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Universities in English medium instruction (EMI) settings are generally reticent about the linguistic diversity of their student body. Very often, a monolingual mindset dominates institutional thinking that casts linguistic diversity as obstacle rather than asset for the EMI curriculum. This has given rise to deficit models of English language provision in which language tutors are viewed as offering language support and 'fixing' language problems. It is timely to address these anachronistic views. In this paper, I do so by making the case for the multilingual agenda in EMI higher educational institutions. From a plurilingual perspective, I examine three narratives for developing the multilingual agenda: (1) 'the institution as anglophone and multilingual'; (2) 'students as plurilingual speakers'; and (3) 'EMI curriculum and pedagogy informed by language-as-resource'. I argue that the significance of these narratives lies in treating them as interrelated and demonstrating their salience for enacting wider higher education agendas at the institutional level.

This paper sets out to develop a finer-grained understanding of the 'plurilingual social actor' within an Anglophone higher educational setting. Drawing on data collected as part of The Multilingual University project, I examine how a group of plurilingual postgraduate students taking modules in applied linguistics at a university in London viewed their linguistic repertoires as a resource for the taught curriculum and what their experiences can tell us about the plurilingual social actor. The study opened an institutional space for making linguistic diversity visible and for considering how it was a resource for the curriculum. The findings indicate that multilingual resources play an important role in supporting learning at postgraduate level and reveal ways in which familiarity with English medium education shapes how postgraduate students mobilise their multilingual resources in relation to the taught curriculum. Importantly, the study shows how the plurilingual social actor offers a dynamic, powerful and affirmative identity position that is well aligned with the teaching and learning agenda in higher education. It is my contention that a better understanding of this alignment will allow us to raise awareness of language-as-resource and advance plurilingual pedagogies in the sector.

As universities in the Anglophone world attend to operating on a global stage, linguistic diversity in the sector has intensified. Historically, higher education has adopted language-as-problem orientations to managing linguistic diversity, viewing multilingual repertoires largely as an obstacle. An emerging body of work informed by language-as-resource orientations seeks to counter these deficit views. However, while timely, it risks treating the multilingual student population as a homogeneous group. This paper addresses this issue by developing a finer-grained understanding of student experiences of their multilingual repertoires with two groups of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds: working-class Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) undergraduate students and international postgraduate students from more socially elite families. By examining students' experiences of their multilingual repertoires in the institution, I demonstrate how universities stratify the linguistic diversity in their midst, arguing that this is resonant with elite-plebeian views of bilingualism. I contend that language-as-resource informed curriculum and pedagogy needs to attend to institutional practices that stratify linguistic diversity to avoid reinforcing a situation in which the multilingualism of students from professional and socially elite groups is reinforced while little is gained when it comes to the multilingualism of working-class BME students.

This paper sets out to develop a finer-grained understanding of the 'plurilingual social actor' within an Anglophone higher educational setting. Drawing on data collected as part of The Multilingual University project, I examine how a group of plurilingual postgraduate students taking modules in applied linguistics at a university in London viewed their linguistic repertoires as a resource for the taught curriculum and what their experiences can tell us about the plurilingual social actor. The study opened an institutional space for making linguistic diversity visible and for considering how it was a resource for the curriculum. The findings indicate that multilingual resources play an important role in supporting learning at postgraduate level and reveal ways in which familiarity with English medium education shapes how postgraduate students mobilise their multilingual resources in relation to the taught curriculum. Importantly, the study shows how the plurilingual social actor offers a dynamic, powerful and affirmative identity position that is well aligned with the teaching and learning agenda in higher education. It is my contention that a better understanding of this alignment will allow us to raise awareness of language-as-resource and advance plurilingual pedagogies in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a seminar on multilingualism in higher education in English-dominant and English-medium instructional contexts hosted by Languages in Education Research Centre at the University of London Institute of Education on July 4, 2014. Topics include language and identity in British higher education; medium of instruction in English-dominant settings; and role of identity of bilingual subject lecturers in use of English as a third language on English-medium instructional programs.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including the International Conference on Language Issues in English-Medium Universities held at the University of Hong Kong, China in June 2008, the racial biases occurred in the admissions systems of minority ethnic students who studied in prestigious colleges in London, England and the multilingual identities development for undergraduate students in Great Britain.

This paper examines linguistic diversity among minority ethnic undergraduate students categorised as from widening participation backgrounds in a new university in London. All students are British born and educated and from working-class families. The paper considers how the students negotiate multilingual and bidialectal identities within the context of an academic writing programme regarded as providing English language remediation. Firstly, there is a consideration of how the students position their heritage languages in relation to English. It identifies three key ways in which the students adopt multilingual identity positions in the academic community, showing how these allow the students to display weaker to stronger affiliation to heritage languages in the setting. Secondly, there is an exploration of how the students adopt bidialectal identity positions to contrast the 'posh' (standard English) practices of the academic community with the 'slang' (vernacular English) language practices of their peers. It considers ways in which the 'posh/slang' binary enables the students to establish social networks and negotiate their positioning as in need of English language remediation. The paper argues for an imagining of English-medium universities as multilingual spaces in which the linguistic diversity of non-traditional minority ethnic students is viewed primarily as an asset, rather than as a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An obituary for college teacher Peter Martin is presented.