Evolving Agendas in European English-Medium Higher Education

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.

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.

Introduction1. English in Contemporary German Society & English Medium-of-instruction Programmes2. Language Policy and Planning in 21st Century Europe3. Internationalisation, Globalisation and English-medium Higher Education4. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as Platforms of Intercultural Teaching and Learning5. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as a Mechanism of Brain Drain, Gain and Circulation6. English Medium-of-instruction Programmes as a Concomitant Challenge to, and Mechanism of, Implicit German Language Policy7. English Medium-of-instruction at Higher Education: Advancing Understanding of the Phenomenon