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The English-medium paradigm: a conceptualisation of English-medium teaching in higher education

The discourse on English-medium teaching in higher education uses several
terms and concepts to describe practices, very often synonymously. This
contribution aims to fill the research gap of a conceptualisation of
English-medium teaching in higher education. It will identify relevant
approaches and their corresponding terminology, as well as clarify which
approaches are most suitable for higher education. Given that the past
decades have seen a substantial rise in the use of English as a teaching
language in European compulsory schooling [Dalton-Puffer, C. 2011.
"Content and Language Integrated Learning: From Practice to Principles?"
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31: 182-183], the paper will also draw
parallels between the secondary and the tertiary levels of education. At
the same time, it will also be shown why insights drawn from research
conducted in secondary education cannot simply be transferred to the
tertiary level of education.
The main focus of the paper is on the "English-medium Paradigm", a
framework created to identify prevalent instructional types in Englishtaught
programmes at universities in non-Anglophone countries
[Unterberger, B. 2014. "English-medium Degree Programmes in Austrian
Tertiary Business Studies: Policies and Programme Design." Dissertation,
University of Vienna, 45-52]. The paradigm is based on terminological
and conceptual considerations gained from the critical discussion of
English for specific purposes, English for academic purposes, Content and
language integrated learning and English-medium instruction literature
[e.g. Bhatia, V. K. 1993. Analysing Genre: Language use in Professional
Settings. London: Longman; Hyland, K. 2006. English for Academic
Purposes: An Advanced Resource Book. London: Routledge; Dalton-Puffer,
C. 2007. "Academic Language Functions in a CLIL Environment". In Diverse
Contexts - Converging Goals: CLIL in Europe, edited by D. Marsh, 201-209.
Mehrsprachigkeit in Schule und Unterricht 6. Frankfurt am Main: Lang;
Dafouz, E., and U. Smit. 2014. "Towards a Dynamic Conceptual Framework
for English-medium Education in Multilingual University Settings". Applied
Linguistics. doi:10.1093/applin/amu034]. The paper therefore provides a
timely conceptualisation of the varieties of English-medium teaching in
higher education which also takes into account pedagogical
considerations as well as implications for curriculum design.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:6416
Date07 1900
CreatorsSchmidt-Unterberger, Barbara
PublisherTaylor&Francis Group
Source SetsWirtschaftsuniversität Wien
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, PeerReviewed
Formatapplication/pdf
RightsCreative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1491949, http://www.tandfonline.com, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3793-0968, http://epub.wu.ac.at/6416/

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