From English-medium instruction to active pluriliterate practices: A qualitative study of students’ attitudes and experiences

Buntinx, Natacha;Meunier, Fanny
(2019) Multilingual and Multicultural Learning: Policies and Practices — Location: Charles University, Prague (14.December.2019)

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Research shows that English is increasingly used as a language of instruction and of knowledge dissemination in higher education, having now acquired the status of “lingua academia” (Phillipson 2007: 130). This presentation focuses on eight in-depth interviews that give students a voice about the legitimacy and the impact of English in their academic life. These interviews were conducted as part of a research project about students’ attitudes towards English-medium instruction in Norway and French-speaking Belgium (Buntinx 2019). The results of the study highlight the contrast between students’ beliefs and their situated experiences. On the one hand, students endow English-taught classes with legitimacy when the use of English is justified by the international orientation of their future community of practice. In that sense, attending English-taught classes is useful to develop their language proficiency. On the other hand, active participation is rarely considered necessary in classes, thereby narrowing down the possible positive effect to mere receptive skills. Students further describe their difficulty in engaging with English-language resources and terminology, as well as in communicating their knowledge in English and in their first language. Based on these findings, some recommendations to improve students’ well-being in (partly) English-taught programmes are formulated. A follow-up research project about the cognitive and social challenges faced by students who read multilingually to write monolingual texts is also presented. The overarching objective of this project is to help students actively engage with sources in multiple languages and encourage the development of pluriliteracy. References Buntinx, N. (2019). Attitudes towards English-medium Instruction in Higher Education: Perspectives from Belgian and Norwegian Universities (Master’s thesis). Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium; University of Oslo, Norway. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/thesis:18914. Phillipson, R. (2007). English, no longer a foreign language in Europe? In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 123-136). Dordrecht: Springer.
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Buntinx, N., & Meunier, F. (2019). From English-medium instruction to active pluriliterate practices: A qualitative study of students’ attitudes and experiences. Multilingual and Multicultural Learning: Policies and Practices, Charles University, Prague. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/222100