1,721,129 research outputs found
The Challenges of Internationalization in EMI Tertiary Education in Ethiopia
No full textThis chapter concentrates on the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, which uses English as a medium of instruction throughout most of its education system. After describing the evolution of the modern education system, and tracing the languages which have been the national medium of instruction in the twentieth century, it examines national and institutional educational policy documents to gauge the extent to which they incorporate an awareness of an international context and internationalization strategies. Data from a questionnaire submitted to 4 universities complements the national picture. In other countries, English medium instruction is introduced as a strategy for attracting international students and creating international classrooms; in Ethiopia, where higher education has always taken place through English, what is at stake is the quality of education
EMI and the Internationalization of Universities, an Overview
No full textThis chapter describes the state of the art in the area of
internationalization of higher education (IHE) and English-medium
instruction (EMI) by setting out the key concepts, research methods and
areas of controversy to be addressed in the various chapters of the volume.
The first section of the chapter looks broadly at internationalization
as a field, outlining the areas of study, and the findings of large-scale
surveys as well as identifying the most popular areas of research.
second thematic section looks at how internationalization intersects with
English-medium instruction, paying particular attention to language
policy, the role of English as a lingua franca (ELF), and the teaching and
learning of disciplinary content. The section concludes with some recommendations
for research and teaching in EMI
Editing Specialised Texts in English A corpus-assisted analysis II edition
No full textThis volume examines the editing of specialised texts as practised by the Editing Unit at the Directorate- General for Translation at the European
Commission in Brussels. Following a corpus-assisted approach, it compares two comparable corpora of the same texts, in their non-edited and
edited versions. Using quantitative techniques from corpus linguistics together with manual text analysis, the author reflects on the types of revisions that are made, of a formal, grammatical and lexical nature, and on some phraseological aspects of the
edited texts. The conclusions drawn are that the written English representing supranational organizations such as the European Union institutions
continues to be norm-bound, adhering to standard British English. However, traces of influences from other European languages, in terms of false friends,
and certain grammatical phrases, characterise the corpus of edited texts more than reference corpora of British English. Similarly to translated language, edited language is also found to be characterised by explicitation and simplification
A corpus-based contrastive study of evaluation in English and Italian
No full textThis book breaks new ground by considering the phenomenon of evaluation - the expression of the point of view of a writer/speaker - in opinion articles in both English and Italian. Evaluation is an under-researched topic in Italian but has received considerable attention in English since the year 2000 (Hunston and Thompson Evaluation in Text). The book considers a corpus of opinion articles from quality newspapers in English and Italian, which all deal with the Kosovo crisis of 1999, and compares both the content of the evaluations of the same entities and persons and the lexico-grammatical means by which this comes about. After the introductory chapters explaining the aim of the book, the historical background of the crisis and an overview of relevant literature in English and Italian, Chapter 4 concentrates on the figure of Milosevic and the entities NATO and the UN, comparing and contrasting the contents of the evaluation as well as the lexicogrammatical means by which this comes about in the two languages. Chapter 5 examines the overt presence of the author in pronouncing these evaluations, looking at first person verbs or impersonal expressions, and finds the English articles much more explicitly personal. Chapter 6 examines ways of attributing evaluations to others and finds that reported evaluations in the English articles encourage an attitude of suspect in the reader, whereas the Italian writers use the lexicogrammatical resources at their disposal less for this aim. Chapter 7 examines the use of adverbs of evaluation in both corpora: here too, the English corpus presents examples of adverbs (such as 'allegedly') which encourage a critical view in the reader. The English articles also appear to encourage an attitude of debate in the reader, while the Italian articles tend to dictate more the way things stand or should be read. The last chapter concentrates on the use of the interrogative in opinion articles, as rhetorical questions which are meant to persuade or as real questions which aim to open up new debates. The methodology used in the book represents both quantitative analyses and close textual reading
EMI – A Tool for the Internationalisation of Higher Education
No full textOver the past two decades, EMI has emerged as a tool for the internationalisation of higher education as a necessary response to the forces of globalisation. As a result of the development of higher education in the same period in Europe and the rest of the world,1 EMI has become a growing trend. Through a change in the medium of instruction, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Europe and beyond have initiated paradigm shifts in the delivery and services of higher education in order to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Indeed, the question of language leads university teachers, as well as university leadership, to consider the linguistic, pedagogical and cultural implications of this new context, as well as to rethink the professional development of university teaching staff
Taking stock and moving forwards: new spaces, agency, authenticity and critical perspectives
No full textThe concept of internationalisation at home (IaH) is relatively new in Italian universities, not least in the institution where the projects recounted in this book take place. As mentioned in the introduction, definitions of IaH “shift the focus of internationalization away from mobility” (Leask, Marantz-Gal, introductory chapter), which has traditionally been the focus of internationalization activities. Patterns of student mobility were already reshaping alongside geopolitical change and the impact of the global pandemic has accelerated the need to rethink Internationalisation as mobility (Mok and Montgomery, 2021; Mok, Xiong, Ke and Cheung, 2021). As the external and internal environment of globalised higher education transforms, Italian universities are responding with innovation in curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment (Giovannetti & Poggiolini 2018; Mair, 2021 and this volume; Mastellotto and Zanin 2021). The chapters of this book have presented notable examples of this. We highlight the new spaces, which are being constructed, the agency and authenticity in student-led learning and the need for critical perspectives on internationalisation
'Naturalness is to text what grammatical correctness is to sentences': a corpus-driven perspective
No full textThis paper addresses an issue that in my experience of working with non-native teachers of English in Italy is often left by the wayside. Sometimes it is unnoticed, but mostly it is not perceived to be of great importance. The problem is that of grammatically correct (or well-formed) but unnatural-sounding English. My aim here is simply to argue that grammatical correctness is still given excessive priority by many teachers today, and that high-quality teaching needs to centre around natural-sounding language, with particular attention to lexical patterning. Obviously, no teacher would actively theorise that linguistic naturalness should be ignored; nevertheless, their choices of activities for students, and their marking of student texts reveal possibly unconscious priorities, where grammar has pride of place. If a coherent theoretical position esteeming natural-sounding language is convincingly set out, and a more heuristic approach to language learning is accepted, and if intelligently-crafted instruments can be seen to help enact this view of language learning, then, perhaps, grammar will return to its rightful place in the chorus, alongside – rather than blocking out - lexical patterning
Incorporating Editing into the Training of English Language Students in the Era of English as a Lingua Franca
No full textEditing is an increasingly common practice in institutions such as the European Commission, which employ large numbers of language professionals. This article aims to demonstrate the pedagogical value of including editing activities in advanced English language courses. It starts by distinguishing spoken English as a lingua franca used in international institutions from the written English required in the same institutions’ documents, which are expected to conform to norms embodied in reference works. It describes an introductory module to editing developed for Italian university students. In a series of tasks undertaken over three months, the students reflected on revisions made to specialized documents by expert editors, read extracts from reference works on good writing in English, were introduced to reference and specialized corpora, and attempted to edit a document themselves. The module raised awareness among students of the editing process, of how to use corpora for solving doubts and exploring language, and alerted them to the contradiction between English as a Lingua Franca (EFL) in its spoken form and the norms required in international institutions for documents written in English
"Who has eaten of the pot knows the taste of the broth" In praise of monolingual English dictionaries
No full textThis article traces the history of the main English dictionaries and points out the advantages for learners of the language of using a modern monolingual dictionary. Drawing on authentic student texts, it identifies two common errors, the confusion of "find/find out" and the use of "have the possibility to" and shows that a corpus-based dictionary can help distinguish between the former and how a collocation dictionary can be an aid to choosing appropriate verb+noun combination in the latter
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