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English medium instruction in Higher Education: The role of ELF

Chapter · December 2018

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In Gao A., C. Davison & C. Leung (eds.) 2018. Second Handbook of English Language
Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education.

English medium instruction in Higher Education: The role of ELF

Abstract:
It is a well-established fact that English has become the primary lingua franca of choice
around the world among speakers of whom the majority are not native English speakers.
And as research into the phenomenon of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has been
demonstrating for over twenty years, the kinds of English used in lingua franca
communication often differ from those used among native English speakers and that are
(still) taught to ‘foreign’ learners in EFL classrooms. The domain of higher education (HE) is a
notable example of the spread and use of ELF: in their drive to internationalise, many
universities have switched to teaching in English-medium so as to recruit more students and
staff from outside their national borders. The internationalisation of universities is thus
going hand-in-hand with ‘Englishisation’, with university campuses paradoxically becoming
increasingly linguaculturally diverse on the one hand, and increasingly focused on English on
the other. However, not only is English being used in myriad ways on campus, but other
languages are also present, regardless of whether the setting is an Anglophone or non-
Anglophone country. English Medium Instruction (EMI) is thus a complex phenomenon, but
its (multi)lingua franca nature is as yet poorly understood and largely ignored outside ELF-
oriented research into EMI. In order to address the gap, this chapter explores the research
findings and their implications for making current HE language policies, both overt and
covert, more relevant to the diverse uses of English and other languages on university
campuses around the world.

Keywords and keyword phrases:

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), English as a Multilingua Franca, English as Medium of
Instruction (EMI), linguistic diversity, Higher Education (HE), international students.

Introduction

While it would be a gross exaggeration to claim that all universities which claim
international status use English as their only, or even main, working language, it is fair to say
that HE is “a prototypical ELF scenario” (Smit, 2018: 387). For although there are
undoubtedly universities that continue to operate at a purely national level using their local
language(s) rather than English, those claiming national status are a diminishing breed. And
while there are still other HE institutions that claim international status but eschew English
and operate in other lingua francas entirely, these represent a relatively small number of
the totality of international universities (see Jenkins 2017). By contrast, there were almost
8000 courses being taught in English medium in non-Anglophone countries in 2016 (Mitchell
2016), and that number is likely to have grown substantially since then. Meanwhile, Times
Higher Education, a British-based HE magazine, reported in September 2017 that in the
eight years until then, there had been a fifty-fold growth in the number of English-taught
 2

bachelors’ courses in continental European universities, from just 55 in 2009 to 2,900 in

2017 (Bothwell 2017). Likewise, Walkinshaw et al. (2017) provide a raft of statistics in
respect of the Asia-Pacific HE sector. These demonstrate the exponential growth of EMI in
the region’s universities over the past ten years in order to increase staff and student
mobility, both inward and outward.

This fast-increasing activity has led to a proliferation of research publications on EMI over
the past few years. Wilkinson (2017), for example, reports a Google Scholar search that he
had carried out over the previous six years for ‘English-medium instruction/EMI’ in ‘higher
education/university’, which yielded 550 books and articles. This number was increased by
only a further 50 items if his search was expanded to ten years, and 72 if it was widened to
any time. As Wilkinson points out, a substantial amount of this growth in research interest
has focused on east and southeast Asia, most notably China, Japan, Malaysia, and South
Korea. Evidently, then, although the current surge of EMI was initially triggered in Europe by
the Erasmus programme, and subsequently strengthened by the Bologna Declaration (see
Murata and Iino, 2018), it is now spreading far beyond its European beginnings.

The question, therefore, is what does this recent rapid rise in EMI universities entail, and
what does it mean for those who are involved? At a basic level, the answer to the first part
of the question is that it entails bringing together on any one university campus students
(and to a lesser, but growing extent, staff) from a wide range of nationalities, and thus a
wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, who carry out their daily activities
primarily in English. Universities tend to welcome the resulting diversity on their campuses
in terms of their students’ and staffs’ nationalities, and can be found boasting online and in
other promotional material of their own institution’s international make-up, with their
students, especially, coming from a large number of countries. My own institution, the
University of Southampton, for example, highlights in the ‘Global’ section of its website that
it currently educates students from over 135 countries. In respect of these students’ lingua-
cultural backgrounds, however, the situation vis-à-vis diversity is rather different. In
particular, there appears to be an assumption, albeit often tacit, among many international
university managements and staffs, that despite the linguistic diversity before their eyes (or,
more often, in their ears), not only should the kind of language to be promoted on campus
as acceptable be English only, but it should also aim to be only native English, by which they
generally mean certain so-called ‘standard’ kinds of British and/or North American English
(though rarely both within the same institution). Thus, like the vast majority of Anglophone
universities particularly in the UK and US, as well as a relatively large number of EMI HE
institutions in non-Anglophone countries, the University of Southampton fits in, at least in
terms of language expectations, with Foskett’s (2010) ‘imperialist universities’ category1,
according to which universities “have strong international recruitment activities to draw
students from overseas, but have done relatively little to change their organization, facilities
or services ‘at home’ ” (p 44) (see also Baker and Hüttner, 2016; and the chapters in Jenkins
and Mauranen, 2019).

To put this another way, the global spread of English in HE, that is, the spread of the
phenomenon of ELF, is often (mis)interpreted to mean the spread of native English. The
many who subscribe to this (mis)interpretation are thus talking about something we could
label ‘native English as a lingua franca’ (NELF?), a phantom, uniform phenomenon, one that
 3

does not (and could not) exist, even if its subscribers think it should do. There is rarely any
evidence of an awareness, let alone an acknowledgement, of the findings of ELF research
and of corpus descriptions such as the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic
Settings, or ELFA Corpus (see Mauranen, 2003, 2012). Nor is there much evidence of an
understanding of the implications of large numbers of students on campus having first
languages other than English, or of the ways in which they communicate with each other.
And as I will discuss later in the chapter, the misplaced assumption of the need for linguistic
non-diversity on campus is causing problems for many international students from their
English language entry tests (see Jenkins and Leung, 2017; Jenkins and Leung, in press), right
through to graduation.

The worst problems are generally to be found in HE in Anglophone countries, partly because
attachment to native varieties of English is inevitably strongest in these countries, especially
the US and UK, and partly because these countries currently recruit higher numbers of
international students than non-Anglophone countries do. But this is not to suggest that
similar problems have not been documented elsewhere. In fact it is a not-infrequent finding
that NNESs may be less tolerant than NESs of non-standard non-native uses of English. This
was observed, for instance, in the qualitative questionnaire findings of Jenkins (2014),
where the British respondents tended to be more tolerant of NNES students’ English
language ‘mistakes’ than their non-native counterparts. It should not be forgotten,
however, that NNES students’ use which differed from native English was considered
‘incorrect’ regardless of whether it was ‘tolerated’. Nevertheless, it should also be noted
that when the local language is something other than English, the language dynamic
between home and international students is generally of a different order, with both groups
often seeing themselves as ‘in the same (non-native English) boat’. The native-English-only
problem may thus be diminished in non-Anglophone settings, if not resolved entirely,
although the extent to which this is so remains for now an empirical question.

Because this chapter is about the role of ELF in EMI, this is not the place to discuss at length
the fact that the spread of ELF in global HE has not been uncontested. Several scholars have
argued that EMI is leading to domain loss as well as inequities for students and staff (see,
e.g. Hamel, 2007; Hültgren, 2013; Phillipson, 2015 for a range of positions). The fears of
domain loss are well made, although as this chapter will demonstrate, if university
managements promoted an ELF rather than native English approach to EMI on their
campuses, the scope for multilingualism and translanguaging (e.g. García and Li 2014) would
reduce the problem of domain loss substantially. For not only is ELF per se a multilingual
phenomenon; it has also been found to promote rather than diminish interest in, and the
learning of, other languages, by bringing together people from different first languages
whose paths would most likely not have crossed if they did not have the English language in
common. Palfreyman and Van der Walt (2017) concur, observing that “[t]he movement by
policy-makers, students and academics towards English has, paradoxically, resulted in
increased multilingualism on campuses, as increasing numbers of students from different
language backgrounds use the lingua franca to access and develop knowledge and
competencies in a variety of languages” (p 2-3; italics in original).

On the other hand, as regards the claim of inequities stemming from the spread of EMI,
research to date suggests that this is undoubtedly true, and ELF researchers would be
 4

among the first to make the same argument. Nevertheless, as with the issue of domain loss,
we ELF researchers would argue that if university managements had greater awareness of
ELF, and were less concerned to promote native-like English in their institutions, many of
the inequities relating to EMI would be speedily resolved. Again, we will return to this topic
later in the chapter. For the moment, it will suffice to observe that “the meaning of “EMI” is
a long way from being settled” and that it is, rather, “a contested term and far from value-
neutral” (Walkinshaw et al., 2017: 7). In the following section, we will explore this point in
more detail by considering the meaning of the ‘E’ of EMI in respect of the lingua franca role
of English in HE. In the third section of the chapter, we will then examine the difficulties that
arise from current orientations to the ‘E’ of EMI and their implications for EMI policies and
practices. And in the final section, we will draw conclusions about the role of ELF in EMI and
the future challenges that adopting an ELF perspective will entail.

The ‘E’ of ‘EMI’

Clearly, the way we interpret the meaning of the ‘E’ of ‘EMI’ is critical. As was observed in
the Introduction, the kind of English used in international university settings, where
students and staff come from a wide variety of different language backgrounds, in practice
is not primarily native (or even native-like) English, but the phenomenon known as English
as a Lingua Franca, usually ELF for short. However, among those outside ELF research
(including more conventionally-minded linguists such as mainstream SLA scholars), there is
an assumption that the only truly acceptable way to use any language is the way in which it
is used by its native speakers; and this assumption is then extended to EMI settings.
Dearden’s (2015) large survey, supported by the British Council, is a case in point. For as
Murata and Iino 2018 observe, “[her] research on EMI has nothing to do with ELF, her ‘E’ in
EMI being solidly and without any doubt based on native speakers’ ‘E’ ”(2018: 403). For
critical multilingualism scholars (e.g. the contributors to Cenoz and Gorter, 2015; Coffey and
Wingate, 2018; May, 2015), the ‘native-like assumption’ and ‘monolingual target’ are
inappropriate even in respect of second languages learned in order to communicate
primarily with their native users. But they are deeply flawed when it comes to languages
used as lingua francas, where it is often the case that few, if any, participants in an
interaction are themselves native speakers of the respective language. And this is
particularly so in relation to English when it is being used as a lingua franca.

ELF researchers who explore EMI settings, by contrast, start from the position that these
are, by definition, ELF settings. The first to make the link explicitly was Smit (2010b), who
argued that the ‘E’ of ‘EMI’ should be taken to mean ‘ELF’, not ‘English’. This begs the
question for those not already familiar with ELF research: what, exactly, is ELF? From what
has been said so far in this chapter, it should at least be evident that it refers to
communication among people who do not share a first language. This is stated clearly in
probably the most cited definition of ELF over the past few years: “any use of English among
speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of
choice and often the only option” (Seidlhofer, 2011: 7; my italics). Like the latter, other
recent definitions of ELF have also put the emphasis on ELF’s Englishness, leaving the role of
its multilingualism implicit. However, more recently, there has been a “more multilingual
turn” in ELF research, with the emphasis on the word “more” signifying that ELF was already
 5

seen by ELF scholars as a multilingual phenomenon (Jenkins, 2015: 61; emphasis in the
original). The point was that up to then, the English of ELF had tended to be foregrounded
and its multilingualism to be backgrounded, whereas the opposite should have been the
case. This led, in turn, to my redefinition of ELF as “multilingual communication in which
English is available as a contact language of choice, but is not necessarily chosen” (op.cit:
73). In other words, despite the availability of English to all present by default in an ELF
interaction, another language or languages of those present may be preferred on any
specific occasion, or interlocutors may choose to translanguage among their various
languages. This also fits in well with Mauranen’s (2012) conceptualisation of ELF
communication as consisting of each speaker’s L1-influenced English (their ‘similect) and the
influence on each other’s language use when their various similects are in contact (‘second
order contact’), as well as the role played by the local, or ‘host’, language, which is rarely
English. In HE settings in particular, as Baker (2016) points out, this leads to a linguacultural
situation of considerable complexity, for which he proposes the term ‘transcultural
university’.

Because of the relative proportion of NNESs to NESs (widely claimed to be at least 4:1), the
majority, and very often all, those involved in any one ELF interaction are NNESs. As noted
above, this situation is particularly prevalent in international HE, and takes us straight to the
main focus of this chapter, the role of ELF in EMI settings. These are ELF settings par
excellence, even though, as I observed earlier, the fact is generally not recognised by EMI
scholars working outside ELF research. To be more precise, this is the domain of English as a
Lingua Franca in Academic Settings. The first scholar to engage with ELFA was Mauranen,
who established her ELFA Corpus in 2003. The findings of the research that she and her
Tampere and Helsinki teams conducted on the ELFA corpus over the decade that followed
led Mauranen to an understanding that not only is ELF the most prevalent use of English in
HE EMI settings, but that native English is of limited relevance:

international research is a site of activity and communication where accuracy and

effectiveness in reporting findings and constructing arguments is crucial – whereas
the ‘native-likeness’ of a text, accent, or turn of phrase has scarcely any relevance. It
is not a realm where nationality or national standards and practices take first
priority” (Mauranen, 2012: 68).

This was in fact written over five years ago and I suspect that in line with more recent
thinking about ELF, including her own, Mauranen would probably replace the words
“scarcely any” with “no”, and the word “first” with “any”.

One further point could usefully be clarified at this point: the distinction between EMI and
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and their respective relationships with ELF.
Although CLIL refers to the learning of any second language along with academic content, in
practice, the language learnt in this way is most often English, which led one ELF scholar to
comment that it should be renamed ‘CEIL’ (personal communication). In order to distinguish
CLIL from EMI, Dalton-Puffer and Smit (2013: 546) describe the parameters of CLIL as
follows:
 6

• It [CLIL] is about using a foreign language or a lingua franca, not a second language
…. It is not regularly used in the wider society they live in.
• It is usually implemented once learners have already acquired literacy skills in their
mother tongue.
• CLIL teachers are normally non-native speakers of the target language and are
typically content rather than foreign language specialists.
• CLIL lessons are usually timetabled as content lessons … while the target language
normally continues as a subject in its own right … taught by language specialists.

Some of these parameters may also appy to EMI, while others do not. And although CLIL is
most commonly found in school-level education, it is also sometimes practised in HE as well.
But the major difference between CLIL and ‘classical’ EMI is that whereas CLIL always
involves an explicit language component to support the content teaching, EMI never does.
This does not mean that EMI students are not expected to develop their subject language
and disciplinary/discursive practices during their content courses (Sonia Morán Panero,
personal communication). It is also not to suggest that those studying content in English
medium never access language support. The point is simply that any language support is
independent of the course in question, and thus taken up by students on an individual basis,
whether from personal choice or because a tutor recommends them to ‘improve’ their
English. It is seen, in other words, as a remedial activity rather than a language development
one; see, for example, Turner (2011: 3), who describes it as the “relentlessly remedial
representation of language issues”.

A further difference between EMI and CLIL, although not such a stark one, is that EMI takes
place most often at tertiary level, whereas CLIL is more often to be found at secondary and,
increasingly, also primary level. And finally, as Hüttner (2018) points out, it is often the case
that in CLIL classrooms, there are only two languages, the local first language and the target
one. This makes CLIL a bilingual situation as contrasted with the typical multilingual nature
of many ELF situatons, including many EMI classrooms. Having said this, EMI courses are not
necessarily ‘English only’ courses. Outside Anglophone HE, EMI may, for instance, take place
alongside the national language on bilingual programmes, as often happens in the Nordic
region; or it may be part of a trilingual policy involving the regional and national languages
as well as English, as is the case in the Basque Country (see Smit, 2018 for further details).
EMI may also be the language policy of an entire institution, or only of particular disciplines
or programmes within an institution, or simply on certain specific courses.

However, it should be noted that although an EMI university/discipline/programme/course

may be ‘English only’ in theory, this is not necessarily what happens in practice. As Costa
and Coleman point out, administrations may in fact be “ignorant about what is taking place
in the classroom” and of “the teaching habits of their academic staff” (2012: 14). Their point
is that as with the Italian teachers they observed, teachers may choose to translanguage in
class by using a combination of the local language and English, a phenomenon that has been
found in a range of other settings (see e.g. Hu, 2015 on EMI university classes in China), and
which in some respects brings them closer to the bilingual CLIL situations discussed by
Hüttner (2018). Meanwhile, even if the teacher uses only English, the students themselves
may choose to use other languages, for instance in classroom groupwork, regardless of the
teacher’s wishes for them to ‘talk in English’. This phenomenon also resonates with
 7

Spolsky’s (e.g. 2004) distinction between language practices (what people choose to do) and
language management (what those in authority try to make them do). And of course,
outside the classroom, in both Anglophone and non-Anglophone settings, there will be a
range of languages in use: the national language(s) in non-Anglophone settings, and the
languages of the diverse student population in both non-Anglophone and Anglophone ones
(see for instance Ra’s 2018 study of the social use of language by EMI students in a Korean
university setting). Even when NNES students (and staff) are discussing EMI course-related
issues rather than engaging in social conversation outside the classroom, they will either do
so in languages other than English or by using ELF. These (sometimes covert) practices thus
fit precisely with the most up to date conceptualisation of ELF, according to which English is
available to all present, but not necessarily used, and where translanguaging therefore has a
key role.

Despite the fact that the recent growth of EMI is intrinsically bound up with the
phenomenon of ELF, as Murata and Iino (2018) observe, ELF has scarcely been considered at
all in publications on EMI outside the ELF-related EMI literature. Even now, with so much
empirical evidence available, it is still ignored and/or misrepresented in some major studies
of EMI. As an example, in a 40-page ‘state of the art’ article on research into EMI, Macaro et
al (2018: 38) mention ELF only once: when they discuss the need for “a consensus about
what kind of English will be/should be used in EMI HE”. They ask:

… are we talking about a ‘native speaker English’ or other nativised varieties of

English, or indeed of English as a lingua franca (ELF)? If it is ELF, then how does this
affect international students from different geo-linguistic areas, including
English-dominant ones?

Revealingly, they go on in the next breath to ask: “[f]urthermore, might the richness of the
language be reduced when proficiency levels in English, on the part of both teachers and
students, are not particularly high?” (ibid; my italics). The juxtaposition of this apparently
rhetorical question with the previous one implies that they are still talking about ELF. And if
so, their suggestion that ELF use reduces the richness of English and involves a low level of
proficiency demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the ELF phenomenon. Their
characterisation of ELF, or perhaps ‘caricature’ would be a better word, will be completely
unrecognisable to anyone familiar with the ELF literature. Meanwhile, their presentation of
ELF as one of three candidates for the ‘E’ of EMI, reveals a lack of awareness of the fact that
apart from a small minority of EMI classes held exclusively for home students (e.g. in some
Chinese and Japanese institutions), EMI settings are, by definition, ELF settings. Even the
majority of the contributions to Doiz, Lasagabaster and Sierra (2013), the first major edited
volume to take a critical look at EMI in a range of contexts around the world, have little to
say about ELF, despite discussing settings that are, in the main, prime examples of ELF
communication. Of the eleven chapters, just four refer, and then only briefly, to any ELF-
related publications and research (Cots; Saarinen and Nikula; Ball and Lindsay; and
Wilkinson).

By contrast, ELF researchers have been making explicit links between EMI and ELF for
several years. As mentioned above, the first ELF scholar to engage with academic ELF, if not
specifically with EMI, was Mauranen (2003). In the years that followed, several other ELF
 8

scholars, myself included (Jenkins 2008) began delivering conference papers on a range of
language policy matters related to international universities. Then followed both Smit’s
(2010a) book-length longitudinal study of ELF in a university EMI tourism programme in
Vienna, and Kirkpatrick’s (2010) discussion of appropriate models of English in ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) education policy and pedagogy. The next major
contribution was that of Mauranen (2012), an in-depth study of academic ELF drawing on
her ELFA Corpus, and demonstrating in comprehensive detail how English is typically used
on international university settings among students and staff from diverse language
backgrounds. This was followed by another linguistic study of ELF in an EMI setting in
Sweden, Björkman (2013). Focusing on form and pragmatic issues, she demonstrates how
communicative effectiveness is achieved in ELF communication in HE. A year later came two
further book-length treatments of ELF in HE contexts: first, Kalocsai (2014), a study of the
social practices of a group of Erasmus students from a range of first languages in an EMI
university setting in Hungary; and second, my own book (Jenkins 2014), which explores ELF
in international universities from a critical language policy perspective. And in the years
since then, there has been a steady increase in ELF-oriented studies of EMI settings
including a number of doctoral theses, alongside a continuing stream of uncritical EMI-
related publications that do not consider the role of ELF (and sometimes any language
issues) at all. A particularly noteworthy feature of many of the more recent ELF-oriented
EMI publications including, for instance, Galloway et al (2017), several of the contributions
to Fenton-Smith et al (2017) and a number of doctoral studies such as Hu (2015), Ishikawa
(2016), Karakas (2016), Cavanagh (2017), and Ra (2018) is that they focus on Asian EMI
contexts rather than the more frequent European settings of most of the earlier EMI
research.

In the next section, we go on to explore the key issues that have been brought to light in
these and other ELF-related EMI studies, and consider what kinds of challenges they raise
for language policies and practices in EMI institutions.

Issues arising and implications for HE language policies and practices

An observation that has been often been made in respect of the recent massive global rise
of EMI is that the motivation seems to be primarily financial and reputational, and that little
thought is given to practicalities, in particular, its potential impact on those who will be
most affected, i.e. students and staff. Walkinshaw et al (2017: 7) note, for example, that “in
many cases, macro- and meso-level stakeholders seem to have adopted EMI policies
uncritically, attracted by the opportunity for marketing, internationalisation and/or financial
benefit”. They go on to argue that this has led to “a policy-level short-sightedness” (ibid.) in
respect of the difficulties that implementing EMI poses at both institutional and classroom
levels. They point out, for instance, that staff not only need expertise in their discipline, but
also the ability to communicate their knowledge effectively in English medium to their
students.

However, it should also not be forgotten that NES lecturers do not have a monopoly on
communicating effectively in EMI settings. Indeed, my own interview study with 34
international students in a UK university (Jenkins 2014) revealed that it was the NES
 9

lecturers who caused the greatest communicative problems for the international students in
a UK university, because of their lack of intercultural awareness. This led, for instance, to
their speaking fast, using local idiomatic language, telling culture-specific jokes, making local
references that would be unfamiliar to those from elsewhere, and being unable to respond
spontaneously to students’ questions in an internationally intelligible manner. In general,
these students found their NNES lecturers easier to understand. The problem was found to
be even more extreme when it came to the international student participants’ peer groups,
with NNES students from other L1s being found easy to communicate with, but home
students often being reported as failing to make any allowances for them. Typically, in
seminar discussions, the home students were found to speak very fast among themselves,
and consequently, whether intentionally or not, to exclude the international students from
the conversation. As one Thai student put it, by the time an international student was ready
to contribute, the home students were moving on to “another topic” (Jenkins 2014: 179).

Having said that, NNES staff are by no means uniformly appreciated by international
students, and are not necessarily comfortable teaching in English medium. Research into
EMI has demonstrated that lecturing in English is a problem for many NNES teachers for a
range of reasons including doubts about both their own and their students’ English
capability, and the availability of relevant teaching materials. In these respects, Galloway
reports in an interview with the British Council on the findings of her study of EMI in five
Chinese and seven Japanese universities as follows:

The faculty were worried that they didn't have enough suitable teaching materials,
although students seem to think the materials were fine. Although they mentioned
some benefits, both staff and students were more focused on the challenges of
implementing EMI. Students were critical of teachers’ English competence and use
of their mother tongue, and teachers were worried about the students’ low English
competence. Students also complained about a lack of collaboration between
departments, and between the content teachers and English for academic purposes
(EAP) teachers. The teachers had conflicting views on whether there was enough
English language support (2017; see also Galloway, Kriukow and Numajiri (2017) for
a full report of the study).

The issues raised in Galloway’s and other previous research into EMI, including various of
the studies mentioned above, link closely with the complex, not to mention controversial,
subject of linguistic proficiency. The key issue is what proficiency means – or should mean –
in a setting that is, by definition, an ELF rather than native English setting and therefore also,
by definition, a multilingual setting. For on the one hand, the ELF HE setting (including in
Anglophone countries) implies that native English should not be expected, while the
multilingualism of ELF users implies that other languages than English should have a role.
This, however, is far from the reality of most, if not all, EMI institutions.

A major problem in this respect relates to the idea that there is an identifiable phenomenon
called ‘standard English’. As Seidlhofer (2018: 89) notes, there is nothing of the kind: it is
merely “an ideological construct”, one aspect of which is “the odd, clearly counterfactual
assumption widely held among both linguistics experts and laypersons that StE [standard
English] constitutes English in its entirety, the English language” (ibid; italics in original).
 10

However, as Seidlhofer goes on to observe, this kind of English, represents only “a tiny
portion” of the world’s English, the kind used among NESs in so far as we can talk of NESs
using ‘one kind’ of English, which would be a gross simplification of all NESs’ use of English
(i.e. just over 378 million L1 English users according to Ethnologue 2018; see
ethnologue.com). And even here, the notion of ‘standard English’ is slippery to the extent
that NESs are not often able to explain what they mean by it. The claim is sometimes made,
for example, that ‘standard English’ is the version used by ‘educated NESs’, but then in
something of a circular argument, it is also claimed that educated NESs can be identified
because they speak ‘standard English’ (see e.g. Honey, 1997). In a UK focus group study with
a group of international students (Maringe and Jenkins, 2015), the participants reported
being told by their PhD supervisors that they should use standard English in their writing,
but that the supervisors could not tell them what standard English was. When one
participant, a doctoral student from the Czech Republic, was asked where she thought she
could find it, she shrugged and said “I don’t know – just in the air”. In general, the
international student participants in both these focus group discussions and the interviews
in Jenkins (2014) noted that their NES supervisors were only able to identify what they
thought ‘standard English’ was not, and not what it was.

As Macaro et al (2018) argue, there is a need for a debate about how proficiency is defined
“in the context of EMI” (p 52). The conclusions reached in any such debate, however, would
depend to a great extent on whether they came from a ‘standard English’ ideological
perspective, or from an ELF one. In the former, which represents a deficit approach to non-
native English, it would likely come down to a question of how much ‘inaccuracy’ could be
tolerated. In the latter, by contrast, it would be a question of demonstrating from the
wealth of empirical ELF evidence what kinds of language are effective in academic ELF
settings, with NNESs divergences from native English (or from English entirely) not being
assumed to be problematic in EMI. This would mean that the many NNES students studying
in English medium who feel negative about their English abilities would come to understand
that the English they use as a tool of communication does not need to be the same as the
English used by NESs among themselves (see Macaro et al 2018 p 52-53 for a range of
studies of NNES students’ perceptions of their English). It would also mean that NESs could
not be assumed to be proficient communicators in EMI settings, and would indicate the
need for their proficiency to be evaluated vis-à-vis their linguacultural awareness and skills.

A further issue arising from the spread of EMI is that of fairness and justice. This relates in
turn to the diversity of English when it serves as a lingua franca among speakers from a wide
range of different first languages. Piller (2016) argues on the basis of her investigation into a
possible link between linguistic diversity and social injustice that there is a “collective failure
of imagination when it comes to linguistic diversity: the failure to recognize that linguistic
diversity undergirds inequality too frequently and the failure to imagine that we can change
our social and linguistic arrangements in ways that make them more equitable and just” (p
222). If we relate Piller’s argument to international HE, we find an environment that
penalises international students for their linguistic diversity in respect of both their use of
English and their multilingualism, while rewarding those whose English is more ‘nativelike’
and native, including monolingual (and therefore less internationally-oriented) NESs. Piller
observes that “schools have maintained their traditional monolingual institutional habitus in
the face of students’ (and, increasingly, teachers’) multilingualism”, and thus that there is an
 11

“entrenched mismatch between schools with a monolingual habitus serving linguistically

diverse societies” (p 120, 127). The same can equally be said of international universities –
which are often far from ‘international’ in terms of their language ethos.

Fairness was a topic that was volunteered regularly by the 34 international students in my
own interview study (Jenkins 2014). The issue that concerned them most was their
perceived linguistic disadvantage in relation to the NES home students. In particular, they
found the assessment system to be unfair, above all in respect of the time element. One
participant, a Korean student, noted that in order to receive the same mark for his work
that a home student receives, he has to spend four times longer on the preparatory reading
for and writing of the assignment. He described this as “a big advantage for native speakers”
(p 192). I mentioned his comment to all the subsequent partipants in the interview study,
and all were in complete agreement. Meanwhile, others argued that international students
should not only be allowed longer for assignments, but also that they should be allocated
more tutorial time. This was both because their fees were considerably higher, and because
it is so much more difficult to work in a second language – something that they felt the
(mostly monolingual NES) staff did not appreciate. Many of them noted that the
requirement to use ‘native-like’ English added considerably to their time and difficulty.

Several participants also mentioned the perceived lack of effort and empathy towards
international students from staff which, again, they saw as unfair. They believed that staff
were not willing to make an effort to understand their use of English, and simply resorted to
describing it as ‘unintelligible’. A Chinese participant observed “sometimes I feel they just
want our money” (p 197). They also spoke of being told that staff were too busy to help
them, and of the staffs’ expectations that international students should make an effort to fit
in with and be understood in the Anglophone university environment rather than expecting
the staff to make efforts too. As one put it, “it’s a paradox, isn’t it? You want to get the
money for all the international students but don’t want to accommodate them” (ibid.).

This study relates specifically to an Anglophone HE context, whereas for various reasons,
unfairness has been found to be far less marked in non-Anglophone settings (see the
chapters in Jenkins and Mauranen, 2019). Part of the difference undoubtedly relates to the
‘in the same boat’ syndrome mentioned above; that is, the home students in non-
Anglophone settings are by definition also NNESs and so the native English ethos (to the
extent that an institution is not overrun with NES staff), is likely to be less stringent. In
addition, the home students do not present constant reminders of how (native) English
‘should’ be spoken. Nevertheless, it is important to consider fairness and justice in
Anglophone settings as, for now at least, the US has the highest number of international
students of any country, while the UK has the highest ratio of international to home
students of any country.

Finally, is an issue that I had not originally planned to include in this chapter: that of the
demise of EMI. For just as I reached the end of this section of the chapter, the latest issue of
University World News landed in my inbox, and the title of the leading article caught my
attention: ‘The challenge to higher education internationalisation’. In the article, Altbach
and de Wit (2018) argue:
 12

The global landscape for higher education internationalisation is changing

dramatically. What one might call ‘the era of higher education internationalisation’
over the past 25 years (1990–2015) that has characterised university thinking and
action might either be finished or, at least, be on life support.

One of the main aspects of HE interationalisation the authors consider to be under threat is
“the use of English as a language for teaching and research worldwide”. They note, for
instance, that the rector of the University of Amsterdam has argued that “English-taught
academic programmes are too widespread and should be cut back”, with greater emphasis
being put on ‘internationalisation at home’ (“the embedding of international/intercultural
perspectives into local educational settings”, Turner and Robson, 2008, p 15). They also
refer to current debates in countries including Denmark and Germany “about the negative
impact of English on the quality of teaching”, and cite “an intense fight at the Polytechnic
University of Milan about the use of English in graduate education [which] resulted in a
recent court ruling that might limit the use of English in Italian higher education drastically
on constitutional grounds”. Overall, they consider, “it is possible that the halcyon days of …
transnational education are over”.

Altbach and de Wit (op.cit.) also express concerns about ethics in respect of HE
internationalisation. While they do not refer to the English language specifically, one of the
areas of ethics that they mention concerns that of “international students cheating in
examinations”. English language entry tests are not singled out, but are implicit given that
cheating is known to occur in major university entry tests such as IELTS and TOEFL. This
takes us back to the issue of fairness and justice concerning the English language that I
discussed just above. For if entry tests continue to be predicated on a ‘standard’ native
English that is both irrelevant to communication in current international HE and mythical in
the sense of being idealised, then international students will continue to be rejected by EMI
institutions on grounds that cannot be justified, and entire careers ruined on the basis of an
inappropriate native English ideology. Not surprisingly, then, some of those at risk will cheat
if they can (see Jenkins and Leung, in press for suggestions of alternatives to current
standardised English language entry tests).

Given the fact that both Altbach and de Wit have been key authorities on developments in
the internationalisation of HE for many years, their comments need to be taken very
seriously. Having said that, one point they do not make is that the current concerns about
English appear to be coming, in the main, from European institutions. Meanwhile, as was
observed in the chapter Introduction, east and southeast Asian universities are expanding
their use of EMI apace. And perhaps, with English as the unproblematised lingua franca of
ASEAN (contrasted with the negative orientations towards English as the primary working
language of the EU), expansion of the use of English in academic settings will continue in
that part of the world, just as it heads in the opposite direction in continental Europe. If so,
mobility will remain a key feature of HE in the countries of the east at the same time as it
diminishes in the countries of the west. On the other hand, we cannot dismiss the
possibility that with very few NESs (Irish and Maltese) remaining in the EU after the UK has
left, English will start to be seen by EU members as a neutral working language, as it is in
ASEAN, and that it will retain its primary role (see Jenkins 2018). If this were to happen, it
 13

could follow that European HE would not abandon EMI after all. At the present time,
however, the various scenarios remain hypothetical.

Conclusion

Despite Altbach and de Wit’s (2018) prognostications, I will assume for now that EMI is here
to stay in global HE for at least some time to come, and discuss the ELF-related challenge it
faces.

As Walkinshaw et al (2017, p.16) note, “[o]n a practical level at least, it is the manner in
which EMI is implemented, and the policy communications and processes underlying that
implementation, which determine the success or otherwise of the eventual outcome”. As
far as language is concerned, the key point in terms of implementation is that for all who
are studying not English, but through English (and this means the vast majority of students
in international HE), the language is simply a tool of communication. And in an international
HE world as linguistically diverse as ours, this tool cannot realistically be aligned to any one
way of using English, including that of the tiny minority of NESs, wherever in the world a
particular university is situated. On the one hand, the majority of English users in HE are
NNESs who use English (or, more accurately, ELF) in a wide range of variable ways, and
employ accommodation skills to ensure mutual understanding. On the other hand, by
definition NNESs speak at least two (and often more) languages. This means that
multilingualism is their norm, and thus it is abnormal for them to be restricted to English
only rather than accessing their full multilingual repertoires as and when appropriate.

The crucial linguistic challenge for EMI, therefore, is to find a way for these facts of HE
linguistic real life to filter through to the mindsets of ministries of education, university
managements, university staff, and students, both NNES and NES. In other words, university
personnel at all levels need to be helped to engage critically with the fact of linguistic
diversity in HE, and to understand its implications. To date, this level of criticality has been
largely lacking, particularly among university managements, including those in western HE
who, paradoxically, tend to regard themselves as bastions of critical thinking.

And finally, to return to my title and sum up, an understanding of the role of ELF in EMI HE
education contexts involves recognising that English is used by far more NNESs than NESs,
that the communication in which they engage is different from NES-NES communication,
that good English in ELF contexts is not related to its native-likeness, and that no one user’s
way of using English is intrinsically better than another user’s: it all depends on how
effective they are as communicators in their specific ELF interaction contexts. And this, in
turn, involves good accommodation skills as well as the ability to translanguage (and
therefore to speak other languages than English).

It is time for the consequences of this ELF reality to be recognised, and for the unquestioned
assumption by all except ELF scholars, that ‘good English’ equals that of the ‘educated
native speaker’ to be abandoned in HE. Innumerable native speakers have been recruited to
help non-native scientists and scholars in their struggle with native English, and it is
standard practice in publishers’ style sheets to require non-native writers to have their text
 14

checked by a native speaker of English prior to publication. And yet it is many (if not all)
NESs who are most in need of help in global HE: help to develop their intercultural
communication and accommodation skills, help to escape their monolingualism, and help to
understand that they do not own English, whether in HE or any other international domain.

Cross-references

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1 Foskett (2010: 43-45) presents a model of internationalization according to which

universities fit into one of five categories depending on their orientation to
internationalization abroad and at home. The five categories, ranging from ‘low
engagement’ to ‘high engagement’, are: domestic universities, imperialist universities,
internationally aware universities, internationally engage universities, and internationally
focused universities.

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