Search

Festskrift til Anne Holmen

I dette kapitel diskuterer vi det særlige som sorterende. Vi præsenterer eksempler fra to forskellige sammenhænge, dels mundtlig eksamen på universitetet, dels brug af fagsprog i naturfagsundervisningen i grundskolen. I begge sammenhænge er der nogle mere eller mindre udtalte rammer for, hvordan man skal deltage, som ikke er tilgængelige for alle, og som derfor kan virke sorterende. Den mundtlige eksamen er en form, som er udbredt i det danske system og derfor velkendt for de danske studerende, men ikke for de internationale studerende. I naturfagsundervisningen kræver den måde, man skal deltage på, adgang til særlige måder at tale på, og det kan lukke nogle erfaringer ude – enten hvis de ikke passer ind i rammen for naturfag, eller hvis de ikke udtrykkes i det rigtige sprog. Samtidig har både mundtlig eksamen og det at lære at udtrykke sig i et specialiseret sprog imidlertid en række fordele, som betyder, at det ikke er en løsning blot af fjerne dem. I kapitlet diskuterer vi, hvordan man på den ene side kan opretholde former, som er meningsfulde, og på den anden side afhjælpe den sortering, der finder sted.

Examining English medium instruction (EMI) through a corpus-based approach, this volume offers a critical inquiry into the use of different linguistic and pedagogical strategies in the EMI classroom. It explores aspects of content lecturers' language use, pedagogy, and intercultural communicative competence by drawing on the findings obtained from EMI lecture corpus analysis and post-observation interviews with EMI lecturers from five universities in Croatia, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. The book also offers insights into lecturers' engagement with students in English, which is their second language, as well as their perception of differences between EMI and first-language-medium instruction (L1MI). Finally, the volume provides readers with corpus-based analysis of teachers' oral ability profiles, as a basis for the identification of communicational challenges and provision of language support. The book will be of interest to scholars interested in EMI in higher education, and postgraduate students in applied linguistics and TESOL programs. It will also be relevant to teachers who are involved in EMI provision, teacher trainers who design support programs for EMI teachers, and policymakers who establish language-in-education policies for EMI.

This chapter points to the fact that notwithstanding the global spread of English-medium instruction (EMI) and a growing body of research into EMI in different disciplines and higher education contexts, transnational, and comparative studies on EMI that draw on large-scale cross-institutional data are extremely scarce. Hence, the TAEC Corpus was created as part of the Erasmus+ project "Transnational Alignment of English Competences for University Lecturers" (TAEC) and included data from various EMI programs at five European universities in Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Croatia, respectively. The TAEC Corpus consists of classroom interaction data, comprising transcripts of 30 video recorded 90- or 120-minute lectures, and enables the cross-institutional analysis of different aspects of classroom language use, such as mediation and translanguaging, and of content teachers' oral English language proficiency. The corpus is accompanied by transcripts of 30 structured post-observation interviews through which the lecturers were asked about their experience of teaching in English, professional development for EMI, and language proficiency, policy, and use. The chapter presents the development and the characteristics of the TAEC Corpus and concludes with an overview of other chapters in the volume, in which the data gleaned from the corpus and the interviews were analyzed and discussed.

Internationalization has become one of the main strategic goals of universities as part of their endeavors to prepare students for careers in a globalized world. However, the establishment of English-medium instruction (EMI) has raised concerns about the quality of teaching and learning, given that most stakeholders involved in the process are second language (L2) speakers of English. Therefore, alongside internationalization policies, a number of universities across Europe have also implemented policies for internal assessment of lecturers' English proficiency with the intention to ensure the quality of teaching. Given that oral English ability for teaching in EMI is an under-researched construct, limited information is available about EMI lecturers' linguistic and communicative ability profiles. Based on the EMI lecturer performances from the TAEC corpus, this chapter discusses how Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scales can be utilized to outline EMI lecturer profiles, and how understanding the complexity of their profiles allows us to identify the sources of communication difficulties and provide detailed feedback and/or offer adequate training support.

This study investigates how video-based mock tests can reveal the types of phonological errors that novice British Sign Language (BSL) learners make most often, and how teachers might help learners increase their phonological accuracy. The testing need that this local language test was designed to address was a predominance of phonological errors among 10 level-1 BSL learners at the author’s university, with relatively little progress being made in enabling them to target their phonological skills effectively. The mock test devised to meet this need, required that students send a video clip of themselves signing about an assigned topic. To categorise the errors, the five phonological parameters of BSL, handshape, location, orientation, movement, and non-manual features, were applied. The results of the mock test showed that most common errors were in the handshape and movement parameters, but that movement errors were repeated more often between signers. Some movement errors seemed to result from confusion between signs in the same semantic domain. Deploying and analysing mock tests in this way can meet the local needs of learners while giving teachers insights that they can use to inform their lessons, and opportunities to increase their own meta-linguistic awareness and analytical skills.

The growing implementation of English in higher education in its multiple functions has led researchers and practitioners to adopt a variety of terminology, theoretical frameworks, and instructional approaches. The two widely used terms of English-medium instruction (EMI) and content and language integrated learning (CLIL), respectively, are commonly but inconsistently referenced in research and publications about the use of English for content instruction and learning in higher education. This chapter thus offers a review of these two constructs from the standpoint of educational policy and strategy, with the aim of addressing identified learning needs or desires in higher education. Through differentiation of the EMI construct based on needs and goals in different contexts and disciplines, this chapter considers the contextual distinctions to place CLIL within an EMI conceptual framework, as well as outlines the fundamental CLIL dimensions, and argues for a reconceptualisation where EMI represents the educational context and CLIL the pedagogical one.