Evolving Agendas in European English-Medium Higher Education: Interculturality, Multilingualism and Language Policy

ISBN-13: 9781137543110 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 244 str.

Clive W. Earls

Opis

In non-English-speaking countries, teaching degree programmes through the medium of English provides opportunities and challenges. This book explores issues of interculturality, language policy regarding English and national languages, and the economic, educational and political agendas in modern-day higher education in Europe.

Recenzje

Review 1 - Ulrich Ammon, University of Duisburg-Essen
The overall standard and quality of the text is high. It starts out with a report on the rise of English and the decline of German as lingua francas of science, which finally resulted in the introduction of degree programmes in English at German institutes of tertiary education. The report makes reference to a wide array of studies and presents a wealth of data which are relevant for the present research. The methodology is up to date and adequately chosen. 'Grounded theory', actually a methodological principle or host of methods rather than a theory, which relies on qualitative rather than quantitative methods, 'triangulation', and carefully considered ethical considerations, are just some of the well-chosen methodological aspects which the author has heeded. The preparation of the actual data collection with pre-piloting phase and the combination of guided interviews with questionnaire studies for data eliciting prove great circumspection. The author is well aware of the lack of representativeness of his findings, due to unavoidably biased sampling, to failure of including foreign students in the interview studies and to, again unavoidably, subjective judgement. He therefore is right NOT to apply more refined statistical analyses like significance testing. The data, nevertheless, shed light on important issues and, above all, show ways of more reliable follow-up studies. Presentation and argumentation are clear and precise throughout.

Earls' study substantially deepens our understanding of Germany's reasons and motivation for introducing the examined programmes and of views of participants, i.e. the three groups the study examines (students, teachers and supervisors). It gives significant new emic as well as etic information and adds knowledge on implicit language policy through comparing it with the explicit policy. It also shows that wide-spread assumptions, which have been expressed by researchers and politicians, are questionable and need further examination, like whether the overall effect of the programmes is detrimental to the study of German as a foreign language or rather enhances it, or whether the programmes provide brain gain for Germany or have the feared opposite effect of brain drain. The results are adequately refined in various ways through, for example, distinguishing indigenous German students (the country may loose through the programmes) from foreign students (the country may gain).

The book will have no serious competition from existing publications, which either are much less specific and detailed (e.g. 2016: Dimova, Hultgren, Jensen; 2013: Doiz, Lasagabaster, Sierra; 2008: Gnutzmann) or written in German (2013: He, 2012: Fandrych, Sedlaczek), and are all conceived from the opposite top-down perspective.

For all these reasons I warmly recommend publishing the book as proposed.

Response to Reviews
Many thanks for this positive review. The proposed monograph is based on my Ph.D thesis completed in August 2013. It will be revised significantly to improve readability and widen accessibility to a non-expert readership. Additionally, the methodology has been condensed significantly to frontload the 4 salient core themes of research.

Spis treści

Introduction
1. English in Contemporary German Society & English Medium-of-instruction Programmes
2. Language Policy and Planning in 21st Century Europe
3. Internationalisation, Globalisation and English-medium Higher Education
4. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as Platforms of Intercultural Teaching and Learning
5. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as a Mechanism of Brain Drain, Gain and Circulation
6. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as a Concomitant Challenge to, and Mechanism of, Implicit German Language Policy
7. English Medium-of-instruction at Higher Education: Advancing Understanding of the Phenomenon

O autorze

Clive W. Earls is currently Lecturer in German and Linguistics at the School of Modern Languages, Literature and Culture at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. He teaches and publishes primarily on Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Sociolinguistics, Language Policy and Planning and Higher Education Policy.

Blurb

English medium-of-instruction (EMI) is transforming modern-day universities across the globe, creating increasingly complex linguistic and intercultural realities which lecturers, students and decision-makers must negotiate. Teaching subject matter at higher-education level through the medium of English, in countries where English is neither an official nor national language (e.g. the Netherlands, Germany), is a highly complex phenomenon fraught with challenges and benefits. EMI programmes are capable of transforming domestic degree programmes into platforms of intercultural teaching and learning by infusing them with greater numbers of international faculty and students. Equally however, EMI programmes pose a socio-linguistic, -cultural and -economic challenge by institutionalising English at higher-education level within a country and displacing somewhat national and minority languages. This book, the first of its kind, provides an up-to-date and empirically-informed exploration of these salient themes in Europe, based on significant empirical data gathered and analysed on the German EMI context.