[lg policy] Dublin: Toward Multilingual Universities

[Harold Schiffman]

Toward Multilingual Universities

September 13, 2012 - 3:00am
By Elizabeth Redden

DUBLIN, Ireland -- European universities continue to respond to
enormous demand from international students for English-language
courses, and should develop robust language policies that articulate
an appropriate balance of English and other global and national
languages in the curriculum, panelists said Wednesday at the European
Association for International Education conference. English is
well-established as the dominant international language of academe
worldwide.

“A lingua academia is a curse and a blessing at the same time,” said
Christian Timm, director of the Centre for Languages and Philology at
Ulm University, in Germany. Timm chaired the panel entitled “Lingua
academia vs. linguistic diversity at European universities."

“The ideal is a mix between the lingua franca [specifically, in this
case, the lingua academia], the languages of the country, and
multilingualism in general,” said Pinuccia Contino, who directs the
multilingualism and translation unit of the European Commission, which
in 2011 released a report entitled Lingua Franca: Chimera or Reality.
“Whenever this mix is not balanced, there are problems and there can
be serious consequences and losses.”

Contino said that these losses are not only cultural in nature, but
they also can be political -- in that the exclusive use of English in
research could prevent the dissemination of knowledge among a
citizenry – and even economic. “Let’s not forget that when we have a
lot of languages we also have a lot of induced jobs, which deal with
languages and with translation.”

A leading Italian public university, the Politecnico di Milano,
attracted headlines this spring when it announced it would move to
all-English instruction at the graduate level in 2014. However, the
more typical approach has been for European universities to introduce
English-language courses as a complement to offerings in the national
language(s).

English-taught programs – which are typically marketed to
international students -- have multiplied rapidly in Europe, from 700
in 2002 to 2,400 in 2007, according to data collected by the
Brussels-based Academic Cooperation Association. The association has
not collected any more recent data on this subject, but Queenie Lam, a
project officer, said that the StudyPortals.eu website currently lists
7,500 such programs.

This trend has worried some in international education, as was
apparent from the audience comments on Wednesday. The programs are
being formed to satisfy international student demand, but some in the
audience bemoaned that these students aren't interested in learning
national languages like Polish, or even French. Audience members also
expressed concern that some of the professors who are teaching
English-language courses have low levels of English language
proficiency themselves.

Johann Fischer, president of the European Confederation of Language
Centres in Higher Education, pointed to the University of Copenhagen
as an example of good practice in this regard: the university has
testing procedures in place to certify the English proficiency of
academic staff.

One university that is just beginning to offer English-language
courses is the Universidad de León, in Spain. This summer, the
university offered training to economics and engineering faculty
interested in teaching in English. To prepare for the task, the 20
instructors participated a 30-hour course on campus, as well as a
two-week intensive course in Ireland, hosted by the University College
Dublin.

“Long term, there has to be a policy” determining what a minimum level
of English proficiency is for instructors, said Robert O’Dowd, who
teaches English as a foreign language and applied linguistics at León.
“At the moment we’re depending on people’s goodwill, and providing
them all the support we can.”

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/13/panelists-debate-lingua-academia-vs-linguistic-diversity#ixzz26SXB8F1U
Inside Higher Ed


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