Volume 11, Issue 2

The adoption of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) is a world-wide phenomenon as part of the internationalization strategies of higher education institutions. While this policy can be seen as a threat to multilingualism, studies on attitudes suggest that EMI lecturers and students see the use of the first language (L1) as a useful resource for content comprehension. Our research questions focused on EMI lecturers’ motivations/reasons for their linguistic choices in the classroom and the strategies in relation to those choices. Our goal was to find out whether they were already adopting an English as a lingua franca approach to EMI, i.e. favoring the use of both Portuguese and English in class. Data collected via questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and observations revealed that both languages are used by lecturers endorsing either an English-only approach or a multilingual one, with similar objectives. Whereas Portuguese seems to increase student participation and reduce insecurity, English provides opportunities to engage with the professional discourse and language practices valued in international research exchanges. In the classroom, a multilingual approach better addresses the lecturers’ pedagogical concerns, while English-only favours their language-oriented goals but is introduced gradually. The results are consistent with a view of English as part of a repertoire of language and pedagogical practices in EMI multilingual settings where students and lecturers share the same language.

We studied German students’ academic writing skills in English at a Dutch university. Their performances are typical examples of English as a lingua franca (ELF) as these students are non-native users of English evaluated by subject lecturers who are non-native users as well. Our database is a corpus of written answers to an open examination question in the context of an EMI (English Medium Instruction) bachelor in psychology. We aimed to detect those characteristics in this specific type of discourse that may affect the comprehensibility of the students’ answers, which in turn may have consequences for their grading by the course lecturer. English language experts assigned Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels and commented on grammar, use of (academic) vocabulary, and text coherence. First, we correlated the grades assigned by the course lecturer and the CEFR levels. There was no correlation. Second, we analyzed the linguistic comments. We found that academic style was poorly present in this type of text. Importantly, we found no proof of communicative blockings or obstacles related to English proficiency levels between the student writer and the lecturer reader. We conclude that informed content interpretation based on contextual appropriateness of the answers overrules grammatical and lexical non-standard characteristics and outweighs the lack of semantic coherence.

This paper investigates distinct characteristics of written English by Japanese L1 (first language) speakers of English and compares them with common features of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Utilizing categories drawn from the literature, I have analyzed 92 writing samples by Japanese university students in order to assess whether there are any distinct characteristics shared among L1 Japanese speakers of English, particularly as to (i) lexico-grammar, (ii) lexis, (iii) semantics, and (iv) pragmatics. I have then examined whether there is any overlap between Japanese characteristics and ELF. The phenomenon of extending a sense of the original English word in Japanese and of then using the extended sense in English has supplied evidence of L1 seeping into L2 (second language) English use. In addition, the use of certain expressions has been found to be tightly connected with the Japanese language and culture (e.g., ‘study society’) in this study. This study has also shown a clear overlap between the writing of Japanese university students and common ELF properties and features, including extra use and regularization – in particular, the extra use of the particle and the pluralization of uncountable nouns – and explicitness and neutrality in word choice.

International business is increasingly conducted through the medium of English as a Business Lingua Franca (BELF). Yet, little is known about interactional strategies in BELF, specifically in internal written business communications. Our study turns to this hitherto less explored area and investigates one of the most important speech acts in the context of workplace communication, i.e. requests. The data under study come from a unique corpus of 398 authentic internal emails produced by the multilingual employees of an international insurance corporation. Using a combination of corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytical methods, we identify and classify request strategies formulated by BELF users with ten diverse first-language (L1) backgrounds, and assess how their choice of pragmatic strategies might be influenced by their lingua-cultural background as well as extralinguistic factors, notably the email senders’ power position within the corporate hierarchy and their gender. Across the corpus, the level of directness in request strategies was high, suggesting that most BELF users prioritised ‘getting the job done’. Yet, the directness of email senders’ request strategies was modulated by a complex interaction between lingua-cultural factors, power position and gender. The most crucial observation was that high-power employees chose more direct strategies than low-power employees, but this pattern was modulated by their lingua-cultural background and by gender.

The paper presents the background, design, implementation and impact of the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme of the EU-funded ENRICH Project, which ran from 2018 to 2021. The programme, which has been freely available online since January 2022 (http://enrichproject.eu), aims at implementing the principles and processes of ELF awareness in empowering English language teachers to integrate the role of English as a Lingua Franca in their multilingual classrooms. We begin by justifying the development of the ENRICH Project with reference to the policies of the European Union supporting multilingualism and go on to discuss the principles of ELF awareness that informed the ENRICH CPD programme. We also present the priorities, target groups, key objectives and innovative practices of the ENRICH CPD programme. The paper is rounded up with a sample of participants’ responses to certain CPD activities and with an appreciation of the impact of the programme on participant teachers and their learners.