Please join us for a seminar given by the ILC visiting scholar Professor Ute Smit, University of Vienna. The seminar is also part of the CLLEAR and CGE seminar series.

Wednesday 19 February 2014, 5:00 PM

Avenue Campus Lecture Theatre C

Topic: English-medium education in multilingual university settings: A sociolinguistic examination of interactive explaining in the classroom

Abstract: At a time of growing internationalization in tertiary education, English-medium education in multilingual university settings (or EMEMUS) has become a common practice, reflected in ample research providing descriptions of local realisations (Doiz, Lasagabaster and Sierra 2013, Jenkins 2013, Smit and Dafouz 2012). In order to expand the focus towards a theoretical understanding, this paper will first present a conceptual framework intended for dynamic analyses of EMEMUS (Dafouz and Smit forthc.). Drawing on recent sociolinguistic orientations and discursive approaches (e.g. Blommaert 2010, Hult 2010, Scollon and Scollon 2004, Shohamy 2006), the framework regards EMEMUS as a social phenomenon and views discourse as access point to six relevant dimensions, which are regarded as inherently complex, contextually bound and intersecting dynamically with one another. The analytical strength of the framework will then be argued for in relation to a specific case of EMEMUS and its English as a lingua franca classroom practices, in particular interactive explaining (Smit 2010). By combining macro, meso and micro levels of policy and practices as embodied in interviews, questionnaires and classroom talk, the dynamic developments in explanatory practices will be analysed in their interlacing with other sociolinguistic and educational dimensions, such as the localised realisation of internationalisation, language managerial decisions, the affordances of the academic discipline and the social agents involved.