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English as a foreign language is no longer the sole object of specialized language classes, but increasingly a medium of university-level instruction in a range of content areas. This leads to a complex interaction between new academic content and the means of expressing this expertise through appropriate disciplinary language uses. Conceptually, this study focuses on oral disciplinary-reasoning episodes, in which knowledge structures are explicitly developed. These episodes exemplify diverse ways whereby disciplinary meaning making is co-constructed in English-medium instruction (EMI), with one specific type being language-related episodes which clarify specific items of terminology. Drawing on INTE-R-LICA, an international and interdisciplinary project, the database under investigation covers 671 minutes (67,605 words) of classroom discourse from a Spanish business administration degree programme. Findings suggest a structural diversity within these episodes, which are jointly constructed, and involve a rich variety of discursive strategies to effectuate meaning making. Our results indicate that an understanding of the crucial role of language in this disciplinary meaning-making process is essential for the TESOL profession to remain relevant in the current English language teaching educational landscape. In addition to providing expert input into the potential of a language-sensitive EMI pedagogy, TESOL teacher education will need to foster both language and content teachers' awareness of the disciplinary nature of classroom discourse and its role in developing subject expertise among their students.

While research on CLIL suggests positive impacts on lexical proficiency and on spoken language, the crucial question of the effect of CLIL on advanced learners, both in terms of subject-specific language (SSL) proficiency and content knowledge, has received less attention. We argue that the ability to negotiate a factual position appropriately is a key element of SSL, relating to both content and to foreign language ability. As a theoretical framework for understanding these negotiations of generally opposing standpoints, we use argumentation theory. The study was conducted in upper-secondary CLIL classes on European economics and politics in Austria. From the data set of 16 hours of video-recording, comprising teacher-whole class interactions, group work, and role plays, episodes of argumentation were extracted and analysed. Two types of argumentation patterns emerge, with one focused on the joint construction and learning of new SSL and content knowledge, and the other on the enactment of such knowledge in interaction. Students' engagement in these argumentations gives clear evidence of their SSL proficiency in prepared and unprepared oral production. As the type of classroom event has an effect on the specific argumentation patterns, the need for exposing students to a diversity of educational practice is underlined.

The rapid increase in English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has resulted in the need for a greater evidence base documenting EMI in practice spanning a range of settings. Studies of EMI focusing on linguistic issues are beginning to emerge but there are few comparative studies looking at multiple sites, levels and stakeholders. In response to this, the study reported here examined the roles of and conceptualisations of English and other languages in three EMI programmes in Thailand, Austria and the UK. A mixed-methods approach was adopted making use of a student questionnaire (N = 121) and interviews (N = 12) with lecturers and students, supported by documentary analysis and observations. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed diverse roles of English and other languages, various levels of recognition of multilingualism, and a sophisticated range of conceptualisations of language by stakeholders. In particular, English as discipline-specific language use emerged as a key concept, straddling language and content learning and teaching, as well as problematising simplistic divides between language and content. Furthermore, the complex understanding of the diverse roles of languages by participants offers a counter to perspectives of English in EMI as an unambiguous, monolithic entity.

While disagreements are often considered dispreferred choices and potentially face-threatening acts due to their oppositional nature, this perception does not adequately reflect the importance of disagreeing for many types of interaction, such as problem-solving and decision-making. Developing ability in performing this speech act therefore becomes relevant for learners of an L2 in order to show achievements in such general language learning targets as expressing and defending opinions and arguments, as well as negotiating consensual decisions. This paper presents a sequential analysis of disagreements in assessed interactions of advanced German-speaking learners of English, observed in three different exam formats, i.e. teacher-led interview, role play with teacher and paired student interaction. Overall, 33 disagreement episodes were identified in 18 oral exams. Findings show that the choice of examination format constrains range and type of disagreement trajectory enacted by the learners, highlighting the influence of minor contextual differences. Moreover, analyses of these exams suggest that linguistic alignment can and does co-exist with oppositional talk, supporting the notion that the purpose of achieving a successful joint performance of L2 interaction carries weight even when there is disagreement on a content level.

This paper focuses on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), an educational approach where a foreign language is used to teach non-language subjects. More specifically, this contribution presents new insights into an under-researched area, namely the potential of CLIL in fostering the learning and use of subject-specific target language vocabulary (SSV). This is investigated in a case study analysing spontaneous oral classroom productions of two groups of advanced, secondary-school students in an Austrian CLIL programme within the subject European economics and politics. Based on a holistic definition of SSV comprising both single and multi-word lexical units, complementary quantitative lexical and qualitative discourse-embedded research methods are employed to present a comprehensive picture of the engagement of learners with subject-specific vocabulary. Findings of the lexical analysis show a substantial and active use of SSV with some homogeneity but also considerable variation between students. Discursive investigations of the affordances for learning arising in interactions indicate that in constructing and negotiating SSV, the students make use of a range of learning and communication strategies, which indicates their heightened level of SSV learning awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]