aware of the inevitability and importance of internationalisation, universities have implemented specific measures to cope with globalisation, namely, internationalisation plans. However, internationalisation plans may vary substantially from university to university for two main reasons. Firstly, the meaning and interpretation of the process of internationalisation itself is subject to various rationales, incentives, and economic circumstances within which it takes place (Callan, 2000; Chan & Dimmock, 2008: 186). Secondly, internationalisation accommodates ‘a significant degree of autonomy and initiative’ (Altbach, 2004: 6). Notwithstanding, Chan and Dimmock (2008: 184) distinguish two distinct models of internationalisation which are not mutually exclusive, the internationalist and the translocalist models, illustrated by a UK and Hong Kong university respectively. In addition, they suggest a third model, the globalist model, whose existence needs to be empirically corroborated. 84

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The internationalist model is most likely found in highly developed economies and in countries with a multicultural population, especially English speaking countries. The main objectives of internationalist universities are to achieve international positioning, conduct research at an international level and aim for academic excellence and world class status. The internationalisation strategies adopted by universities within this model are internationalisation-abroad, that is to say, the delivery of courses abroad, the establishment of international alliances and the development of partnerships. Individual departments and faculty members are in charge of promoting internationalisation-at-home actions. By contrast, the translocalist model is ‘most likely found in less developed countries and/or countries with culturally homogeneous populations, where nation-building is a priority or at least a concern’ (Chan & Dimmock, 2008: 197). The universities associated with this model are primarily undergraduate teaching institutions with some research; a large number of their academic faculty is local, although may be overseas trained; they have a small number of international and research students and primarily serve the local community. Their main objectives are to be good national universities, fostering a national as well as a global perspective among students within the context of nation building and student employment in the global market. The internationalisation strategies undertaken by universities within this model are focused on internationalisation-at-home, e.g. the internationalisation of the curriculum, the creation of an English-speaking environment in non-English speaking countries, participation in study abroad programmes and the establishment of overseas partnerships. Finally, the globalist model is ‘most likely found in developing economies with a larger number of foreign businesses and/or growing populations of local elites aspiring for upward mobility both at home and abroad’ (Chan & Dimmock, 2008: 201). The universities which follow this model are engaged in transnational education offering internationally recognized certificates. They ‘aim for unilateral benefits of national or institutional self-interests’ (Chan & Dimmock, 2008: 201) and focus on the delivery of national or international programmes of study. These programmes do not include issues such as foreign language proficiency, intercultural understanding or mutually beneficial international and inter-institutional cooperation in their institutional agenda. Perhaps one of the most characteristic results of internationalisation in the first two models (the internationalist and the translocalist) is the ‘Englishization’ of the universities, whereby English is adopted as the medium of instruction (Kirkpatrick, 2011: 3). In their study, Wächter and Maiworm (2008) noted that over 400 European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) provided more than 2400 programmes taught entirely in

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English in 2007, which represents a remarkable 340% increase on the 700 Bachelor courses and Master’s programmes taught in 2002. The wide spread of English within the context of internationalisation has provoked division among academics: some scholars ‘subscribe either to the Diffusion of English paradigm or the Ecology of Language paradigm, depending on whether they see the present rate of spread of English as a second/foreign language as a blessing or a threat’ (Dörnyei et al., 2006: 7). The former perspective believes in the survival of the fittest, the latter contends that the decrease in language diversity is a great loss. The issue regarding the spread of English has caused some scholars to talk about a ‘linguistic genocide’ (SkutnabbKangas, 2001), while others have taken a more cautious approach and perceive English as a necessary lingua franca for direct communication, but argue that its spread must be balanced to guarantee the maintenance of linguistic diversity (Tonkin, 2003).

The Introduction of English in a Bilingual University: The Case of the University of the Basque Country (UBC), Spain The university under consideration in this chapter is a public higher education establishment located in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), one of the 17 autonomous communities that make up Spain. The university has two official languages, Spanish – the majority language – and Basque, the minority language, and lectures and research are conducted in either language. The UBC instantiates both the translocalist model and the internationalist model. Firstly, in accordance with the internationalist model, the UBC has made becoming a research-intensive institution a priority, and accordingly was awarded in 2010 the highest distinction by the Spanish Ministry of Education for International Excellence (Campus de Excelencia Internacional). In addition, the UBC is involved in a multinationalisation process, namely, the development of cross-border education through the implementation of master’s and PhD programmes in Latin American universities. This action has resulted in student mobility (students enrolled in those degrees abroad have come to the main campus in the BAC), academic mobility (teaching staff from the main campus have travelled to the partner universities to teach courses) and the creation of courses that are delivered online. Secondly, in line with the translocalist perspective of internationalisation, the UBC has set as one of its priorities the internationalisation of its campus, while simultaneously preserving the cultural-national identity of

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the region. There are two main activities aimed at fostering the internationalisation-at-home process: the participation in study abroad programmes and the establishment of overseas partnerships, on the one hand, and the creation of an English-speaking environment on campus through the implementation of the Multilingualism Programme (henceforth MP), on the other hand. The overriding goal of the MP is to promote the use of a foreign language as a medium of instruction at the UBC. Under the MP students can join optional and compulsory subjects in a foreign language, primarily English. In particular, the main objectives of the programme are (i) to improve home students’ proficiency in a foreign language, to provide students with specialised language and access to research in the foreign language; (ii) to improve students’ work/career prospects; (iii) to facilitate students’ pursuit of postgraduate degrees abroad; and (iv) to attract foreign students and teachers. In order to guarantee that students can take part in the MP, parallel groups in the official languages and a foreign language have been created in the case of compulsory subjects, thereby tripling the number of groups in some instances (i.e. one in Spanish, one in English and another one in Basque). Students can choose the language in which they wish to take a specific subject. Optional subjects, which are the majority within the MP, are usually taught in only one of the three languages. While the aim of the multilingual language policy implemented by the UBC is to offer lectures in foreign languages such as English, German and French, the current role of English as the lingua franca par excellence, as stated above, and the use of English for communicating knowledge worldwide have favoured the choice of English-medium instruction (EMI) in the majority of the classes offered in the MP. Accordingly, in the academic year 2011–12, around 171 subjects were taught in English and only six in French. In multilingual contexts in which minority languages are present (Cenoz, 2009; Doiz et al., 2011), the overwhelming dominance of English has led to the realisation that the need to have a balanced spread of English is ever more important if tensions between supporters of the spread of English and advocates of the minority language are to be avoided (see also Cots, Li and van der Walt & Kidd in this volume for linguistic tensions between EMI and local languages). In the case of the UBC and Basque, whereas Basque loyalists may interpret that resources which should be allocated to Basque have been diverted to the implementation of EMI, supporters of the spread of English may argue that the support given to Basque is slowing down the internationalisation process of the UBC. At

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present, with less than a 5% of the total academic offer being delivered in English at the UBC, the risk of an overriding presence of English is small. However, attaining language ecology in a multilingual setting such as the UBC requires careful planning, more so when scarce economic resources dictate the need for decisions which limit the financing of different strategies.

The Research Questions There is a need to reflect on the stakeholders’ opinions concerning the different languages in contact, if we are to understand the effects of multilingualism on HEIs. In particular, this chapter will focus on students’ perspectives about the implementation of multilingual language policies at university. As the university community is clearly directly involved in and affected by the MP and the UBC’s multilingual policy and practices, it is important to know what they think about this highly topical issue. We consider the following two specific research questions: – –

Do local and international students’ attitudes towards multilingualism differ, and if so, in which way? Does the mother tongue of local students, whether it is Basque, Spanish or both languages, exert any kind of influence on their attitude towards multilingualism at university level?

The research questions are approached from a quantitative perspective. In this chapter we analyse the questionnaires filled in by local and international university students at the UBC. The variable of the mother tongue of the local students is also controlled. The students gave their opinions about the following issues: the presence of different languages and cultures in an international university, the role played by a minority language such as Basque in a multilingual educational context and the compulsory introduction of foreign languages at university and EMI, among others.

Method The sample The sample was made up of 632 undergraduates enrolled at the UBC during the 2009–10 academic year, but out of this total, 608 completed all the items included in the part of the questionnaire under scrutiny in this chapter. 84.5% of the 608 students (514 subjects) were local, whereas 15.5%

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(94) were international students participating in the different studentexchange programmes available at the UBC, such as the Erasmus programme. At the moment of handing out the questionnaire they were completing their degrees in 21 different faculties ranging from Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine and Architecture, through Fine Arts, Law, Journalism and Education, to Economics and Business Studies. Their ages ranged from 18 to above 57 (only 4 subjects), although the vast majority of the participants (87.5%) were in the age range 18–25. As for sex, 43.6% were male students and 55.1% female, whereas the remaining 1.3% did not specify their gender. Among the local students 20.6% had Basque as L1, 54.3% Spanish and 22.8% both Basque and Spanish as L1. The remaining 2.6% had different L1s such as Catalan, both Spanish and Galician, both Spanish and French, or Arabic. The international students had 25 different nationalities and 20 different L1s, but Italian, French and German students amounted to half (49.9%) of the international students. Only 11.3% of the international students were not European: one from Japan, three from Brazil, two from India, one from Bangladesh, one from China, and three from the USA. All local students considered that their Spanish was good or very good, whereas the grasp of Basque was much more uneven: none (9.1%), a little (19.3%), good (23.5%), very good (47.3%). International students’ command of Spanish ranged from a little (30.9%), through good (62.8%) to very good (6.4%). Only 13.8% understood some Basque, acquired either through the Basque language courses offered for free at the UBC or due to there being Basque readerships in their home universities. As for English as a foreign language, there are significant differences once the degree of competence of local and international students is compared, as can be observed in Table 5.1. A rather high percentage of local students (42.8%) believed they had a (very) low command of English, a result which is in accordance with previous studies carried out in both the Basque context in particular and Spain in general (Lasagabaster, 2011; Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2010), whereas this percentage is much lower amongst the international students (11.7%). In the same vein, the percentage of international students whose English proficiency was good or very good happened to be much higher than that among the local students (88.3% versus 56.2%). Table 5.1 English-as-a-foreign-language proficiency amongst local and international students Local students International students

None 1.4% 0.0%

A little 41.4% 11.7%

Good 46.9% 41.5%

Very good 9.3% 46.8%

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The questionnaire The questionnaire was constructed and piloted both in Spanish and Basque in February and March 2010 among similarly-aged undergraduates enrolled at the UBC who were not included in the final sample. After having made some minor amendments to the final version of the questionnaire, the participating students filled it out in April and May of the same year. The description analysis was carried out in order to detect if all five levels (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = mostly disagree, 3 = undecided, 4 = mostly agree, 5 = strongly agree) of the Likert-scale had been used by the students and, since the five levels were used by the participants, a position response bias was rejected (Cid et al., 2009). To examine the cohesion of the items, an analysis of reliability was performed with all the 22 items together. Items 21, 33, and 34 showed a very low Alpha level (0.430) and were consequently eliminated from further analysis. Thus, the questionnaire analysed in this paper finally comprised 19 items that were categorised into 4 scales: learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque; foreign students; foreign language learning; English as a lingua franca/EMI. The items comprised in each scale are set out in Table 5.2, the four multi-item scales being tested for internal consistency reliability. The statistical analysis showed good alpha ratings, as all of them were above 0.60 (Dörnyei, 2007).

Procedure Local students were given the possibility of filling out the questionnaire either in Basque or Spanish, whereas international students completed it in Spanish during their Spanish language courses, so that they could have support from both their teachers and the researchers in case any language problem arose. On a very few occasions, some of the items had to be translated into English so that the less proficient international students could answer them adequately.

Results and Discussion Firstly, descriptive statistics (see Tables 5.5, 5.6, 5.7 in the appendix) were performed in order to have a general picture of the main trends when comparing local and international students, as put forward in the first research question. The items in the scales of Foreign Students and Foreign Language Learning obtained the highest means in both groups of students (Table 5.5 in the appendix). In the scale of Foreign Students, item 22, ‘International

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Table 5.2 Cronbach’s Alpha values for each multi-item scale Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque α = 0.708 (3 items) Item 29. The University of the Basque Country should provide more opportunities to learn Basque Item 31. There should be more teaching through Basque at the University of the Basque Country Item 40. The increasing presence of English at the university may be an obstacle for the recovery of Basque Foreign students α = 0.605 (4 items) Item 22. International students cause a lot of problems in classes (reverse coded) Item 23. It is very difficult to communicate with international students (reverse coded) Item 24. International students should arrive at my university with an adequate knowledge of Spanish (reverse coded) Item 25. The presence of international students makes classes much better Foreign language learning α = 0.607 (7 items) Item 26. I think it’s better for the university to keep to one language that gets used correctly, instead of two or more languages that get used incorrectly (reverse coded) Item 27. One way for two people who are learning each other’s languages to practise them is to talk in one language for a while and then switch to the other language for a while. I would like to practise a foreign language in this way Item 28. The university should provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages for both staff, administration personnel and students Item 30. I have learnt enough foreign languages now because the more languages I learn the more confused I get (reverse coded) Item 32. If there were only three or four languages spoken in the world, everything would be easier for everybody (reverse coded) Item 35. Foreign language courses should be compulsory for all students in this university Item 42. The university should require students to be competent in two foreign languages at the end of their studies English as a lingua franca/EMI α = 0.704 (5 items) Item 36. Using a foreign language to teach a module in a non-language subject (e.g. ‘Economic Theory’ through English) is not necessary (reverse coded) Item 37. Students should be required to take a certain number of modules taught in English Item 38. The students at my university are linguistically prepared to be taught in English Item 39. Knowing English well enables students to make the most of their university studies Item 41. The university should require students to be competent in English at the end of their studies

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students cause a lot of problems in classes’ (reverse coded) had a mean score of 3.96 for local students and 4.09 for international student, and item 25, ‘The presence of international students makes classes much better,’ had a mean score of 3.93 for local students and 4.04 for international students. In the scale of Foreign Language Learning, item 27, ‘One way for two people who are learning each other’s languages to practise them is to talk in one language for a while and then switch to the other language for a while. ‘I would like to practise a foreign language in this way’ had a mean of 3.86 for local students and 4.07 for international students. Item 28, ‘The university should provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages for staff, administration personnel and students’, obtained high means (3.99 for local students and 4.09 for international students), which suggest that both local and international students deem it necessary to boost foreign language learning at university. The highest mean of all items (4.13) in the case of the international students was displayed in item 30, ‘I have learnt enough foreign languages now because the more languages I learn the more confused I get’ (reverse coded), which clearly indicates the widespread belief that the learning of different foreign languages is not automatically associated with linguistic problems. Thus, the presence of diverse languages in their linguistic repertoire is not regarded as a hurdle by international students, whereas this mean (3.71) was lower in the case of the local students. This seems to indicate a greater interest among international students regarding foreign language learning and a more positive perception concerning learning additional languages, the latter being perceived as unproblematic. Conversely, two scales yielded the lowest scores among local students. Item 42 of the Foreign Language Learning scale, ‘The university should require students to be competent in two foreign languages at the end of their studies’, apportioned one of the lowest means (2.33) in the case of local students, revealing their unwillingness to be required to have some proficiency in two foreign languages. Several items on the English as a Lingua Franca/EMI scale also produced misgivings: item 37, ‘Students should be required to take a certain number of modules taught in English’ (2.56) shows a certain resistance on the part of local students towards compulsory attendance for courses delivered in English. The mean of item 38, ‘The students at my university are linguistically prepared to be taught in English’ (2.26), points out local students’ skepticism about their classmates’ English proficiency, whereas international students are more positive (3.16). Finally, the mean of item 41, ‘The university should require students to be competent in English at the end of their studies’ (2.74), suggests that there is no general support for this idea; the mean of international students, 3.57, is much higher than that of local students.

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The lowest means for international students were related to the Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque scale (Table 5.7 in the appendix): item 31, ‘There should be more teaching through Basque at the University of the Basque Country’ (2.57), received a low mean as international students would see their opportunities to choose different courses much more limited due to their lack of Basque language skills; and item 40, ‘The increasing presence of English at the university may be an obstacle for the recovery of Basque’, obtained a mean of 2.67, which would denote their positive view about the coexistence of both the minority language and the main foreign language, whereas local undergraduates’ mean was closer to the undecided point of the scale (2.97). As expected, local students’ means for item 2, ‘the University of the Basque Country should provide more opportunities to learn Basque’, and item 31 in this scale were considerably higher. We consider these results in more detail in the discussion of research question 2. Once the lowest and highest means were considered, independentsample t-tests were carried out to compare the results of both local and international students. Table 5.3 reproduces the significant differences in each of the aforementioned 4 scales. The results were statistically significant in the four scales that made up the questionnaire. Regarding Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque, the statistical analysis confirmed that local students were

Table 5.3 Independent-samples t-tests of local and international undergraduate students M Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque Local students International students Foreign students Local students International students Foreign language learning Local students International students English as a lingua franca/EMI Local students International students *p < 0.05; **p < 0.001

SD

3.55 2.75

0.98 0.72

3.70 3.86

0.64 0.60

3.35 3.70

0.60 0.61

2.80 3.47

0.74 0.77

df 606

t

606

–2.302*

606

–5.057**

606

–7.943**

9.216**

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significantly more inclined to believe that more opportunities to learn Basque are needed, there should be more teaching in Basque and they were also more worried about the allegedly negative impact of the increasing presence of English on the Basque language. International students were significantly more favourable towards the items encompassed in the Foreign Students scale, although it has to be said that the mean of local students (3.70) was also high in this respect. Therefore, we can conclude that both groups held a positive attitude towards the presence of foreign students, but international students were still more favourably disposed. As already detected by means of the descriptive statistics, international students were significantly more favourable towards Foreign Language Learning both in the specific context of the university setting, and at wider social and personal levels. Finally, local students were significantly more averse to the role English currently plays as a Lingua Franca at university and EMI, which may be due to two main perceptions. Firstly, local students may feel that English can exert a lot of pressure and, therefore, have a negative impact on Basque, and, secondly, their lack of English language proficiency makes them cautious and unenthusiastic about the use of English to teach content and the compulsory requirement of having to take a certain number of modules that are delivered in English. In order to answer our second research question, we distinguished three groups within the local students sample depending on the participants’ L1: those who had Basque as their L1 (L1=Basque), those students whose mother tongue was Spanish (L1=Spanish), and finally those who had both Basque and Spanish as their L1 (L1=Basque & Spanish), that is, those to whom one of the parents spoke Spanish when they were a baby and the other Basque. Out of 502 local undergraduates (the remaining 12 local students had L1s other than the three examined in this chapter), the first group consisted of 106 students, the second of 279 and the third of 117, respectively. The descriptive statistics (Table 5.8 in the appendix) revealed that the greatest differences were in the items encompassed in the Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque scale, as those whose L1 was Basque were more favorable (4.59) towards item 29, ‘The University of the Basque Country should provide more opportunities to learn Basque’, than those with Spanish as L1 (3.71) and those with both languages as L1 (4.30). The same trend was observed with regards to item 31, ‘There should be more teaching through Basque at the University of the Basque Country’, those with Basque=L1 being more positively disposed (4.52) than those with both languages=L1 (4.20) and those with L1=Spanish (3.11). Similarly the first

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group was more afraid (3.69) of the possible negative effect of the increasing presence of English on the Basque language than those with both languages as L1 who were undecided (3.07), whereas those who had Spanish as L1 did not have such a negative viewpoint about this item (2.67) (item 40). Conversely, the influence of the mother tongue variable also stood out with regard to the role of English as a lingua franca/EMI, since those who had Basque as L1 were clearly more negative, especially in the case of item 37 stating that ‘Students should be required to take a certain number of modules taught in English’ which had the lowest mean of the whole questionnaire: M = 2.00. However, it has to be pointed out that the means of both those with Spanish as L1 (2.74) and those with both languages as L1 (2.60) were also low. Likewise, when the participants were asked whether the use of a foreign language to teach a module in a non-language subject (e.g. Mathematics) was not necessary (item 36), both the L1=Spanish (3.25) and the L1=both languages (3.03) groups were close to the undecided point of the scale, whereas the L1=Basque undergraduates harboured a more negative attitude towards this item (2.73), which means that they agreed that teaching in English is not absolutely necessary. Since the L1 variable was divided into the aforementioned three groups, analyses of variance (ANOVA) were run in order to assess the significance of the differences in the means of the three groups with regard to the four scales (see Table 5.4). The ANOVA analysis evidenced significant differences in two out of the four scales, namely Learning of Basque (N = 502, df = 2, F = 69.46, p < 0.001), and English as a lingua franca/EMI (N = 502, df = 2, F = 11.43, p < 0.001). The effect size for the learning of Basque is large (0.217) and therefore its magnitude is large and actually meaningful, whereas it is moderate (0.053) in the case of English as a lingua franca (Dörnyei, 2007). In contrast, the local students’ mother tongue did not have any effect on the other two scales: the presence of foreign students at university as a result of the internationalisation process or the learning of foreign languages. Scheffé’s post hoc tests showed that L1=Basque undergraduates were significantly (p < 0.05) more concerned about the need to have a greater presence of Basque at the UBC and the detrimental effect that the presence of English may have on the minority language than those who had Spanish or both languages as their L1. Similarly, the L1=both languages students were more worried about these issues than those with Spanish as their L1. As for the role of English as lingua franca/EMI, those with Spanish as L1 were more positive than the L1=Basque students, whereas the L1=Spanish and the L1=both did not differ from each other significantly. In short, the

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Table 5.4 ANOVA analysis of local students depending on their L1 Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque L1=Basque L1=Spanish L1=Basque & Spanish Foreign students L1=Basque L1=Spanish L1=Basque & Spanish Foreign language learning L1=Basque L1=Spanish L1=Basque & Spanish English as a lingua franca/EMI L1=Basque L1=Spanish L1=Basque & Spanish

M

SD

4.26 3.16 3.85

0.72 0.96 0.76

3.70 3.69 3.74

0.63 0.68 0.57

3.33 3.33 3.40

0.52 0.64 0.58

2.51 2.91 2.81

0.72 0.71 0.77

F (2, 502) Effect size1 69.461** 0.217

0.252

0.001

0.505

0.002

11.430**

0.053

**p < 0.001; 1 Eta squared

trends observed in the examination of the descriptive statistics are borne out by the ANOVA analyses.

Conclusions As a result of the internationalisation process, universities are more multilingual than ever before. This is especially so in bilingual universities such as the UBC in Spain, where, besides the presence of the two official languages (Basque and Spanish) in all the different degrees, the utilization of EMI is on the increase as a result of the implementation of the MP. This situation at universities in a multilingual national context can be seen across Europe: Fribourg (Switzerland), where French, German and English are languages of instruction; Bolzano (Italy) with programmes in Italian, German and English; Luxemburg (German, French and English); Frankfurt an der Oder (German, Polish and English); or Helsinki (Finnish, Swedish and English). As van Leeuwen (2004) has observed, these universities are multilingual in as far as they use more than one language, but they differ in many aspects regarding the native language(s) of the students, the language(s) of

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instruction, the language(s) of the university’s administration, the environmental language(s) and the language(s) of the labour market. This is a rather new context, particularly in southern European countries such as Italy (Costa, 2009) or Spain (Fortanet, 2010), that demands research aimed at analysing the university community’s awareness about the spread of multilingualism in higher education (see Cots, this volume for the teachers’ perceptions). This chapter seeks to attain a better understanding of multilingualism in HEIs by gathering the opinions and beliefs of local and international undergraduate students with regard to the following issues: the presence of foreign/international students; the role of foreign languages and foreign language learning; English as a lingua franca; the impact of English on Basque and, finally, the role to be played by a minority language such as Basque in a multilingual university context. As regards the first issue, both international and local students hold very positive attitudes towards the presence of foreign students. These results are in line with those of a qualitative study conducted at the UBC (Doiz et al., 2012) in which both international students and local students were well aware of the benefits of incoming international students, and were enthusiastic about their own participation in the mobility programmes and the gains related to it. Regarding the second topic, the results attest to the fact that both local and international students think that HEIs should provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages. As for English as a lingua franca and EMI, the local students show a certain resistance, whereas the international students are clearly in favour. As we have mentioned in the description of the sample, a rather high percentage of local students regard their English as inadequate. By contrast, the percentage of international students who thought their English proficiency was (very) good was much higher than that of local students. In this respect, the results confirm this opinion, as local students consider their English proficiency is not sufficient to cope with EMI, whereas international students feel much more confident about it. Local students show a manifest unwillingness towards being required to be proficient in English or to be competent in two foreign languages at the end of their studies, while international students are much more positive. A plausible explanation for their being reluctant to EMI has its roots in the historically little importance attached to foreign language learning in Spain in general and in the BAC in particular (Lasagabaster, 2011). Among local students, their mother tongue made a clear difference regarding EMI: those with Basque as L1 were manifestly more negative than those who had Spanish or Basque and Spanish as mother tongue.

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In relation to the impact of English on Basque, international students feel that the increasing presence of English at university does not represent an obstacle for the recovery of Basque and that both languages can coexist. Local students hold a slightly less positive perception and are worried about the impact of the foreign language on the minority language. Those students, whose mother tongue is Basque, are significantly more worried than those local students whose mother tongue is Spanish or Basque and Spanish. As Wilkinson (this volume) has claimed, the increasing implementation of EMI programmes has raised criticism, and many see loss of domain for the L1 as a real danger. And this regardless of how strong national language(s) are. Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium or Denmark have expressed concerns on this issue. In this context, the ambitious European Union’s language learning policy, aimed at maintaining linguistic diversity in Europe by enabling citizens to be fluent in two languages in addition to their mother tongue, may prove unsuccessful. Finally, regarding the role played by a minority language such as Basque in a multilingual university context, international students consider that opportunities to learn Basque at the UBC need not be increased, while local students think that more opportunities are needed and there should be more Basque-medium instruction. Those local students whose mother tongue is Basque are significantly more favourable than the local students whose L1 is Spanish or Basque and Spanish. In contexts where a minority language, a majority language and a foreign language are in contact, the clash to a greater or lesser degree seems unavoidable. As noted in the introduction, the spread of English has caused some scholars to talk about linguistic genocide (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2001) or to talk of language ecology, seeing language imperialism and linguistic rights as extremes of a linguistic continuum. Linguistic tensions in multilingual settings need to be addressed to achieve tolerability (de Bres, 2008) – the attitudes of majority speakers towards the minoritised languages – which, in our context, can also be applied to the position adopted by minority Basque speakers and majority Spanish speakers towards English. As we have noted elsewhere (Doiz et al., 2011), in the Basque context, the introduction of a foreign language in a bilingual setting may be perceived as a potential threat to Basque by language loyalists and may be responsible for its rejection (see also Cots and Shohamy in this volume for the impact of increasing EMI instruction in multilingual HEIs). In bilingual universities such as the UBC, students’ (and all stakeholders’) insights should be considered if HEIs are to provide well-grounded EMI practices and implement successful language policies. Our findings will hopefully contribute to this purpose.

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Acknowledgements The results presented in this chapter are part of the research projects FFI2008-00585/FILO and FFI2009-10264 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, as well as the project IT311-10 funded by the Department of Education, University and Research of the Basque Government.

References Altbach, P. (2004) Globalisation and the university: Myths and realities in an unequal world. Tertiary Education and Management 10, 3–25. Callan, H. (2000) Higher education internationalization strategies: Of marginal significance or all-pervasive? Higher Education in Europe 25 (1): 15–24. Cenoz, J. (2009) Towards Multilingual Education: Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cid, E., Grañena, G. and Tragant, E. (2009) Constructing and validating the foreign language attitudes and goals surveys (FLAGS). System 37, 496–513. Chan, W. and Dimmock, C. (2008) The internationalisation of universities: Globalist, internationalist and translocalist models. Journal of Research in International Education 7, 184 –203. Costa, F. (2009) ICLHE/CLIL at the tertiary level of education. State of the art. Studies about Languages 15, 85–88. De Bres, J. (2008) Planning for tolerability in New Zealand, Wales and Catalonia. Current Issues in Language Planning 9 (4), 464–482. Doiz, A., Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (2011) Internationalisation, multilingualism and English-medium instruction: The teachers’ perspective. World Englishes 30, 345–389. Doiz, A., Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J.M. (2012) Globalisation, internationalisation, multilingualism and linguistic strains in higher education. Studies in Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03075079. 2011.642349. Dörnyei, Z. (2007) Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Methodologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dörnyei, Z., Csizér, K. and Németh, N. (2006) Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation. A Hungarian Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Fortanet, I. (2010) Training CLIL teachers at university level. In D. Lasagabaster and Y. Ruiz de Zarobe (eds) CLIL in Spain: Implementation, Results and Teacher Training (pp. 257–276). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers. Kirkpatrick, A. (2011) Internationalisation or Englishization? Medium of Instruction in Today’s Universities. Centre for Governance and Citizenship Working Paper Series 2011/003. Hong Kong. Institute of Education. Lasagabaster, D. (2011) Language policy in Spain: the coexistence of small and big languages. In C. Norrby and J. Hajek (eds) Uniformity and Diversity in Language Policy: Global Perspectives (pp. 109–125). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J. M. (2010) Immersion and CLIL in English: more differences than similarities. ELT Journal 64, 376–395. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2001) The globalisation of (educational) language rights. International Review of Education 47, 201–219.

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Tonkin, H. (2003) The search for a global linguistic strategy. In J. Maurais and M.A. Morris (eds) Languages in a Globalising World (pp. 319–333). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Leeuwen, C. (2004) Multilingual Universities in Europe: models and realities. In R. Wilkinson (ed.) Integrating Content and Language: Meeting the Challenge of a Multilingual Higher Education (pp. 576–584). Maastricht: Maastricht University Press. Wächter, B. and Maiworm, F. (2008) English-taught Programmes in European Higher Education. The picture in 2007. Bonn: Lemmens (ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education).

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Appendix Table 5.5 Descriptive statistics: Highest means Scale: Foreign students

Item 22. International students cause a lot of problems in classes (reverse coded) Item 23. It is very difficult to communicate with international students (reverse coded) Item 24. International students should arrive at this university with an adequate knowledge of Spanish (reverse coded) Item 25. The presence of international students makes classes much better Scale: Foreign language learning Item 26. I think it’s better for the university to keep to one language that gets used correctly, instead of two or more languages that get used incorrectly (reverse coded) Item 27. One way for two people who are learning each other’s languages to practise them is to talk in one language for a while and then switch to the other language for a while. I would like to practise a foreign language in this way Item 28. The university should provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages for both staff, administration personnel and students Item 30. I have learnt enough foreign languages now because the more languages I learn the more confused I get (reverse coded)

M SD Local Interna- Local students tional students students 3.96 4.09 0.94

International students 0.93

3.53

3.89

0.95

1.00

3.38

3.45

1.04

1.01

3.93

4.04

0.82

0.96

3.08

3.30

1.14

1.20

3.86

4.07

0.97

0.97

3.99

4.09

0.86

0.87

3.71

4.13

1.12

1.07

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Table 5.6 Descriptive statistics: lowest means among local students Scale: Foreign language learning

Item 42. The university should require students to be competent in two foreign languages at the end of their studies Scale: English as a lingua franca/EMI Item 32. If there were only three or four languages spoken in the world, everything would be easier for everybody (reverse coded) Item 35. Foreign language courses should be compulsory for all students in this university Item 36. Using a foreign language to teach a module in a non-language subject (e.g. ‘Economic Theory’ through English) is not necessary (reverse coded) Item 37. Students should be required to take a certain number of modules taught in English Item 38. The students at my university are linguistically prepared to be taught in English Item 39. Knowing English well enables students to make the most of their university studies Item 41. The university should require students to be competent in English at the end of their studies

M SD Local Interna- Local students tional students students 2.33 3.17 1.11

International students 1.11

3.53

3.27

1.41

1.44

2.97

3.88

1.16

1.08

3.08

3.68

1.10

1.13

2.56

3.27

1.21

1.28

2.26

3.16

1.02

1.17

3.41

3.71

1.11

1.09

2.74

3.57

1.18

1.16

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Table 5.7 Descriptive statistics: lowest means among international students Scale: Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque

Item 29. The University of the Basque Country should provide more opportunities to learn Basque Item 31. There should be more teaching through Basque at the University of the Basque Country Item 40. The increasing presence of English at the university may be an obstacle for the recovery of Basque

M SD Local Interna- Local students tional students students 4.04 3.02 1.15

International students 1.04

3.65

2.57

1.30

1.01

2.97

2.67

1.27

1.06

Item 22. International students cause a lot of problems in classes (reverse coded) Item 23. It is very difficult to communicate with international students (reverse coded) Item 24. International students should arrive at this university with an adequate knowledge of Spanish (reverse coded) Item 25. The presence of international students makes classes much better Scale: Foreign Language Learning Item 26. I think it’s better for the university to keep to one language that gets used correctly, instead of two or more languages that get used incorrectly (reverse coded) Item 27. One way for two people who are learning each other’s languages to practise them is to talk in one language for a while and then switch to the other language for a while. I would like to practise a foreign language in this way Item 28. The university should provide more opportunities to learn foreign languages for both staff, administration personnel and students Item 30. I have learnt enough foreign languages now because the more languages I learn the more confused I get (reverse coded)

Scale: Foreign Students

3.48 3.35

3.95

3.06

3.83

4.01

3.72

3.55 3.49

3.84

3.05

3.83

3.91

3.67

3.75

4.00

3.93

3.18

3.93

3.43

3.63

L1=Spanish L1=both 3.99 3.97

M L1=Basque 3.92

Table 5.8 Descriptive statistics of local students depending on their L1

1.11

0.82

0.87

1.21

0.97

1.06

0.91

SD L1=Basque 0.88

1.11

0.90

1.04

1.13

0.83

1.05

0.99

1.13

0.83

0.90

1.12

0.71

1.02

0.87

L1=Spanish L1=both 0.96 0.96

104 Part 3: Fostering Trilingual Education at Higher Education Institutions

Scale: English as a Lingua Franca/EMI Item 32. If there were only three or four languages spoken in the world, everything would be easier for everybody (reverse coded) Item 35. Foreign language courses should be compulsory for all students in this university Item 36. Using a foreign language to teach a module in a non-language subject (e.g. ‘Economic Theory’ through English) is not necessary (reverse coded) Item 37. Students should be required to take a certain number of modules taught in English Item 38. The students at my university are linguistically prepared to be taught in English Item 39. Knowing English well enables students to make the most of their university studies Item 41. The university should require students to be competent in English at the end of their studies Scale: Learning of Basque/Impact of English on Basque Item 29. The University of the Basque Country should provide more opportunities to learn Basque Item 31. There should be more teaching through Basque at the University of the Basque Country Item 40. The increasing presence of English at the university may be an obstacle for the recovery of Basque

Scale: Foreign Students

Table 5.8 Continued

3.25

3.10 3.25

2.74 2.19 3.48 2.90

3.71 3.11 2.67

2.67 2.73

2.00 2.27 3.13 2.42

4.59 4.52 3.69

3.07

4.20

4.30

2.58

3.48

2.38

2.60

3.03

2.93

3.74

L1=Spanish L1=both

4.04

M L1=Basque

1.26

0.86

0.71

1.06

1.11

1.00

1.00

1.06

1.06

1.29

SD L1=Basque

1.20

1.31

1.21

1.20

1.09

1.01

1.22

1.07

1.17

1.41

1.23

0.97

0.89

1.21

1.15

1.05

1.21

1.14

1.20

1.34

L1=Spanish L1=both

English as L3 at a Bilingual University in the Basque Country, Spain 105

6 Introducing English-Medium Instruction at the University of Lleida, Spain: Intervention, Beliefs and Practices Josep Maria Cots

Introduction This chapter offers three glimpses of the language policy of a CatalanSpanish bilingual university in connection with the promotion of English as a third institutional language (see also Doiz et al., Li, van der Walt & Kidd in this volume for trilingual HEIs). The ultimate goal is to reveal possible ambiguities and tensions in the language policy of the institution and to better understand its potential for success or failure. Following Spolsky (2004: 5), it is considered that the language policy of a speech community involves three main components: language practices, language beliefs or ideology, and language intervention, planning or management. At the risk of stretching Spolsky’s definition of the first component, in this study language practices are defined as communicative situations in which the participants not only select ‘among the varieties that make up [the] linguistic repertoire [of a speech community]’ (Spolsky, 2004: 5) but also enact particular discourse and social roles with specific goals in mind. Language beliefs or ideology, as dealt with in this chapter, refer to more or less modalised constructions of the world in connection with language as a system which is used and learnt for communicative purposes. Finally, language intervention, planning or management is seen as the attempt to explicitly regulate the language practices in a specific social institution such as the university. Thus, the present study will consider three different sources of data: two white papers in which the language policy of the institution is made explicit, the opinion of the academic staff and students as obtained in a questionnaire and in a focus group session, and a class session from a course module in which English has been introduced as medium of instruction. 106

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The introduction of a third language as a medium of instruction in a Catalan-Spanish bilingual institution such as the University of Lleida (UdL henceforth) is not free from ambiguities and tensions derived, in the first place, from the fact that Catalan in the last 30 years has been the object of a process of reversing language shift (Fishman, 1991) which has been part of a parallel process of political devolution within Spain to grant greater autonomy to regions (Wright, 1999). The process of reversing language shift has been very successful at the level of primary and secondary education, since Catalan has become the main medium of instruction. At the level of higher education, Catalan is also the dominant language, although perhaps to a lesser extent than in compulsory education, with figures on language use published by the same universities showing that Catalan is the main language of instruction, with percentages of use that in the academic year 2007–08 were 67.6 at the University of Lleida (Universitat de Lleida, 2011a) and 61.6 at the University Pompeu Fabra (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2011), one of the metropolitan universities in Barcelona. However, the introduction of English, as part of the process of internationalisation, triggered in great measure by the creation of a new European Higher Education Area (EHEA), has had to confront the argument used by a part of the student body (see, for instance, Ferrés, 2007) that the space occupied by English will be at the expense of Catalan. This attitude is consistent with Lasagabaster’s (2005) findings according to which L1 Basque students showed a less positive attitude towards a trilingual environment than L1 Spanish students, and can be related to what Baker (1992: 136) defines as a ‘bunker attitude’, involving the perception of majority languages like English or Spanish as ‘language predators’ and the need to adopt a defensive attitude against them in order to protect the minority language (see also Doiz et al., this volume for a similar situation between Basque and English). The second main source of tension is that the university is considered not ready for the urgent need to introduce English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in order to compete in the global academic world. This situation is widely acknowledged not only by universities but by society in general, as expressed in the following citation from an article in a digital newspaper (Barrera, 2010): ‘This is the challenge: being fluent in English, acquiring and conveying knowledge in this language and, ultimately, being able to communicate in the lingua franca that the western world has adopted as a means of communication. The journey is not easy and although the inclusion into the EHEA makes it more accessible, Catalan universities are far from the University of Maastricht, where almost all the subjects taught are in English, even though it is a Dutch university’ (author’s translation). Further confirmation of the problems that Catalan universities must

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Table 6.1 Language competence among first-year students School (number of students) Education (88) Engineering (87) Law and Economy (69)

Level in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 1.14% 36.78% 57.47% 4.59% 0.00% 0.00% 4.65% 13.95% 70.93% 10.46% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 17.64% 73.52% 8.82% 0.00% 0.00%

confront to introduce EMI comes from a placement test that was administered to a sample of students entering the University of Lleida in September 2011 (Universitat de Lleida, 2011b). The results can be seen in Table 6.1. As we can see, the level of English of a great majority of first-year students is B1 or lower. According to the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2002: 34), level B1 is characterised by the learner’s ability to deal with ‘personal views or opinion in an informal discussion with friends (. . .) but may sometimes be difficult to follow when trying to say exactly what he/she would like to’. If we add to this that the learner at this level is able to cope with problems in everyday life, it seems that it is clearly insufficient to cope with the level of formality, abstraction and precision that is expected in a university subject both in terms of receptive and productive skills. As for the instructors, although we do not have data about their level, the low number of English-medium subjects offered by universities may reflect the difficulties universities encounter to introduce this type of instruction. Following Coleman (2006), who cites a study by Ammon and McConnell (2002), we see that in the academic year 1999–2000 Spain was one of four European countries in a total of 23 where universities did not offer English-medium programmes. Although the situation has probably changed slightly since then, the figures we have for Catalan universities for the academic year 2007–08 related to the presence of EMI can be considered as rather low, with 3.4% for the University of Lleida (Universitat de Lleida, 2011a) and 5.6% for the University Pompeu Fabra (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2011).

Literature Background The strong connection between medium of instruction policies and the development of certain socio-political processes is the main point of Tollefson and Tsui (2004), as language is often considered as a symbol of ethnic, cultural or national identity. The authors mention three main themes: the inseparability of medium-of-instruction policies from their socio-historical contexts, the tensions involved in adopting a lingua franca

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between linguistic imperialism and multilingualism, and the impact of medium-of-instruction policies on ethnocultural identity and globalisation. Balfour (2007) is an interesting example of the tensions that may be experienced by British and South African universities (see van der Walt, this volume) between promoting indigenous languages such as Welsh or isiZulu and English, and of how apparently bi/multilingual policies are not always supported in practice. The issue of feasibility (see, for instance, van Leeuwen, 2003) often comes to the fore when dealing with the implementation of multilingual medium of instruction policies in universities, including aspects such as legal regulations, the attitudes and linguistic preparation of the academic community, the economic investment of the institution and the potential return of this investment, or the methodology to be adopted. Coleman (2006: 6–7) refers to a series of problems that have been observed in the process of introducing EMI in higher education. Among these, we can mention the marginalization of the institution’s language specialists, the lack of adequate language skills by staff and students, negative attitudes resulting from the perception of English as a threat to the native language, unwillingness of local staff to teach through English, loss of confidence, failure to adapt to local students or lack of a critical mass of international students. Jenkins (2011) points to another problem related to the standards of English that are being upheld by the institution, which often leave lecturers alone to confront the dilemma between accepting non-native deviant but intelligible English usage or consider it as defective usage requiring remedial action. It is precisely the nature and effectiveness of EMI in higher education that is considered by Björkman (2011: 952) as a ‘pressing issue that calls for investigation’, with a majority of the studies mentioned focusing on universities in countries where English is a very ‘integrated’ foreign language (e.g. Mauranen, 2006, in Finland; Airey, 2009, in Sweden; and Wilkinson, this volume, in the Netherlands). An essential element to take into account when dealing with the introduction of EMI has to do with the second component of Spolsky’s (2004) language policy: language beliefs or ideology. One of these beliefs has to do with the perception of communicative skills in English, which is the focus of Lehtonen et al. (2003). One of the interesting aspects of this research is the fact that they confronted the instructors’ own perceptions of their skills with those the students had about their instructors’s skills, with the result that they either coincided or the instructors rated themselves slightly lower than the students. In general, instructors felt confident using English except with conversational episodes in class and formal writing. The level of comfort with which instructors can convey contents in a chatty, studentfriendly way is also a source of worry for the Danish lecturers Tange (2010)

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interviewed, who were also worried about the students’ criticism on their communicative competence, with the consequent results it would have on their status within the faculty. The need to improve interpersonal skills in order to ‘interact with the students on a more informal level’ is also expressed by one of the Spanish instructors interviewed by Dafouz (2011: 203). In a previous study, Dafouz et al. (2007) point out that both lecturers and students coincide in their positive attitude towards EMI and in the need for interactive classes. However, the students are more cautious about it because it may involve an increase in the complexity of already highlydemanding subjects. The actual practices that take place inside the EMI classrooms are still relatively unknown. For instance, Hellekjaer and Wilkinson’s (2003) comment on the scarcity of research into the extent to which language helps or hinders progress in the learning of contents continues to be a valid one nowadays. The authors’ data show that the time invested by students in self-study is around 10–25% greater in English-medium than in L1-medium subjects. They also point out that systematic language instruction is often neglected. This is consistent with Dafouz’s (2011: 201) reflection on the fact that lecturers in her study ‘made a strict division between language issues and content’, and that FL matters may be considered by content lecturers as falling beyond their responsibility. Smit (2010) observes that it is precisely when lecturer and students focus on general lexical items, rather than subject-specific, that the explanatory pattern becomes more interactive, as the general language expertise is no longer to be found in the lecturer alone. From studies like those of Miller (2002), in Hong Kong, or Dafouz et al. (2007), in Spain, one gets the impression that spoken language, often in the form of lecture-based sessions with little interactivity, is rather dominant in EMI. Miller’s (2002) work is actually a model of lecturing and the lecturers in an ethnographic study she had carried out seem to rely on practices such as reading aloud and computer simulations. The majority of lecturers surveyed by Dafouz et al. (2007: 94) claim that they ‘combine lecture-based sessions with theoretical and practical ones, while group work and discussion are given less space’. However, a few paragraphs later the author adds the following clarification about ‘practical’ sessions: ‘labelling a class session “practical” (. . .) may not always correlate with cooperative pair/group-work dynamics. Rather, it may reproduce the monologic teaching schemas of theoretical sessions’ (Dafouz et al., 2007: 95). It is also interesting to take into account the strategies adopted by the classroom participants in order to cope with English as a lingua franca. Jenkins (2011) presents some of the structural features that are associated with ELF, many of which reflect the

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same kinds of regularisation processes native speakers engage into. The author also refers to other studies in which it is shown how ELF speakers use pragmatic strategies such as the adoption and manipulation of readymade chunks for managing interaction (Mauranen, 2009), repetition or code-switching to align themselves with their interlocutor(s) (Cogo, 2009). The relevance of pragmatic strategies such as comments on details of task, discourse structure or communicative intent, and more interactive strategies such as backchannelling or repair is taken up by Björkman (2011) as a means to increase communicative effectiveness and compensate for potential misunderstandings and, ultimately, to support that pragmatic fluency is not necessarily dependent on the speaker’s ability to manipulate the forms of the language.

Language Intervention In this section, I will focus on two examples of language intervention by the University of Lleida (UdL) to regulate and direct the language situation of the institution. The examples include two white papers: one on the university’s internationalisation programme (IP henceforth; Universitat de Lleida, 2006) and the other one on the university’s language policy (LP henceforth; Universitat de Lleida, 2008). Foreign languages have a very important role in the development of UdL’s IP. Internationalisation is framed in what Bolsman and Miller (2008) define as a discourse of ‘economic competition’, and it is presented as one of the ‘great challenges of Catalonia’. Universities can contribute to meeting this challenge with their research and innovation, which should ‘promote the competitiveness of the companies, the localisation of new highly technological productive activities, and the development of innovative company strategies’ (Universitat de Lleida, 2006: 5; author’s translation). A necessary requirement for internationalisation is the mobility of the academic community and the establishment of connections with foreign institutions. This mobility, which is also considered as a basic element for the university to become part of the new EHEA, requires academic staff and students to improve their knowledge of foreign languages. In five of the six goals of the university’s IP, languages are mentioned as one of the strategies to achieve them. However, the references made to languages in this document are often ambiguous about the nature of the multilingualism that is favoured. In fact, the only direct reference to a specific foreign language (see also Saarinen & Nikula, this volume) is in connection with the information that should be included on the university’s website,

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which should make all academic, administrative and scientific information available in English. Apart from this, all the other references to languages that appear in the document avoid mentioning a specific language. Thus, we find expressions such as ‘other wide-spread languages’, ‘foreign languages’ or ‘linguistic competences’. This ambiguity derives, in the first place, from the fact that in a bilingual context such as Catalonia, ‘linguistic competences’ may refer to the communicative skills in one of the two co-official languages, Catalan or Spanish. In the second place, if ‘linguistic competences’ involve learning other languages apart from the official ones, it is not clear which. One of the reasons for the absence of references to English in the IP may be the resistance to acknowledge the dominance of English in an academic environment in which, especially in the humanities, English is not as dominant a language as in other non-humanities fields. Another reason, could be the ‘bunker attitude’ (Baker, 1992: 136) that was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, according to which speakers of minority languages tend to perceive majority languages like English or Spanish as ‘language predators’ and they adopt a defensive attitude against them. The ambiguous references to languages that we find in the IP disappeared two years later in the white paper on the university’s language policy (Universitat de Lleida, 2008). In this document English is defined as a third medium of instruction, together with Catalan or Spanish, although it is acknowledged that this is not possible at the time, and that the university will have to organise the necessary language support and training for academic staff and students. However, at the postgraduate level, English is considered a medium of instruction that should already be ‘fully consolidated’. In the LP white paper, multilingualism is presented as both a strategy for the survival of the academic institution and a requirement from the new EHEA. In the institutional multilingualism proposed, the members of the academic community are expected to be competent in three languages: Catalan, Spanish and English. A brief reference is also made to other languages such as Aranese (the third co-official language in Catalonia, spoken in the Aran Valley), French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese or Arabic, which are considered as languages with either a deeply-rooted tradition in certain academic fields or with a great projection in terms of language use. In the section ‘The language of teaching: norms of classroom management’ of the LP white paper, a distinction is made between productive and receptive skills. During the first stage of implementation of the multilingual programme, the university will try to ensure that lecturers and students have trilingual Catalan-Spanish-English competence only in listening and

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reading. In this way, it is claimed, the institution guarantees the right of members of the community to express themselves in any of the three languages and, at the same time, promotes the progressive use of English so that it will gradually become the third language of institutional communication. The document also makes an interesting distinction between communication inside the classroom, which must be carried out in the language that has been announced for the subject and communication outside the classroom (e.g. tutorials) in which the interlocutors may agree on using any language. Nevertheless, there are certain contradictions in the document that pose a threat to the success of the initiative. In the first place, the ‘principle of language safety’ established in the document forces the lecturer to teach, assess and design or select the materials in a specific subject in ‘the language that has been announced in the course plan’. The fact that the document says ‘the language’ instead of ‘the languages’ may be interpreted as reflecting an institutional multilingualism which is realised through an accumulation of monolingual situations (i.e. subjects), implicitly sending the message that there must be a one-to-one relationship between subject and language and that it is not ‘natural’ to use more than one language as the medium of instruction in one subject (see also van der Walt & Kidd in this volume). The same principle of language safety assigns to the lecturer(s) the responsibility for deciding the language of instruction. The problem with this is not only that the university relinquishes its responsibility to promote a balanced institutional multilingualism, but also that lecturers may not be willing to opt for EMI, given the lack of incentives and support from the institution. A second potential obstacle that is posed by the document for the development of trilingualism is that the lecturer’s choice of one of the three languages may be coercive in terms of the language the students may choose to use in two different ways: (i) the lecturer is the powerful participant, and the students, the powerless participants, will try to accommodate to the instructor’s choice, (ii) if the classes, materials and assessment are in one language, the tendency of the students will be to use that language because it may be easier for them to construct and negotiate knowledge in the same language of the sources that have been used in the module. In the university’s attempt to promote the use of English, and in line with the guidelines issued by the regional government, the document requires the students to prove that they have an intermediate level of English before they graduate. This requirement can be fulfilled by the students in different ways: (i) submitting a diploma from a university-endorsed institution, (ii) following a minimum number of English-medium subjects (5% of the subjects required to graduate), which might be interpreted as an

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implicit invitation to include EMI in course-degree programmes, (iii) writing the bachelor degree thesis and holding the viva in the same language, (iv) doing the practicum in a company or institution in which the use of English is compulsory, and (v) taking part in a mobility programme involving academic activities in English. In 2010, a regulation was passed (Universitat de Lleida, 2010) which implemented some of the proposals made in the white paper, and introduced three main changes: (i) it replaced the English-language requirement with a ‘third language requirement’, which allowed students to choose among English, French, German, and Italian; (ii) it mentioned B1 level of the CEFR as the lowest level which a student must have in one of these languages in order to graduate; and (iii) it included language courses which formed part of a course-degree programme as another possible way of fulfilling the language requirement to graduate.

Language Beliefs and Ideology Garrett (2010: 30) considers ‘beliefs’ and ‘ideology’ as two of the ‘terms that seem so closely related to attitudes that they are often used interchangeably’. According to this author, beliefs are mainly related to the cognitive component of attitudes, although it is not always easy to separate them from the affective component. Following the same author, we can define language ideology as ‘patterned but naturalised sets of assumptions and values’ (Garrett, 2010: 30); to this we could add that these assumptions and values tend to be linked to specific social/institutional contexts (Errington, 2001). In this section we will deal with specific beliefs that instructors and students associate with the English language and its role in the academic community. We could hypothesize that an individual’s belief about their language competence may have an impact on the degree of acceptance of EMI. In a survey carried out in 2007 (Arántegui et al., 2008) and administered to 339 students and 33 instructors at the UdL, students and lecturers were asked to assess their competence and willingness to engage in an Englishmedium course. As can be seen in Table 6.2, the answers provided by the two groups in terms of a five-point Likert scale (1: totally disagree; 5: totally agree) show that when it comes to stating how prepared they are for a course-module in English, both students and instructors show a tendency to acknowledge that they are not prepared enough. In general, both lecturers and students agree that the introduction of EMI subjects in a degree programme is a good way of promoting the learning of English, although the students show a lower level of agreement than the lecturer. This result seems be in line with the findings of Dafouz et al. (2007) that, despite the

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Table 6.2 Beliefs related to EMI Lecturers My level of English is good enough to follow/teach a course1.94 module of my specialisation in English. Introducing subjects taught in a foreign language like English 4.40 is a good way of promoting the learning of the foreign language

Students 2.13 3.50

positive attitude towards EMI of both students and lecturers, the former are a little more cautious to embrace it because of the added complexity it might represent for their successful performance in the subject. Another interpretation of this result could be that the students believe more in traditional language instruction with courses with an exclusive language focus. Cots and Llurda (2011) provide further information on the beliefs of students and lecturers in connection with English. In this case, the results come from a survey that was administered in 2010 as part of a three-year project with a population of 669 students and 67 lecturers. We will focus our attention on the items included in Table 6.3. The general impression that one obtains from the results in Table 6.3 is that English is welcome by both lecturers and students, with the lecturers consistently showing greater enthusiasm towards the language than the students, the difference being consistent with the already mentioned preoccupation of the students about the increased cognitive difficulty it might represent for their academic performance. The highest level of acceptance in both groups can be found in item 1, on the issue of the usefulness of English in the academic environment. Items 2 and 3 are very much connected, since they both focus on the issue of competence in English being a requirement in university degree programmes. Therefore the response given by lecturers

Table 6.3 The role of English at the university 1. Knowing English well enables students to make the most of university studies 2. The university should require students to be competent in English at the end of their studies 3. Students should be required to take a certain number of courses taught in English 4. The increasing presence of English at the university may be an obstacle to the recovery of Catalan

Lecturers 4.00

Students 3.78

3.88

3.35

3.73

3.12

2.21

2.50

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and students are very similar. Finally, item 4 centres on the possible ‘bunker attitude’, mentioned above, involving the perception of English as a ‘predator language’ which can take up some of the socio-communicative space occupied by Catalan. In this case, the results do not show a clear tendency of the members of the academic community to agree or disagree with the statement. The last ‘sampling’ of the beliefs of the members of the academic community in connection with the introduction of EMI comes from a group interview with five lecturers. One of the ideas that came out on several occasions during the interview has to do with their acceptance of English as part of their academic profession, most of them acknowledging that they had no choice but to learn English in order to ‘survive’ in the academic environment. This can be seen in statements like ‘you’ve got to wise up when you suffer your first conference’, ‘nowadays everything is in English and so I was forced to retrain’, ‘and there I had no choice, either I learnt English or I had to leave’, ‘when it comes to research, it’s horrible, you have no other option’. Another idea expressed by more than one participant is that English is at the basis of any action to make the institution more international or multilingual. For instance, one of the lecturer’s comments on a university which has experienced a dramatic increase in internationalisation which is evident from the fact that ‘one can walk 100 metres and you are very likely to hear someone speaking in English’. Another lecturer, when asked whether he thought that the university was multilingual mentioned the absence of English in many of the sections of the university’s website. English is seen, therefore, as the ‘default foreign language’. In general, we see that the participants in the focus group seem to share a similar discourse with the Danish respondents in Thøgersen’s (2010) study, who construct English as (i) the default language of the world and (ii) a sign of modernity. The lecturers tend to perceive the level of the local students as excessively low in their ability to be able to follow a subject in English, which contrasts with the level of the international students. However, one of them suggests that there is gap between the students’ self-perception and their actual communicative capacities in English, which are higher. This low ‘selfesteem’ also affects the lecturers, with one of them claiming that, because of this, she feels she cannot be as demanding as they should with their students when they teach in English. This is corroborated by another lecturer who claims that the impact is not so much in terms of depth as of width. Another participant in the interview introduced the idea that in his case if EMI has had an impact on the topics covered during the course, it is because it has forced him to adopt a more learner-centred methodology

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which no longer relies as heavily as before on monological presentations, and he admits that this methodological change would have the same impact if the subject were taught in Catalan or Spanish.

Language Practices As Dafouz (2011) points out, EMI instructors tend to separate language and content, and many give the former very scarce attention. This may be due not only to what they see as their imperfect communicative competence in English, but also to their lack of training in language teaching. As a result, for many lecturers, the shift from L1 to EMI is reduced to a change in the vehicle of communication, and does not take into account that it usually requires an adaptation of the teaching methodology. In this section, I will focus on a pilot experience developed at the UdL which attempts to confront the problems just mentioned (see Clemente et al., 2006; Cots & Clemente, 2006; Cots & Clemente, 2011) by means of tandem teaching between two instructors, whom we define as Content Expert (CE) and Language Teaching Expert (LTE). This collaboration took place both at the level of the design of the teaching programme as well as in its implementation. The presence of a ‘language teaching’ expert, rather than simply a ‘language’ expert, is very important because the introduction of EMI to students for whom English is a foreign language requires a shift to a methodology with which content lecturers are not always familiar (see Ball & Lindsay, this volume). This methodological shift involves a change from considering texts as transparent (i.e. as presenting no linguistic/ textual problem for their interpretation and production) to seeing them as relatively opaque (i.e. involving the addressee’s familiarity with certain conventions as well as a series of procedures for interpretation and production). Another element of this methodological shift consists of a process of decentering of the focus of pedagogic action from the instructor to the students, giving the latter a much more predominant space during the class. This change implies a third variation in the methodology, according to which the main function of the instructor is no longer conveying knowledge but helping students to construct knowledge by themselves, by providing them with the necessary resources and conceptual scaffolding. The process of collaboration between the CE and LTE developed in a three-stage project, which corresponded to three academic years (from 2005–06 to 2007–08). During the first stage, previous to the actual teaching of the subject, the CE and the LTE collaborated in the design of the course materials and activities for the different units. The LTE also observed some classes of the same subject, which was taught by the CE in the L1. In the

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second stage, the subject was taught in English for the first time. The LTE was present in all the classes and had a clearly dominant role in the management of the different activities. In the third stage or second year of the implementation, the number of classes with the presence of the LTE diminished and the CE was given greater responsibility for their management. After two academic years of experience, it was considered that in the third year of the implementation of the module, the CE was fully autonomous and was capable of conducting teaching without the help of the LTE, who was only available to the CE for sporadic consultation. In the remaining part of this section I will focus on how the two lecturers distributed their roles and constructed their expertise through their participation in classroom interaction during the first year. My ultimate goal is to explore the extent to which the introduction of EMI through the collaboration of a content and a language teaching expert may have an impact on the interactional structure of traditional teaching practices in higher education. One of the important decisions in the design of the subject was to allocate specific roles. The relevance of this issue can be appreciated in Table 6.4, reflecting a fragment of a teaching plan, in which each activity is described in terms of the roles to be adopted by each of the instructors. In Extract 1 (see the Appendix for transcription conventions), we can see how CE and LTE enact these roles. The CE enacts the role of ‘controller’ of the class by declaring the end of an activity and the beginning of the next one (line 1). However, the ‘organiser’ of the activity is the LTE (line 4 onwards).

Table 6.4 Extract from a class teaching plan Activities Steps CE’s roles 1. Warming-up 1 2

LTE’s roles organiser prompter

3

resource

4

controller resource assessor organiser

2. Reading 1 comprehension 2

resource

prompter

3

resource

resource

4

controller resource assessor

Description of the activity - Group work - Topic introduction - Answering basic questions related to high-hydrostatic pressure - Prompt: picture of HHP equipment - Pair work - Reading for gist - Aim: to check comprehension on technical terminology

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Extract 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

CE: LTE: CE: LTE:

so. . . let’s go to the following activity- they are ten- five and five- two groups? five and five\ ok\ two groups\ ok\ so- {(?) we’ll now} split the class into twos\ so {(?) group} five people and {(?) group} five people\ so get together- in five and five\ and separate a little bit- like- one group sitting. CE: here and the others\ LTE: so X {(?) together-} and {(?) three} more that side\ yeah? so how you {(?) gonna} split? so.. you two with them? X? so.. [inaudible conversation between LTE and CE] LTE: so. . . you’ll be asked to prepare- well- to give an oral presentation in class\ right? but before- X doing your presentation- we have {(?) split it-} we have divided- the oral presentation in three stages\ so stage number one will be XX\ so each group will have an equipment- so one equipment {(?) will be the red} and the other will {(?) in the red\} and- first of all- you are supposed to {(?) first} label this different part of the equipmentand then- well- we do stage one now\ afterwards we’ll explain you- the next stage\ yeah? so you’ll be in the {(?) red\} and XX\

The dominant role of the LTE in the management of the activity can be explained by the fact that she was also fully responsible for the pedagogical design of the subject, which involved typical language teaching formats based on, for instance, information gaps, ‘scaffolding’ or integration of communicative skills with which the CE was not familiar. This dominance sometimes goes beyond the role of organiser, through the adoption of the roles of controller and assessor of the knowledge constructed by the students, which, in principle, should correspond to the CE. This can only be understood if we bear in mind that the CE and the LTE collaborated very intensely in the design of the course materials and activities and, in the course of this collaboration, the latter was able to familiarise herself with some of the contents of the different activities. In this sense, Extract 2 shows the LTE being fully in charge of an activity in which the group is correcting the students’ answers to a series of true/false statements; the CE is only contributing sporadically to the interaction by confirming the right answer:

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Extract 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

LTE: Oriol\ you {(?)are} starting- so you read the first statement and then you decide- tell me whether you think the statement is true or false\ ST7: bread ready sliced meats with true taste technology are raising the standards for today’s sliced meat\ LTE: so according to the video- what do you think? ST7: hm. . . true\ LTE: and about the others? do you agree with him? do you think is true? yes? no? we don’t know? you are not sure? it’s true\ it’s true\ {(?) Dolors-} number two\ ST6: sliced meat is produced using far more preservatives\ eh.. false\ LTE: false\ all the rest? ST?: true\ LTE: it’s true? yeah\ it’s true\ and. . . next one? (. . .) ST2: when you lice meat- slice meat- there is no risk of X- introducing bacteria\ false\ LTE: false\ what do you think? ST?: is false\ LTE: it’s false\ yeah\ I mean it’s false\ [addressing to CE] it’s false? CE: {(?) hm\} LTE: go on\ seven\

The scarce presence of the CE in Extract 1 and 2, who only participates to either effect a transition of activity or to confirm knowledge produced by the students may represent a challenge to the traditional teacher-centred methodology, which is still fairly dominant in Spanish universities, but, at the same time, it may contribute to lighten the burden experienced by some non-native English-speaking teachers who feel that they are not capable of producing the kind of monological presentations they are expected to in their L1. One basic way of relieving the lecturer from this responsibility is to make the class more interactive by means of using questions. These questions are especially useful at the beginning of a new topic or activity, to check out the students’ previous knowledge and to prepare the students for new knowledge, and/or in the closing section, in which, after the students have been exposed to new input (e.g. written, audiovisual) accompanied with scaffolding exercises facilitating the negotiation of meaning, the instructor checks the extent to which the students have constructed new knowledge accurately. In Extract 3 we can see another possibility of

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promoting the interactional initiative of the students. In this activity the students are required to ask questions to the CE based on a text they have just read and discussed in pairs. Extract 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

LTE: ST3: LTE: ST3: LTE: ST3: LTE: CE: LTE: ST3: LTE: ST3: LTE: ST3: LTE: CE:

ST7: CE: ST7: CE: ST7: CE: LTE:

ok\ next one\ one question\ why high pressure has a limited X? X? ok\ the last X? so why-? why high pressure has a? limitedlimitedXpackagingpackaging\ packaging- options\ options\ packaging options\ again\ for the rest of the class\ again\ come on\ X {(?) para pronunciar esto\} why high pressure has a limitedpackagingpackaging- =options\= =options\= hm\ ah- that depends how you process the food\ if you are doing a.. continuous processing the.. limited- the options are the same that if you are doing a continuous heat processing\ you just a need an aseptic packaging\ but if you are processing X- you need some package eh.. flexible to transmit pressure\ if you package you food inside a can- that is not flexible- the pressure won’t transmit to the food\ so- these are the main reasons that you have these limited options\ XX- eh. . . you said that if you have a package- a rigid packageeh? a rigid- eh. . . the. . . pressure goes to the.. X? if you have a flexible\ ah\ flexible\ XX\ eh. . . imagine a plastic- a plastic {(?)bag\} ok\ next question? another question?

The interactive nature of the class is on occasions reinforced by the LTE. This can be seen, for instance in line 19 of Extract 2, in which the LTE asks the CE to confirm an answer given by a student. Interactional episodes between the two lecturers also tend to appear when they need to decide on

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a course of action. The verbal interaction in this case takes place on-stage, in front of the students, even though it is not directly addressed to them. The presence of these brief dialogues between the two instructors contributes to ‘naturalising’ not only an interactional format for the class, but also the presence of two lecturers, showing to the students that the instructors are in control of the lesson and that they are capable of responding to unforeseen circumstances. Extract 4 exemplifies this negotiation aimed at managing the teaching task. In this case there is a problem related to an activity involving the students watching a video: Extract 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

CE: we have a problem with the batteries\ LTE: oh [LTE is trying to solve the technical problem] LTE: we can try to correct the statements in the meantime\ CE: yeah\ LTE: what do you think? CE: ok\ XX\ LTE: [addressing the students] so let’s see what answers you have\ so. . . let’s start {(?) from-} your name was? what was your name?

Although the most important role of the LTE is in the design of the pedagogic activities and their implementation during the first year, it is also relevant to analyze how she enacts her role of language expert. In the classroom, this role often takes the form of very short interventions in which she either rephrases the student’s output into a grammatically more acceptable form or responds to a request for help from a student. Both cases are exemplified in Extract 5. Thus, in line 3 the LTE corrects a mispronunciation by one of the students of the word ‘unchanged’ and in lines 10–11 she not only supplies a paraphrase for the word ‘equal’, but also attempts to obtain a translation from one of the students. Extract 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

ST4: because the water pressure is equal from all sides- the package and X are +unchand\+ LTC: unchanged\ ST4: unchanged\ LTC: yeah? what do you think? it’s true? yes\ it’s trueit’s true\ why? why is it true? do you understand the the statement? in ge- you and I mean in general\ do you

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understand the statement? do you understand the sentence- the meaning? ST11: what’s the meaning of equal? LTE: equal- the same\ the same\ so how would you translate it Julia? How would you translate it?

The LTE’s action of correcting a mistake and supplying the correct form to be used can also be addressed, although much less often, to the CE, as in Extract 6, in which the LTE corrects the CE on two consecutive occasions. In the first one, the problem is related to vocabulary and on the second occasion it is a problem involving the mispronunciation of the word ‘flavours’: Extract 6 1 2 3 4 5 6

ST1: {(?) alters-} eh. . . properties\ CE: hm\ yes\ obviously the flavour change\ you lose all the. . . the a- oh\ aromas\ LTE: +fleivurs+ CE: flavours\ LTE: flavours\

The extracts included in this section on practices can be taken as examples of classroom episodes which, depending on the relationship between the two experts, can become potential locations in which ambiguities and tensions arise due to the innovative nature of a teaching format which is based on (i) the adoption of EMI, and (ii) the collaboration of two experts, a CE and a LTE. These ambiguities and tensions may originate in the simultaneous presence of two lecturers who possess not only different fields of expertise but are also influenced by different training traditions and beliefs about efficient and effective classroom practices. I have focused mainly on the issue of roles and, specifically, on episodes in which the LTE adopts a relevant role, sometimes at the expense of the CE, who seems to accept that his main role is no longer that of ‘input-supplier’ but rather that of controller or assessor. However, we should also bear in mind that the extracts belong to the very initial stages in the implementation of the Englishmedium module and that the CE is only beginning to familiarise himself with a different type of teaching practice in which interaction is an essential component.

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Final Remarks In this chapter I have attempted to exemplify some of the ambiguities and tensions that arise within a Catalan/Spanish bilingual HEI in introducing English as a third vehicular language (see also Doiz et al., this volume). I have approached this task by looking successively into each of the three components that Spolsky (2004) suggests for the language policy of a speech community: intervention, beliefs and practices. From the point of view of intervention, the introduction of English is at times ambiguously presented as part of a strategic goal of transforming a bilingual institution into a multilingual one, thereby increasing its potential to compete in the academic global market. The language intervention is very clear in the form of white papers and regulations through which multilingualism is perhaps excessively regulated, to the point that the resulting institutional multilingualism may adopt the form of a sum of separate monolingual situations. As for beliefs, we can notice possible sources of tension between instructors and students. Thus, students seem to be more likely than instructors to define their competence in English as ‘fairly good’ or ‘good’. However, in both groups their level is not considered adequate for an EMI situation. English is accepted (not necessarily in an enthusiastic way) as the ‘default’ foreign language and one of the keys to internationalisation. Instructors and students agree on the academic relevance of English in higher education, but in this case the instructors are a little more enthusiastic about it than students. Although neither group show a clear position in connection with a ‘bunker attitude’, the students seem slightly more worried than the instructors about the ‘predator power’ of English. From the point of view of the practices, I have presented a pilot experience as a response to what can be seen as an ambiguous position of the institution, which, on the one hand, wants to promote EMI, and, on the other hand, does not provide the necessary methodological resources which content instructors require in order to adapt their materials and teaching style. In this sense, it is worth pointing out that the pilot experience I have reported on in the previous section was externally funded and has not been taken up by the university to be applied in other schools. I have also tried to show that the collaboration of a content- and a language-teaching expert is not free from possible tensions and I have exemplified this by focusing on the interactional roles they can adopt in the classroom. Tandem teaching is not only an expensive methodological resource but also one with a short tradition, at least in Spanish universities, and therefore one can expect that it might not be easy to convince the community about its benefits.

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Acknowledgements This chapter is part of a project on internationalisation and multilingualism in higher education funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. FFI2008-00585/FILO). I am grateful to Elisabet Arnó, Enric Llurda and Guzman Mancho for their comments on a first draft of this chapter.

References Airey, J. (2009) Science, Language and Literacy: Case Studies of Learning in Swedish University Physics. (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala dissertations from the Faculty of science and technology 81.) Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University. Arántegui, J., Clemente, M. and Cots, J.M. (2008) Viabilidad de la enseñanza integrada de contenidos y lengua extranjera en la universidad. Poster presented at the V Congreso Internacional Docencia Universitaria e Innovación, Universidad de Lleida, 2–4 July 2008. Ammon, U. and McConnell, G. (2002) English as an Academic Language in Europe: A Survey of its Use in Teaching (Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 48). Bern: Peter Lang. Balfour, R. (2007) University language policies, internationalism, multilingualism, and language development in South Africa and the UK. Cambridge Journal of Education 37 (1), 35–49. Baker, C. (1992) Attitudes and Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Barrera, J. (2010) El nivell d’anglès a la universitat preocupa més que el de català. Article in digital newspaper publico.es, 13 September, 2010, accessed 25 June 2011. http:// www.publico.es/catalunya/336373/el-nivell-d-angles-a-la-universitat-preocupa-mesque-el-de-catala Bolsmann, C. and Miller, H. (2008) International student recruitment to universities in England: Discourse, rationales and globalisation. Globalisation, Societies and Education 6, 75–88. Björkman, B. (2011) Pragmatic strategies in English as an academic lingua franca: Ways of achieving communicative effectiveness. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 950–964. Clemente, M., Cots, J.M. and Arántegui, J. (2006) Integrating Foreign Language Training and Course Contents at University: A Pilot Experience. Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de Docencia Universitaria e Innovación (CD edition): Barcelona. Cogo, A. (2009) Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: A study of pragmatic strategies. In A. Mauranen and E. Ranta (eds) English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings (pp. 254–270). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Coleman, J. (2006) English-medium teaching in European higher education. Language Teaching 39, 1–14. Cots, J.M. and Clemente, M. (2006) Teaching and learning about food technology in English: An experience of content-based English instruction at university level. In M.C. Pérez-Llantada, R. Plo and C. Neumann (eds) Actas del V Congreso Internacional AELFE (Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos) (CD edition). Zaragoza. Cots, J.M. and Clemente, M. (2011) Tandem teaching in CLIL for tertiary education. In C. Escobar and L. Nussbaum (eds) Aprendre en una altra llengua (pp. 165–184). Bellaterra, Spain: Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

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Cots, J.M. and Llurda, E. (2011) University students and professors’ visions on multilingualism in higher education in a non-English speaking bilingual university. Paper read at the 2011 American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference, Chicago, 26–29 March 2011. Council of Europe (2002) Common European Framework of reference for languages: learning, teaching, assessment. Language examination and test development, prepared under the direction of M. Milanovic (ALTE). Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Online document: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf. Dafouz, E. (2011) English as the medium of instruction in Spanish contexts: a look at teacher discourses. In Y. Ruiz de Zarobe, J.M. Sierra and F. Gallardo del Puerto (eds) Content and Foreign Language Integrated Learning. Contributions to Multilingualism in European Contexts (pp. 189–209). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Dafouz, E., Núñez, B., Sancho, C. and Foran, D. (2007) Integrating CLIL at the tertiary level: teachers’ and students’ reaction. In D. Marsh and D. Wolff (eds) Diverse Contexts – Converging Goals. CLIL in Europe (pp. 91–101). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. Errington, J. (2001) Ideology. In A. Duranti (ed.) Key Terms in Language and Culture. (pp. 110–112). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Ferrés, M. J. (2007) La llengua catalana davant l’entrada a l’Espai Europeu d’Educació Superior. Escola Catalana 42 (444), 16–18. Fishman. J. (1991) Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundationsm of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Garrett, P. (2010) Attitudes to Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hellekjaer, G. and Wilkinson, R. (2003) Trend in content learning through English at universities: a critical reflection. In C. van Leeuwen and R. Wilkinson (eds) Multilingual Approaches in University Education: Challenges and Practices (pp. 81–102). Maastricht, The Netherlands: University of Masstricht. Jenkins, J. (2011) Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 926–936. Lasagabaster, D. (2005) Bearing multilingual parameters in mind when designing a questionnaire on attitudes: Does this affect the results? International Journal of Multilingualism 2 (1), 26–51. Lehtonen, T., Lönnfors, P. and Virkkunen-Fullenwider, A. (2003) Teaching through English: a university case study. In C. van Leeuwen and R. Wilkinson (eds) Multilingual Approaches in University Education: Challenges and Practices (pp. 103–118). Maastricht, The Netherlands: University of Masstricht. Mauranen, A. (2006) Signalling and preventing misunderstanding in English as a lingua franca communication. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177, 123–150. Mauranen, A. (2009) Chunking in ELF: Expressions for managing interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics 6 (2), 217–233. Miller, L. (2002) Towards a model for lecturing in a second language. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1, 145–162. Smit, U. (2010) CLIL in an English as a lingua franca (ELF) classroom. On explaining terms and expressions interactively. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula and U. Smit (eds) Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL Classrooms (pp. 259–277). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Spolsky, B. (2004) Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tange, H. (2010) Caught in the Tower of Babel: University lecturers’ experiences with internationalisation. Language and Intercultural Communication 10 (2), 137–149.

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Thøgersen, J. (2010) Coming to terms with English in Denmark: Discursive construction of a language contact situation. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 20 (3), 291–326. Tollefson, J. and Tsui, A. (2004) The centrality of medium-of-instruction policy in sociopolitical processes. In J. Tollefson and A. Tsui (eds) Medium of Instruction Policies. Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? (pp. 1–20), Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Universitat de Lleida (2006) Programa d’internacionalització. Online document: http:// www.udl.cat/serveis/ori/Fitxers_descxrrega/Pla_internacionalitzacio2.pdf Universitat de Lleida (2008) Política lingüística de la UdL. Online document: http://web. udl.es/rectorat/sg/bou/bou101/acord153.htm Universitat de Lleida (2010) Normativa d’Acreditació de la Tercera Llengua en els estudis de grau. Online document: http://web.udl.es/rectorat/sg/bou/bou123/acord224.htm Universitat de Lleida (2011a) Dades lingüístiques. Online document: http://www.udl.cat/ serveis/sl/catala/dades Universitat de Lleida (2011b) Resultat de les proves de nivell per a l’estudiants de nou ingrés als graus. Online document: http://www.udl.cat/serveis/sl/aprenentatge/provesnivell/ provniv-1-1011.html Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2011) Dades lingüístiques de la docència. Online document: http://www.upf.edu/gl/sociolin/dadesdoc/ Van Leeuwen, C. (2003) Feasibility of policy in university language education. In C. van Leeuwen and R. Wilkinson (eds) Multilingual Approaches in University Education: Challenges and Practices (pp. 19–45). Maastricht, The Netherlands: University of Masstricht. Wright, S. (ed.) (1999) Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Appendix Whenever possible, orthographic rules have been followed. The ensuing transcription conventions have been adopted: CE LTE ST1 [ ] / / +word+ word word.. \ ? {(?) word} X XX XXX =word=

Content Expert’s turn Language Teaching Expert’s turn turn by student 1 contextual information phonetic transcription attempted English pronunciation sudden breakdown in utterance length of pause in approximate seconds syllable lengthening (1 or 2 dots according to length) end of utterance rising intonation and some response is expected uncertain transcription inaudible (x = 1 syllable approximately) overlapping speech

Part 4 Institutional Policies at Higher Education Institutions

7 Implicit Policy, Invisible Language: Policies and Practices of International Degree Programmes in Finnish Higher Education Taina Saarinen and Tarja Nikula

Introduction Internationalisation of higher education has increasingly become an issue since the late 1980s, both in Finland and elsewhere (Teichler, 2004). This internationalisation development places Finland in a similar situation with other non-Anglophone countries (such as the Netherlands in Wächter & Maiworm’s 2008 study), which resort to offering programmes in English to attract international students (see also Hughes, 2008). This phenomenon is particularly visible in countries with small national languages, while countries such as Germany and France seem to have been more reluctant to initiate English language instruction in higher education (Ammon & McConnell, 2002). International study has also become a major global economic commodity over the last decades, with a turnover that is calculated in billions of dollars (Coleman, 2006). When ‘globalisation’ or ‘internationalisation’1 as phenomena extending the boundaries of nation states and their national languages, and entering their systems of education are discussed, we would expect to see language featured explicitly. However, this does not seem to be the case: language appears more or less invisible when internationalisation and globalisation of higher education are discussed (Saarinen, forthcoming). While our social realities are increasingly multilingual – or in some countries, such as the United Kingdom, characterised by what Vertovec (2007) calls superdiversity – the internationalisation strategies of higher education and their 131

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degree programme level implementations appear monolingual, or in some cases without specifying any particular language. Alexander (2008) divides international programmes into three broad groups, depending on their use of the foreign (usually English) language. The replacement type refers to English being used systematically throughout the programme by students and staff alike; Finland represents this type. In the cumulative type, the use of the foreign language increases gradually, as proficiency is assumed to improve simultaneously (as apparently takes place in the Polish higher education system). In the additional type, the foreign language is used to facilitate the students’ transition to courses in the local language; Germany is mentioned as an example. International programmes usually involve culturally and linguistically heterogeneous student populations, with varying levels of proficiency in English and experience with English-medium instruction (EMI). This heterogeneity does not seem to be a concern at the level of implementation where, as Hellekjær (2010: 233) puts it, it is often taken for granted that lecturers and students will have few difficulties in operating in English. However, as for example Dafouz and Núñez (2010) show, teachers’ performance may be impoverished in their lingua franca, with possible implications both for pedagogical practice and learning outcomes and also students may find learning through English demanding (e.g. Airey & Linder, 2006; see also Cots and Doiz et al., this volume). It thus seems that despite the strong position of English as the instructional language, it is rarely problematized at the outset, and the questions of language mastery or the effects of teaching in English on content learning are rarely discussed (Saarinen, forthcoming). We analyse this apparent paradox by using Finnish higher education as a case in point, with particular attention paid to the role that ‘language’ has in the past and present internationalisation policy of Finnish higher education, explicitly or implicitly.

Data and Approach The data consist, firstly, of text documents such as website degree descriptions for international degree programmes (N=44). The website data is collected from two universities and two polytechnics2 in Finland. The degree programme descriptions form the primary textual data, supported by analysis of national level policy documents in the form of internationalisation strategies for higher education (three documents from 1987−2009). Additionally, pilot interviews with university staff and students (N=4) and a student narrative from one university, all concerning the internationalisation of higher education, are also used. Three of the interviews were

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conducted in Finnish and one in English; also the student narrative was written in English. One interview took place with a university-level student affairs administrator; one with a faculty-level international affairs administrator; one with a faculty janitor; and one with an international degree student. An additional written student narrative from an international degree student was also used; the narrative was written in English. The interviews lasted from 35 minutes to 85 minutes, and were conducted using a semi-structured interview frame. Throughout this article, examples taken from the Finnish language interviews are provided with a translation into English. Discourse analysis is used as an analytic tool to come to an understanding of how the policy setting for EMI is constructed in Finnish higher education. In analysing both the website data and the policy texts, occasions where English and other languages are made relevant, explicitly or implicitly, will be of particular interest. Equally important, however, is to be observant to the absence of references to language use and learning because it may also be indexical of ideologies (e.g. Blommaert, 2010). Secondly, pilot interviews conducted among staff and students will illuminate to what extent their lived experiences meet the conditions and expectations emerging in the textual data.

Historical Background Internationalisation of Finnish higher education was until the Second World War directed towards Central Europe, with German as the main language of internationalisation (Saarinen, forthcoming). After the political, cultural and economic collapse of Germany in the Second World War, the direction of internationalisation within higher education turned towards Anglo-Saxon countries. English took over from German quite rapidly by the 1950s, not only in Finland, but worldwide also in countries like Japan or Denmark, as a part of the post-war Pax Americana (Haberland, 2009). Internationalisation did not, however, become a higher education policy issue until the late 1980s, and was, at that time, geared mostly towards internationalisation of research and of staff and student exchanges. Finnish higher education became more decentralised as institutions received more autonomy and the old, detailed budget allocation financing gave way to a lump sum budgeting practice. State steering took another form, as institutions started receiving small performance based rewards in addition to the lump budgets. ‘Internationalisation’ made one part of the efficiency indicators; the others were quality, effectiveness and innovation (Saarinen, 1997).

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In the early days of an institutionalised internationalisation policy, language skills were deemed important. Language Centres were founded at universities during the degree reformation of the late 1970s. However, Ollikainen and Honkanen (1996: 72) argue that while languages featured relatively high in the internationalisation discourse of the early 1990s, languages were still referred to mechanistically or instrumentally as selfevident. The first official internationalisation strategy was written in 1987 as an unpublished memo by the Ministry of Education. In the first strategy, language was frequently referred to in very practical terms, by discussing language skills of students and staff and by offering concrete suggestions for universities on how to improve their language provision. Towards the end of the 1990s and especially beginning of the 2000s, the emphasis turned on developing ‘foreign language’ study programmes, as they were then called. As a consequence of the first policy for internationalisation (Ministry of Education, 1987), EMI programmes were set up; initially in the polytechnic sector, and after that in universities. At first, these were genuinely ‘foreign language’ programmes as the language repertoire of the programmes included also German and French in addition to English (see also the Dutch case in Wilkinson, this volume). The next internationalisation strategy of 2001 (Ministry of Education, 2001) made specific reference to the ‘competitive edge’ offered by English. ‘English language’ programmes were also referred to, but mostly reference was made to ‘foreign languages’. The latest internationalisation strategy for higher education was accepted in 2009 (Ministry of Education, 2009). This document also refers systematically to ‘foreign language’ teaching, when, in fact, in Finnish higher education internationalisation, foreign means English (Lehikoinen, 2004). That Finnish universities have so eagerly embraced opportunities to set up English medium degree programmes also reflects the strong role of English in Finnish society. It is studied widely and Finns’ overall proficiency in English can be considered quite good, especially as regards the younger generations. Finns also encounter English daily in the media e.g. through films and TV series (that are subtitled rather than dubbed) and among the younger generations in particular, the use of resources from English may have various identity-related functions (see Leppänen et al., 2008). Furthermore, Finns’ attitudes to English are very positive, as indicated by a recent national survey on English in Finland, which also showed that the majority of respondents had favourable attitudes towards the idea of Finnish children attending English-medium schools (Leppänen et al., 2009).

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Hence, when teaching staff capable of teaching through a foreign language at university level is needed in Finland, it is obvious that the reserve for EMI is considerably larger than for any other foreign language (Ylönen, 2011), which partly explains why international degree programmes are in the majority of cases offered in English. Another reason for the growing dominance of English over the last decades has to do with its role as the main international lingua franca in the academia, both in Finland and elsewhere (e.g. Mauranen, 2011; Smit, 2010). The number of international degree programmes in Finnish higher education grew fast. In 1996, there were approximately 75 international programmes in universities and polytechnics; in 1999 this figure had almost doubled. In December 2010, there were 335 international degree programmes at Bachelor’s and Master’s level at universities and polytechnics, overwhelmingly in English. Two were run in Swedish (the other national language in Finland), and five in ‘other’ languages, which means Finnish and Finno-Ugric degree programmes offered for foreigners. Nowadays, measured by the share of English taught programmes against all programmes, Finland ranks second in Europe after the Netherlands. Measured by the proportion of institutions providing English language programmes, Finland ranks first in Europe (Wächter & Maiworm, 2008).

The Role of Language in Describing the International Degree Programmes Self-evident English Before turning attention to the websites of the degree programmes, it is worth reiterating that the more general context provided by the national level internationalisation policy documents frames the programmes in general terms as offered in a ‘foreign language’, despite the fact that the language is almost by definition English. For example: The higher education institutions offer high-quality education focused on their fields of expertise, given in foreign languages (Ministry of Education, 2009: 26; our emphasis). In order to improve the quality of education and counselling provided in a foreign language, the higher education institutions will focus on their continuing education activities for teachers and staff in language and cultural studies as well as the pedagogics of teaching in a foreign language (Ministry of Education, 2009: 20; our emphasis)

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English is, in other words, clearly conflated (or euphemisised even, as implied by Lehikoinen, 2004) into ‘foreign’. On the one hand, the choice of the more general term is probably indicative of a genuine political will to keep possibilities open for the introduction of other foreign language programmes. On the other hand, given that the spread of English also raises concerns relating to domain loss (Fishman, 1972; Haberland, 2005; see also Wilkinson, this volume), i.e. English gradually replacing the use of national languages in research and education (Hiidenmaa, 2003), the Ministry of Education, as a national institution, is in a precarious position when both national and international considerations need to be balanced and the scarcity of explicit references to English-medium programmes may reflect this. Hence, even when the strategy texts explicitly acknowledge the strong position of English, general reference is still made to ‘foreign languages’: Higher education institutions have increased education given in foreign languages leading to a qualification. In proportion to the size of our higher education sector, there is an exceptionally large amount of teaching available in English. (Ministry of Education, 2009: 14; our emphasis) This ambivalence between ‘foreign’ and ‘English’ does not concern the websites analysed as all programmes are conducted in English. The role of English as almost self-evident in the context of international degree programmes is also reflected by many descriptions making no explicit reference to the language of instruction. Instead, the fact that the programme websites are in English seems to function as an index of the working language of the programmes as well. However, in many descriptions English as the working language is mentioned explicitly, typically early on when introducing the programme: The language of instruction is English (TY3 Law and Information). The programme is conducted in English (JAMK Logistics engineering). All courses are given in English (TuAMK Information Technology). As the examples show, references to English provide factual information about the language of instruction and in no way point towards the programmes as arenas for learning (academic, field-specific) English. In other words, international degree programmes are not textually construed, and probably not perceived, as contexts for language learning. However, there is an exception, as in the description of JY Mobile Technology and

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Business programme, it is stated that upon completion of the programme, students will have obtained ‘excellent communication skills due to the integrated language and communication studies’. Other than that, the role of English-medium programmes in higher education does not, at least explicitly, seem to fit into the realm of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) that has as its starting premise the simultaneous learning of both language and content. This probably reflects the point made by Smit (2010: 262) that, rather than language learning being the motivation for choosing the instructional language, the use of English in tertiary education usually derives from the fact that it is the only language that all participants share. Curiously, the only time ’bilingualism’ is mentioned as a learning object, it has to do with a novel and humoristic use of the term, as indicated by the quotation marks, to describe the simultaneously growing competences in two disciplinary areas: Our mission is to educate ‘bilingual’ experts, in terms of combined knowledge of information technology and biosciences (TY Bioinformatics; our emphasis). This finding of ‘invisibility’ of languages is also corroborated by the pilot interviews of university staff and students. During the interviews, none of the interviewees mentioned the language of studies independently without the initiation of the interviewer, as if language had nothing to do with the goals, everyday practices, difficulties and high points of international study and its organisation. When language was mentioned in the student narrative (and on the initiation of the writer), it was in the context of studying other languages than Finnish or English (student, written narrative), and when referring to the importance of languages in general in international communications, with specific reference to the January 2011 events in North African Arabic countries (staff, university central administration, interview).

Implicit English: Discourses of Internationalisation and Globalisation Even if English, or languages in general, are rarely discussed explicitly when describing the degree programmes, the use of languages is brought in by implication through reoccurring references to internationalisation and globalisation. These two concepts by definition involve crossing national

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boundaries and interacting with people from different (language) backgrounds in both formal and everyday situations (Haberland, 2009). Interaction, in turn, necessitates the use of communicative resources of which language is undoubtedly a crucial one, hence the idea of languages implied. Describing programmes as international/intercultural and global seems to serve a twofold function. Firstly, these labels are used in a promotional manner to define the learning environment and ways of working in the degree programmes, the implication being that the international and global atmosphere is a feature that distinguishes these programmes from regular courses offered in Finnish universities: Education is given in English, and the students of this international programme learn to work together with associates from different countries and cultures (TY Environmental Sciences). You will study in a multicultural group of students coming from different countries (JAMK Facility Management). Learning is based on applying theoretical knowledge in a multicultural, innovative learning environment (JAMK International Business). Secondly, the descriptions often make reference to the degree programmes preparing the students’ global or international skills for a global and international future in the labour market: To educate experts of research on institutions in an international, multidisciplinary environment. (TY Institutions and Social Mechanisms) [. . .] you will be able to develop your intercultural business skills. We offer you excellent opportunities for creating a career in international companies. (JAMK Facility Management) We strive to develop talent which will be capable to contribute to innovative companies’ international expansion and lead their development. (TY Global Innovation Management) The Degree Programme in International Business prepares you with the skills and knowledge to be successful in global business. (JAMK International Business) Accordingly, the staff in the pilot interviews tended to motivate international study specifically from the perspective of labour market needs. This is

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indicative of the change in motivations of internationalisation. Until the 1970s, internationalisation was largely motivated by humanistic values of international peace and solidarity; from the 1980s onwards, more utilitarian motivations such as economic and labour market benefits gained ground (Ollikainen & Honkanen, 1996: 87−89; see also Wilkinson, this volume for the monetization period). As far as policy texts are concerned, they also refer to the potential of international study programmes, and especially of the mobility involved, to increase intercultural skills as evidenced by a quote from the 2009 internationalisation strategy: . . . mobility increases the competence needed for working in an international higher education community by improving the appreciation of other cultures, religions and languages. In sum, globalisation and internationalisation in general but of the labour market in particular are prevalent themes used to motivate the international degree programmes. The role of language in this is not explicitly discussed, yet at the level of implication connections are forged between language (English), internationalisation and globalisation. Moreover, as shown by the following example, these descriptions may be combined with positive adjectives such as ‘modern’ and ‘innovative’, . . . competences you gain will give you a great opportunity to work for modern, innovative, global companies (JAMK International Business). The implicit connection of English to such clusters creates, discoursally and ideologically, a powerful image of their interdependency and makes the role of English as the de facto lingua franca of international programmes even stronger.

The Role of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism If learning English through attending courses offered in English is not an issue in the degree programme websites, learning other languages is even less so. On only a couple of occasions, shown below, is language learning brought up as an outcome of participating in international programmes; the second extract is exceptional in that specific languages are mentioned: The studies include a comprehensive choice of economic sciences, other business and finance-related subjects and foreign languages (TY Global Innovation Management).

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Our structure offers you also an excellent chance to develop your language skills and multicultural skills. We provide individual tutoring in English. You are expected to study other languages as well: Finnish, German, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, etc. (JAMK International Business). Students are encouraged to take language studies. The language studies cannot replace the compulsory subject studies, but they can be included in the degree as additional studies (TY Baltic Sea Region Studies). The Internationalisation strategy of 2009 seems to be more explicit in this regard, as the following example shows. Study and work abroad are assumed automatically to improve the students’ language and cultural skills: Studying and working abroad improve the individual’s language skills and position in the labour market and increase understanding between cultures and societies. [. . .] Moreover, mobility increases the competence needed for working in an international higher education community by improving the appreciation of other cultures, religions and languages. As regards the interviews and the narrative, when interviewees and the writer of the narrative explicitly (and without prompting) refer to ‘language’, what is mentioned concerns mastery or studying of other languages rather than focusing on English, as shown in the following examples: The language centre offers a wide range of language courses; all of them are free to university students. We can choose whatever language courses that interest us. There are several different courses regarding any one single language. As a result students really have great freedom to choose the courses that suit them most. (Student, narrative) This. . . Southern Mediterranean which at the moment is rather unpredictable in a way is kind of interesting in that [. . .] it may be something that will inevitably arise . . . Arabic is not necessarily mastered too well by our students but there are French speakers, so they kind of do it with this transition. (Staff, university central administration, interview; Finnish in the original. Our translation)

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Despite these occasional references to the importance of learning and studying other languages, the overall impression remains that languages rarely become an issue either when international study programmes are described or when participating students and teachers offer accounts of their experiences in the increasingly international world of higher education. This ‘invisibility’ of language may reflect its self-evident nature as something that is so ingrained in the processes and practices of studying that it rarely ends up being discussed, let alone questioned. However, what also remains invisible is that underneath this self-evident surface, there may remain many important concerns relating to the role of different native languages in various contexts of study, on the one hand, and the role that different languages play in the entry and course requirements.

The Role of Language in Regulating Access to the Degree Programmes It was shown above that the role of English and language in general remains marginal, or at least tends to be implicit rather than explicit, when the content and learning objectives of study programmes are described. However, when questions of eligibility and access become an issue, the role of English is very significant and explicit.

What kind of English? As discussed above, the texts introducing the study programmes convey an impression that they are not perceived as environments for language learning. This is further emphasised by the fact that skills in English are usually stated as an important prerequisite for studying in the international degree programmes. In other words, good proficiency in English is something students must possess prior to their studies rather than develop along their studies, as evidenced by the following quotes about course requirements: [. . .] a sufficient knowledge in English language is required (TY Biomedical engineering). [. . .] a good command of English (TY Learning, Learning Environments and Educational Systems). Excellent command of English (JY Educational Leadership).

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To specify what counts as ‘good’ or ‘sufficient’ skills, all programmes have defined some minimum level of language skills, to be shown with a test that students must pass to prove their proficiency in English. All polytechnics in our data have adopted the same language skill requirements since 2011. The tests accepted are usually TOEFL (for polytechnics, the score of 550 in paper based test/79−80 in internet-based text), IELTS (academic score 6.0), the National Certificate of Language Proficiency in English (skills level 4); also the minimum grade of C in advanced level English in the Finnish Matriculation examination, a school leaving examination in high school that counts as evidence of proficiency in English. These requirements approximate the B1/B2 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).4 The requirements are not equally unified in universities. Yet, in general, similar rules apply as with the polytechnics, but the test score limits are slightly higher, ranging from 575−600 in the TOEFL paper based test, or 79−92 in the internet-based test. Good command of English is thus represented as a self-evident entry requirement for all students, for the obvious reason that the programmes are run in English. It is worth noting, however, that regardless the similar score limits, the level of skills is phrased in quite different terms, ranging from sufficient via good, very good and excellent to fluent. As the different adjectives seem to have no clear-cut connection to required scores in language proficiency tests, the range of adjectives is probably indicative of different emphases placed on the quality of language skills. Verbalising for instance 575 in the TOEFL paper based test as ‘sufficient’, ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ creates different horizons of expectation on language skills, and the verbalisation may either lower or heighten the entry threshold for the prospective student.

Whose English? In addition to defining accepted language test scores, the programme descriptions also spell out who will be exempted from taking a language test. Here, we argue that entry qualifications shift from being purely related to language skills to having political implications. As said above, since 2011 polytechnics have nationally unified language requirements. According to these, exempt from language tests are those who have completed upper secondary education or a university degree in English in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Moreover, a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree conducted in

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English in a European Union or European Economic Area (EU/EEA) country is also an accepted demonstration of sufficient English language skills. Below are the current language skills requirements of polytechnics: In 2011, those applicants who are applying with a qualification completed somewhere else than in Finland and are not citizens of an EU/EEA-country, must provide a proof of language skill. Accepted certificates are: * TOEFL score 550 paper based test/79−80 internet-based test * IELTS academic score 6.0 * grade C in the Finnish Matriculation examination in advanced level English * skills level 4 in English in the National Certificate of Language Proficiency. In addition upper secondary education or University degree in English completed in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States of America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand or a bachelor’s or Master’s degree conducted in English in a European Union or European Economic Area Country is also accepted as a demonstration of sufficient English language skills. Education in English completed in any other country will not be accepted. (http://www.admissions.fi) As is seen from the above, education in English completed anywhere else than in the countries listed is explicitly not accepted. Thus, the emphasis is very much on recognised Anglo-American varieties of English. This leaves qualifications received in the approximately 50 countries where English is an official language (such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa) outside the selection of accepted languages, creating a hierarchy of different ‘Englishes’. For universities, however, the range of language criteria is wider, as universities have opted to keep the decision regarding language requirements to themselves. However, while universities do not have nationally unified language skill requirements, some harmonisation seems to be taking place, as can be deduced from the similar kinds of requirements within the same university, but also based on the pilot interviews with staff. According to University Admissions Finland, a centralised organisation handling applications for international degree programmes for a number of Finnish universities, the students are usually exempt from the language test if their earlier studies have been completed ‘in English in Great Britain,

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Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand’. The website also explicitly states: Please note that education completed in English in any other country from the ones listed above does not give sufficient proof of English language skills. (http://www.universityadmissions.fi/) Altogether, 28 of 32 university programmes in our data will exempt applicants from an English test if they have had previous Bachelor level studies in one of the six English speaking countries mentioned above. Three out of the remaining four do not require a language test from ‘native speakers’. However, only in one programme was nativeness defined by limiting it to the same six countries mentioned earlier; in the remaining two cases, nativeness was not specified in any way: Native speakers (from USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the English speaking part of Canada) do not have to send proof of language proficiency (TY Management of Information Technology). The programme is conducted in English. All applicants who are not native speakers have to be able to demonstrate their English language proficiency at the time of the interview. The required level of English proficiency for the programme is equivalent to: (1) a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score of minimum 600 (paper-based) or 100 (internet-based) (www.toefl.org) (2) an IELTS (academic) (International English Language Testing System) score of minimum 7.0 (www.ielts.org) (3) a Cambridge ESOL’s Certificate of Proficiency in English (CPE) or Cambridge ESOL’s Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) grade C or above (www.cambridgeesol.org) (4) a secondary level education diploma and Bachelor’s degree studied in English, accompanied with a letter of verification from the awarding institution. (5) a Bachelor’s degree certificate with the English language as a major (JY/Educational Leadership). While the question of nativeness is not a major concern when defining eligibility, it seems to surface from time to time (see also Inbar-Laurie & Donitsa-Schmidt in this volume). For example, one staff interviewee referred to nativeness in the programme as potentially problematic from the

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point of view of both teachers and students. There seem to be differences of opinion at least in the programme s/he represents as to whether there should be more native teachers or students on the one hand, or whether the students’ English skills are adequate, on the other. As is typical for the interviews, the matter of language came up rather late in the interview (in this case, on the 54th minute), and on the initiation of the interviewer: Interviewer: one more question here, we have been talking about internationalisation and different questions of culture, but not about language (Interviewee: mmmm) How does. . . Do you think language is a factor here (Interviewee: nods slowly). . . In what way? Interviewee: Weeeell. . . It shows in that most of us . . . teachers, me, students. . . none of us speak. . . or there are maybe one or two native English speakers (Interviewer: mmmmh). But that all of us speak English as. . . non-native. And. . . I don’t know if it shows. . . well some teachers find it problematic that the students’ English skills are not good enough . . . but I think that’s just something we have to be prepared for. That it’s a part of the package (Staff, faculty level) (In Finnish in the original. Our translation). In the extract, the focus of the potential problem of non-nativeness thus shifts from the lack of native speaking teachers and students to the apparently insufficient language skills of students, as perceived by the non-native teachers (see also Cots and Doiz et al. in this volume for further discussion on students’ lack of English proficiency). In addition to the varieties of English used in contexts representing western countries and Anglo-American culture, there are other factors that may exempt the prospective university programme students from taking a standardised language test. Twelve out of 32 university programmes exempt students with a Bachelor’s degree or similar in English from a European Union or European Economic Area country. Furthermore, another three programmes give students with studies in English in a Nordic country exemption from test. The special rules for the European and Nordic countries perhaps suggest either a need to promote European and Nordic students, or that programmes in these countries are trusted over those in Asia or Africa. In this context, accepting studies in English in an European Union or European Economic Area country as acceptable evidence of language skills makes ‘EU English’ (cf. Phillipson, 2003) both a political language variant and an indicator of adequate transparency and homogeneity of European higher education systems.

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The governing rationality (Rose, 1996) of creating hierarchies between different varieties of English as accepted or non-accepted produces categories of identity, creating social order that fuels prestiged social trajectories. (Nikula et al., forthcoming.) The mere use of English has been referred to as some kind of gatekeeping (Alexander, 2008: 83), but our examples above go beyond the gatekeeping role of English as the working language of the study programmes. By categorising different varieties of English, students are also categorised by what appears to be language criteria but what, in reality, can also be interpreted as a hierarchisation of the students’ origins, language varieties, and the higher education systems they come from. These implicit requirements, or ascriptive characteristics (Hoffman, 2007) of nationality, educational background and language variety that are hidden behind the language requirements may sustain a certain level of inequality among international students (see also Shohamy, this volume).

Conclusions In this chapter, we have explored the role of language in general and English in particular in how international, EMI programmes are described in the websites of Finnish universities and polytechnics and in Finnish policy documents dealing with internationalisation strategies of higher education. The university and national policy data has been complemented with four pilot interviews and an international student narrative. Overall, the emerging picture is complex, with English appearing vital, even exotic from certain perspectives, and marginal or mundane from others. Firstly, as a starting point and the overall context for international study programmes, English plays a pivotal role: it appears the means that makes it possible for the educational institutions to strive towards the global, multicultural and international objectives set for higher education at policy level. While policy documents, euphemistically, make use of the label ‘a foreign language’ to describe the programmes, it is evident both on the basis of our textual data and of the Finnish educational scene in general that the de facto language of internationalisation is English. Secondly, the role of English seems to increase in importance due to its role as a gatekeeper: students’ skills in English, and moreover, in a particular sort of English, becomes a major factor in regulating access to international study. We emphasise that requiring a particular skill level in English is in itself not problematic; on the contrary, it is a very practical requirement in international study contexts. However, emphasising a particular variety of English over another may produce different, probably unintended,

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categories of international students. Exempting students with a particular educational background from taking a language test not only selects students based on their language skills, but factually also based on their nationality, a particular set of Western hegemonic varieties of English, the status of the higher education system (as Anglo-American systems are preferred), or the status of the political system (as in some cases students within the European Union or European Economic are preferred). Thirdly, when moving to the level of how international degree programmes are described on the homepages of universities and polytechnics or in policy documents, English acquires an almost taken-for-granted quality. It is the self-evident language of instruction and the shared lingua franca for multilingual and multicultural students and teachers. Given that proficiency in English is an entry requirement, its ‘sufficient’ or ‘good’ mastery after the entry seems to be presumed, with the consequence that the potential of the study programmes to further develop students’ language skills does not become an issue. Policy documents do not discuss language learning, either, but forge (in a very unproblematic manner) a connection between international degree programmes and an increase in cultural, religious and language awareness and understanding. Policy documents and degree programmes websites that at the same time function as advertisements for prospective students operate, by necessity, at a general level and obviously cannot focus on problematisations or take full stock of the complexities involved in everyday practice. However, the image they create of the role of languages is indicative of a perception that does not take into consideration that language learning is part and parcel of any students’ development into a professional and that instruction in a foreign language may add to this challenge (cf. Hellekjær, 2010). The self-evident role given to English, for its part, both further emphasises its dominant role in the linguistic landscape of the academia, already a concern for many (see Lillis & Curry, 2010), and also downplays the potential of multilingualism as a teaching and learning resource in international study programmes (see Kaloscai, 2009; Moore & Dooly, 2010). This chapter has illustrated that a global language entering national educational institutions is a precarious issue that creates controversies and tensions. Both educational authorities and higher education institutions are involved in a balancing act of sorts when they seek to embrace the benefits that international degree programmes bring without compromising the role of universities and polytechnics as national institutions. One way in which the struggle shows in the data analysed is the shifting role of English from invisibility to necessity.

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Notes (1) We approach the phenomena of internationalisation and globalisation textually, without preset definitions. However, for practical purposes, we find Teichler’s (2004) definitions of ‘internationalisation’ as growing border-crossing activities between national systems of higher education, and ‘globalisation’ as increasing bordercrossing activities of blurred national systems adequate. (2) While the Ministry of Education and Culture uses the word polytechnic when referring to institutions of vocational higher education, the institutions themselves prefer university of applied science. In this article, we use the simpler term polytechnic consistently, except when reference is made to their English name. (3) We refer to the degree programmes by the institution’s Finnish acronym and programme’s name. Hence, TY = University of Turku, JY = University of Jyväskylä, TuAMK = Turku University of Applied Sciences and JAMK = Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. (4) According to an ETS summary of studies comparing IELTS, TOEFL and CEFR levels (Educational Testing Service, 2011), 79–80 (typical for polytechnics) on an internet based TOEFL test (TOEFL iBT) approximates a high B1 or a low B2 on the CEFR scale; and TOEFL iBT 79–92 (the range for universities) approximates a high B1 to a medium-range B2 on a CEFR scale. The IELTS score 6.0, often found in polytechnics’ requirements, fits fairly well within B1 on the CEFR scale. IELTS score of 7.0, more found in the universities’ requirements, more or less equals B2.

References Airey, J. and Linder, C. (2006) Language and the experience of learning university physics in Sweden. European Journal of Physics 27 (3), 553–560. Alexander, R. (2008) ‘International’ programmes in the German speaking world and englishization: A critical analysis. In R. Wilkinson and V. Zegers (eds) Realizing Content and Language Integration in Higher Education (pp. 77–95). Maastricht: Maastricht University Language Centre. Ammon, U. and McConnell, G. (2002) English as an Academic Language in Europe. A Survey of its Use in Teaching. Duisburg Papers on Language and Culture 48. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Blommaert, J. (2010) A Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coleman, J. (2006) English-medium teaching in European higher education. Journal of Language Teaching 39, 1–14. Dafouz, E. and Núñez, B. (2010) Metadiscursive devices in university lectures. A contrastive analysis of L1 and L2 teacher performance. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula and U. Smit (eds) Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL (pp. 213–231). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Educational Testing Service (2011) Compare TOEFL® Scores, website, accessed 10 September 2011, http://www.ets.org/toefl/institutions/scores/compare. Fishman, J. (1972) Domains and the relationship between micro- and macrosociolinguistics. In J.J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 435−453). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Haberland, H. (2005) Domains and domain loss. In B. Preisler, A. Fabricius, H. Haberland, S. Kjærbeck and K. Risager (eds) The Consequences of Mobility: Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones (pp. 227–237). Roskilde: Roskilde University.

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Haberland, H. (2009) English – the language of globalism? Rask, Internationalt Tidsskrift for Sprog og Kommunikation 30, 17–45. Hellekjær, G. (2010) Language matters. Assessing lecture comprehension in Norwegian English-medium higher education. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula and U. Smit (eds) Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL (pp. 233–258). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hiidenmaa, P. (2003) Suomen kieli – who cares? [The Finnish language – who cares?] Helsinki: Otava. Hoffman, D. (2007) The Career Potential of Migrant Scholars in Finnish Higher Education: Emerging Perspectives and Dynamics. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Hughes, R. (2008) Internationalisation of higher education and language policy: Questions of quality and equity. Higher Education Management and Policy 20 (1), 111–128. Kaloscai, K. (2009) Erasmus exchange students: A behind-the-scenes view into an ELF community of practice. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies, 3 (1), 25–49. Lehikoinen, A. (2004) Foreign-language-medium education as national strategy. In R. Wilkinson (ed.) Integrating Content and Language: Meeting the Challenge of a Multilingual Higher Education (pp. 41–48). Maastricht: Universitaire Pres. Leppänen, S., Kääntä, L. and Nikula, T. (2008) Kolmas kotimainen. Lähikuvia englannin käytöstä Suomessa. [Third domestic language. Case studies of English in Finland]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Leppänen, S., Pitkänen-Huhta, A., Nikula, T. Kytölä, S., Törmäkangas, T., Nissinen, K., Kääntä, L., Virkkula, T., Laitinen, M., Pahta, P., Koskela, H., Lähdesmäki, S. and Jousmäki, H. (2009) Kansallinen kyselytutkimus englannin kielestä Suomessa: Käyttö, merkitys ja asenteet. [National survey of English in Finland: Uses, functions and attitudes]. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities 132. Lillis, T. and Curry, M. J. (2010) Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Mauranen, A. (2011) English as the lingua franca of the academic world. In D. Belcher, A. M. Johns and B. Paltridge (eds) New Directions in English for Specific Purposes Research (pp. 94–117). Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Ministry of Education (1987) Development of International Activities in Higher Education. Unpublished memorandum, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2001) Korkeakoulutuksen kansainvälisen toiminnan strategia. [International strategy of higher education institutions]. Helsinki: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (2009) Strategy for the Internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions in Finland 2009–2015. Helsinki: Ministry of Education. Moore, E. and Dooly, M. (2010) ‘How do the apples reproduce (themselves)?’ How teacher trainees negotiate language, content, and membership in a CLIL science education classroom at a multilingual university. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 9, 58–79. Nikula, T., Saarinen, T., Pöyhönen, S. and Kyllönen, T. (forthcoming) Linguistic diversity as problem and resource: multilingualism in European and Finnish policy documents. In J. Blommaert, S. Leppänen, P. Pahta and T. Virkkula (eds) Dangerous Multilingualism. Palgrave. Ollikainen A. and Honkanen, O. (1996) Kosmopoliittien kilpakenttä. Näkökulmia korkeakoulutuksen kansainvälisyyteen [Competition of cosmopoles. Views into internationalization of higher education]. Turku: Turun yliopisto. Phillipson, R. (2003) English-only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge.

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Rose, N. (1996) Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds) Foucault and Political Reason. Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government (pp. 37–64). London: University College London Press. Saarinen, T. (1997) Tehokkuudesta laatuun ja vaikuttavuuteen: tuloksellisuudesta palkitseminen Suomessa [From efficiency to quality and effectiveness: rewarding for results in Finland]. In K. Nyyssölä and T. Saarinen (eds) Näkökulmia korkeakoulutuksen tuloksellisuuteen (pp. 33–51). Turku: Turun yliopisto. Saarinen, T. (forthcoming) Internationalisation of Finnish higher education – is language an issue? International Journal of the Sociology of Language, forthcoming. Smit, U. (2010) CLIL in an English as a lingua franca (ELF) classroom: On explaining terms and expressions interactively. In C. Dalton-Puffer, T. Nikula and U. Smit (eds) Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL (pp. 259–278). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Teichler, U. (2004) The changing debate on internationalisation of higher education. Higher Education 48, 5–26. Vertovec, S. (2007) Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6), 1024–1054. Ylönen, S. and Kivelä, M. (2011) The role of languages at Finnish universities. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies 5 (3), 33–61. Wächter, B. and Maiworm, F. (2008) English-Taught Programmes in European Higher Education. The Picture in 2007. ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education. Bonn: Lemmens.

8 Englishization in an Israeli Teacher Education College: Taking the First Steps Ofra Inbar-Lourie and Smadar Donitsa-Schmidt

Introduction English has been used for many years as the medium of instruction for overseas students at Israeli universities (Gonen, 2008). Recently, however, English-medium instruction (EMI) has become much more common, encompassing local students as well as those from abroad, at universities and academic colleges. This current turn towards English is linked, as it is in many other contexts, to on-going globalization, in which knowledge of English, the world’s current lingua franca, is believed to assist in the attainment of cultural and social capital and economic benefits. Lately, this development is becoming part of the agenda of teacher education colleges in the country as well. The aim is to attract an international student body hence facilitating cultural and social exchange and expanding the colleges’ recruitment pool. Moreover, the colleges encourage prospective teachers to improve their proficiency by studying content courses in English on the assumption that exposure to such courses will upgrade the level of English of the local student teachers, and improve their ability to access international resources and participate in international professional communities. What is of interest in Israel is the unique linguistic scene within which this phenomenon of ‘Englishization’ occurs, i.e. the relationship between the hegemony of Hebrew, the inferior status of Arabic and its inconsequentiality in academic discourse, and the status of English and of other immigrant languages, especially Russian. The impact of Englishization in Israel’s tertiary institutions in general is still unknown due to the paucity of research on the subject. Research on teacher education colleges in this respect is non-existent due to the novelty 151

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of this development. This research therefore aims to provide an initial insight into this phenomenon by investigating EMI in a teacher education college from the perspective of the prospective teachers, similar to other current research in different parts of the globe (Evans & Morrison, 2011). The literature review which follows will provide a glimpse into the rich linguistic reality of Israeli society, focusing first on the two national languages, Hebrew and Arabic. It will then examine the status and role of English in the language policy of the country’s academic institutions, and of teacher education colleges in particular.

The Linguistic Context in Israel The language policy in Israel since its inception in 1948 has strongly favored and prioritized Hebrew, the language of the Jewish majority, as a vehicle for establishing and nurturing a national Israeli identity. In order to achieve this goal immigrant Jews were expected to follow a Hebrew-only policy. One of the results of this policy was the near annihilation of most of the immigrant and heritage languages, abandoned in the process of acquiring Hebrew (Spolsky, 2009). Hence Hebrew enjoys the ideological status of a national language, and is one of the two the official languages of the state. Arabic, is also an official language, as well as the language of the largest ethnic minority in the country (approximately 20% of the population). Although both languages share the same official standing, Hebrew is hegemonic in all governmental, social and economic interactions (Amara, 2000; Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999). Within the educational system, each language serves as the medium of instruction of its speakers, Hebrew in schools for Hebrew speakers and Arabic in Arab schools, with the other language taught as second language (i.e. Hebrew in Arabic-speaking schools and Arabic in Hebrew-speaking schools). However, while Arabic speakers are usually literate in both national languages, speakers of Hebrew have little or no real knowledge in Arabic (Donitsa-Schmidt et al., 2004). Thus many of the current generation of Israeli-born Hebrew-speakers tend to be monolingual with some knowledge of English. This runs contrary to the multilingual knowledge of their forefathers in the Diaspora who, in addition to the local languages also spoke a Jewish vernacular like Yiddish or Ladino, and knew Hebrew as the language of the scriptures and prayer (Spolsky, 2009). The early 1990s marked a change in Israel’s linguistic ecology, with the arrival of almost one million Russian-speaking immigrants from the former USSR (Donitsa-Schmidt, 1999). Unlike most monolingual Hebrewspeakers, this large speech community is concerned with language maintenance in and outside the home (Kopeliovich, 2010). The efforts made by this

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community to maintain Russian have contributed to plurilinguistic awareness among other speech communities. Partly as a result of this immigration and the need for skilled labor at the time, large numbers of foreign workers entered the country, further adding to its multilingual diversity (Kemp, 2010). Throughout this process English maintained its position as ‘everybody’s second language’ (Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999), the language of foreign and local commerce and media and of a large immigrant group from Englishspeaking countries (Ben-Rafael, 2001). Though not an official language, knowledge of English is recognized as a powerful, influential and highly desirable commodity. It is taught in the school system as the first foreign language, with an identical EFL curriculum (English as a Foreign Language) for speakers of Hebrew and Arabic alike (Inbar-Lourie, 2005a). As in other non-English-speaking contexts, issues concerning the relevance of the teacher’s native or non-native English-speaking background are debated in Israel as well. The Israeli context differs from others in one respect, in that the proportion of native English-speaking English teachers (first and second generation) is unusually large for an EFL setting, and comprises a significant part of the teaching force in the Jewish sector due to Jewish immigration from English-speaking countries (Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999). One of the interesting aspects of the native/non-native debate is the students’ awareness and perceptions of their teachers’ native or non-native English speaker background (Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2002; Mahboob, 2004). Findings in Israel show (as in other places) that perception patterns are complex, and do not necessarily differentiate between teacher groups on the basis on their native/non-native background (Inbar-Lourie, 2005b). The fact that some of the non-native Israeli English teachers are also non-native Hebrew speakers, many of whom immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the last two decades, adds to this complexity. Research regarding this topic in Israel has thus far focused on EFL classes, and not on instances where English serves as the medium of instruction for teaching other content areas. Here the teacher’s mastery and teaching skills in the subject taught presents yet another variable in the existing native/nonnative discussion. The findings of a research that aimed to rank the perceptions of Israelis towards the country’s leading languages shows that English was perceived by adult Hebrew-speakers as the most important language, more important even than their own. It was also seen as the future language of the Middle East (Shohamy & Donitsa-Schmidt, 1998). These findings differed with regard to speakers of Arabic and Russian, who feel that although English is important Hebrew is more important for local transactions.

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English is often perceived as a threat to the maintenance of Hebrew (see also Doiz et al., Saarinen & Nikula and Wilkinson in this volume for majority-language maintenance tensions). This notion is reflected in debates over different social and pedagogical issues which arise periodically, with the opponents of English usage trying to resist what is seen as an attempt at English dominance. One example can be found in the debate over lowering the starting age for studying English at school. While the educational language policy (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 1996) decrees that the study of English should commence at the age of nine (fourth grade), most schools begin much earlier, some in the first grade, in many cases succumbing to public pressures which associate English knowledge with success (Carmel, 2009; Shohamy, 2010; Shohamy & Inbar, 2006). Another contested issue relates to resistance to initiating content-based instruction as part of English teaching programs, for such a move, it is claimed, could endanger Hebrew and contribute to English monopolizing language knowledge. The ideological ‘Hebrew Only’ stance (see also ‘English Only’ stance in the USA in García et al., this volume) has also filtered into language policy in academic institutions, as will be discussed below.

Language Policy in Academic Institutions in Israel The language policy in Israeli academic institutions favors Hebrew predominantly. The academic body includes eight universities, 21 public academic colleges and 15 private colleges, and 24 teacher education institutions, all supported by the government via the Israeli Council for Higher Education. All the universities use Hebrew as the medium of instruction, with just a few teacher education colleges using Arabic. This means that Arabs wishing to study in academic institutions in Israel need to do so in their second language, although there are plans for establishing an Arabicspeaking university in Nazareth (a mixed Arab-Jewish city) in the future (Trumper-Hecht, 2009). The programs in teacher education colleges are geared towards the respective educational programs of the two different sectors: the Hebrew speaking colleges train teachers to teach in Hebrewmedium schools, while the Arab colleges conduct teacher education programs for the Arabic-medium institutions. The establishment of academic institutions in Israel is strongly bound up with the ideological debate over the revival of Hebrew and its use as the medium of instruction. A central case in the struggle for ensuring Hebrew dominance is the debate over whether the language of instruction at the Technion, the technological tertiary institution founded in 1913 in Haifa, would be Hebrew, rather than German, as German was considered the

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language of science, with the supporters of Hebrew gaining the upper hand (Harshav, 1993). Interestingly, this very institution has recently announced that it will be teaching its MBA program in ‘Eyeing global markets’ in English (Ilani, 2008). In 1925 Hebrew was chosen as the leading language of the newly founded Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999). The ideology that led to the exclusive promotion of Hebrew kept the use of other languages in abeyance in academic institutions for many years, with special permission required (and often not granted) for writing a thesis or a dissertation in English (Gonen, 2008). Although the current medium of instruction in academic institutions in Israel remains generally Hebrew, proficiency in academic English is mandatory as well, since so many bibliographical sources and venues for publication in all disciplines are in English, very similar to the situation in Honk Kong described by Kirkpatrick (2011) and Li in this volume. A degree of proficiency in English thus serves as a criterion for studying and teaching in all tertiary institutions in Israel. Acceptance to these institutions is contingent upon a high-school matriculation exam in English and a university entrance examination which tests academic English ability. Students must achieve an advanced level of reading comprehension in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) courses to be eligible for an academic degree. The EAP programs focus on academic reading proficiency since this is the main skill required in English in the context of an academic degree. Research has shown, however, that the skills acquired in these courses are often not utilized, because students as well as lecturers find ways to avoid having to read in English by using translations or restricting themselves to the available Hebrew resources (Inbar et al., 2005). Lately, there is evidence of an increase in the top-down demand to employ English as the medium of instruction in certain programs or courses in academic institutions. As mentioned earlier, this demand has a two-fold purpose: to attract students from abroad to study in Israel (Gonen, 2008), and to improve the Israeli students’ level of English to provide them with a better starting position in conditions of global competition (Ilani, 2008). The universities and some academic colleges offer undergraduate and graduate programs for overseas students in English in high-demand areas such as Business Administration, Communications, Computer science, Government and Sustainability, for both local and international students (see for example the Interdisciplinary Center, IDC site). Another institution, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES), a private research and teaching center situated in the southern part of the country, provides an English-medium environmental studies program for international students. The program aims to bring together Israeli-based,

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Palestinian and international students to solve environmental issues and create ‘a sustainable future for the region’s human and natural resources’ (the Arava website). It is also worth noting that academic institutions in Israel have always drawn Jewish students from various parts of the world who want to combine English-medium studies with an experiential stay in Israel, which includes Hebrew-language courses (Gonen, 2008).

Colleges of Education The colleges of education present an interesting case within the process of Englishization. In general, schoolteachers in Israel do not need to employ English in their everyday teaching since the medium of instruction is either Hebrew or Arabic (apart from teachers teaching English as a foreign language). In addition, since the teaching profession is considered to have low prestige (Zuzovsky & Donitsa-Schmidt, 2004), teacher education colleges place less emphasis on high level English proficiency as entrance and study criteria. However, there have been recent attempts to upgrade teacher status by offering advanced degree programs and various financial schemes. These attempts are in line with other efforts to raise the quality of the teaching force by upgrading teacher education programs, such as offering MEd programs in addition to BEd degrees, and improved pay. Englishization is perceived in this context as contributing to the improved status and prestige of these institutions, and content-based English-medium courses are being offered to all prospective teachers as well as to international students in these institutions. Beit Berl Academic Teacher Education College, for example, has courses on Jewish and Israeli topics for overseas students, which are also open to Israeli students (Beit Berl College website). Since the English level of the students may present an obstacle to their motivation to join such courses, the colleges employ different tactics to lure the students: participation in English-medium courses is awarded double credit, and some courses are offered in summer to ease the pressure during the academic year. Although the research regarding Englishization in Israel is meager and tenuous, it can be assumed that the teacher education colleges are using or will use English as the medium of instruction to improve the status of both the college and its graduates, to expand the colleges’ international recognition, to promote their graduates’ social and professional mobility through international collaboration, and to attract students from other parts of the world, all of which will presumably lead to scholarly and financial gains for the colleges (see also Wilkinson, this volume).

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Research Context The current research was conducted at one of the largest colleges of education in Israel. The college is centrally located, prepares prospective teachers in various disciplines for all grade levels in the Israeli school system, and awards a Bachelor of Education degree after four years of studies. It also offers MEd programs in various disciplines including a Masters in teaching, and re-training programs for university graduates interested in the teaching profession. Students at the college are mostly Jews, some of whom (20%) are immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. The medium of instruction in all courses on campus is Hebrew, except for courses given at the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) department and courses geared towards prospective teachers for English as a foreign language. In an attempt to internationalize and globalize the college for academic, as well as for economic reasons, a new initiative was launched in 2009 called the ‘Center for International Studies’. Its stated goals are to build contacts and collaborations with colleges and universities around the world and to oversee study abroad activities, including study tours and exchange programs for both faculty members and students. The long-term plan is for every student on campus to study some content courses in English. One of the first activities of the center was the creation of a summer school in which Israeli students and foreign students will study together. The elective courses offered in this summer school are all taught via English as a medium of instruction on different aspects in the field of education. The first two courses were offered during the summer of 2010. Each course was 30 hours long; no extra credit was given for taking the course. Each course was taught by a different teacher, bilingual in English and Hebrew. One of the teachers was a native English speaker (NS), and the other a non-native English speaker (NNS) whose L1 was Hebrew. Both teachers were chosen on the basis of (a) their expertise in the subject matter; (b) their bilingual competence, and in particular their ability to lecture in English; (c) their willingness to participate in a summer course. While lectures in both courses were conducted in English, students did have the option of submitting course work in Hebrew which they took advantage of. This option was advertised in advance. Twenty-two local college students chose to register for the two courses, 11 in each course. As it turned out, there were no international students.

Research Purpose Although the long-term initiative to introduce English-medium courses to all college students on campus is still in its preliminary phase, it is of

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importance to find out how the different stakeholders, students in particular, feel with regard to the process of Englishization. Moreover, the immediate implementation of English-medium instruction in the two summer courses is also of interest for college policy-makers, since finding out more about students’ needs and benefits in such a course could be useful for formative evaluation purposes. Hence, in this research we focused on two different situations: the first was a hypothetical one, where students at the college were asked to express their opinions and feelings about introducing English-medium instruction into the study program in general; the second represents the voice of experience, the impressions of students who had actually chosen one of the English-medium courses offered in the summer of 2010 as an elective, questioned near the end of the courses.

Research Questions Two research questions were posed, one for each situation. The first relates to the general initiative of introducing content-based studies in English. The second research question focuses on the two summer courses described above. 1.

2.

What are prospective teachers’ attitudes and motivations towards the idea of studying in courses using English as a medium of instruction, and which variables best predict their willingness to study in such courses? What are the attitudes of prospective teachers who chose to study a course in English as the medium of instruction towards the course, and what motivated them to pick the course?

Research Methodology Two studies were conducted, each using a different research methodology. Each study is therefore presented separately.

First study: Attitudes and motivations towards English medium-ofinstruction courses The participants in this study included a sample of 200 students who filled an online questionnaire sent to all college students studying towards their BEd degree in various disciplines (response rate of 10%). Most of them were female students (79%), thus reflecting the teaching force in Israel which is predominantly female (Zuzovsky & Donitsa-Schmidt, 2004).

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Students’ ages ranged from 23 to 35 with a mean age of 26 (SD=3.5). With regard to English academic proficiency (based on the EAP entrance level), the sample was slightly skewed with more high-level students answering the questionnaire. Thus, in order to assure adequate representation of the different English proficiency levels, a statistical ‘weight’ procedure was applied in order to assure the following breakdown: 13% (N=26) advanced English skills; 45% (N=90) medium-high level; 24% (N=48) medium-low level; 18% (N=36) basic level. These EAP levels correlated significantly (r=0.55; p