Seminars on Language and Intercultural Teaching
June 6, 2008
Please note that this discussion will take place at 9:00 a.m. in Ülikooli Kohvik (2nd floor).
Pre-Seminar Homework Assignment
To prepare for this seminar, I would like you to do some reading and reflecting on the topic of English in international higher education. In the first attached file, I have collected a list of several articles — some of them from popular news sources (Financial Times, New York Times), others from specific journals on language or higher education, and one policy-related document from the Council of Europe. Please choose reading material that looks interesting. If you come across additional reading that is relevant, feel free to use it for our discussion as well. However, I don't want to burden you with too much homework, so while you are welcome to browse all of the articles, I would ask that you focus on reading and thinking about just ONE of them.
After you have done your reading/reflecting. Please formulate 3-4 discussion questions to bring with you to our meeting next Friday.
Discussion Reading
- The Imperial Tongue: English as the Dominating Academic Language by Philip Altbach, Fall 2007 in International Higher Education.
- Where is English taking universities? By Bob Wilkinson, March 17, 2005, Guardian Weekly.
- English, a cuckoo in the European higher education nest of languages? by Robert Phillipson, April 2006, European Journal of English Studies.
- Europe challenges US for foreign students by adding more English courses by Susan Robertson, September 27, 2007, GlobalHigherEd blog.
- What Will Globalization Do to Languages? by Stephen J. Dubner, May 28, 2008 from A Freakonomics Quorum.
- The Internationalization of Higher Education: Motivations and Realities by Philip Altbach and Jane Knight, 2007, Journal of Studies in International Education.
- A Defense of European Languages by Stephen Brockmann, May 15, 2008. Inside Higher Ed.
- BUSINESS LIFE: New dawn in a shared language by Andrew Yeh, April 13, 2005, Financial Times.
- Key aspects of the use of English in Europe by Claude Truchot, 2002, Council of Europe Strasbourg.
