Multilingual Higher Education

This book argues that a multilingual approach to higher education is imperative in an increasingly globalised education environment. This book addresses the need to acknowledge other languages explicitly in classroom instruction and in student learning to improve student success, to widen access and to internationalise institutions.

Christa van der Walt is Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her research interests include the role of English in multilingual, academic contexts and she is the author of Multilingual Higher Education (Multilingual Matters, 2013).

Christa van der Walt is Professor of Language Education in the Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include language-in-education, English language teaching in multilingual contexts and multilingual education. She is the author of Multilingual Higher Education: Beyond English-medium Orientations (2013).

Multilingualism in higher education is increasingly important with regard to the growing mobility of students across the globe and the hidden influence that higher education has on curricula of secondary and primary education, promoting English as a 'lingua franca' for instance. Van der Walt has written an overview of research in this pressing field of multilingualism, presenting a model of critical insight. It conveys with remarkable context-sensitive understanding the situation of higher education in this time of globalization to the researcher and interested scholar.

Trailblazing in its challenge of the sole role of English in shaping multilingual higher education, this book not only offers readers practical information on structures and pedagogies being used in multilingual higher education across the globe, but theorizes what it all means in a context of widened access to universities and increased transnational mobility. A comprehensive, well-written integration of scholarship on multiliteracies, language planning, pedagogies, and higher education that is bound to become a classic in its field.