"The impact of Internationalisation Policies in Higher Education Institutions": Online Talk organized by BUSRG Talk Series 2021 "Global Englishes/English Medium Instruction Network"
Online Talk organized by
Boğaziçi University Department of Foreign Language Education
Sociolinguistics Research Group (BUSRG)
Talk Series 2021
"Global Englishes/English Medium Instruction Network"
Date: 10 June 2021
Time: 19.00-21.00
Livestream link will be shared.
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The impact of Internationalisation Policies in Higher Education Institutions
Enric Llurda, Universitat de Lleida (UdL)
Abstract
Many European universities have set ‘internationalisation policies’ as one of their top priorities and therefore have designed and implemented specific policies involving the three main groups of agents that form part of the academic community: students, academic and administrative staff. From the point of view of language policy, this process of internationalisation in non-English speaking universities tends to be associated with a greater presence of English. However, in bilingual communities such as Catalonia, with Catalan and Spanish as co-official languages, the introduction of English may be the source of ambiguities and tensions which are related to what can be defined as the double role of higher education institutions. On the one hand, universities aim to provide their students with the best skills to allow them to ‘compete’ for work in a global world, and English tends to figure very high in this set of skills. On the other hand, higher education institutions may be seen by society as having the mission to protect and promote the language and culture of its local environment; this is especially relevant in bilingual contexts in which there is a minority language/culture that is perceived as threatened by the dominance of the majority language/culture.
In this talk, I will cover different aspects related to such internationalisation policies that I (together with other colleagues at UdL) have been working on during the last 12 years. In particular, I will present the results obtained in 3 different studies, each looking at the following issues:
- Linguistic, attitudinal, intercultural and identity development of study-abroad university students
- The role of smaller languages like Catalan alongside bigger languages (Spanish and English) in internationalised contexts
- The use of plurilingual/translanguaging models of teaching ESP
Biodata
Enric Llurda is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Lleida. He has extensively published in international journals and books on non-native language teachers, English as a lingua franca, language attitudes, multilingualism, translanguaging, internationalisation and language education and policy in higher education institutions. He is the coordinator of the research group Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada and is currently working on the project “Development of disciplinary literacies in English as a Lingua Franca at university”.
