Disciplinary literacies as a nexus for content and language teacher practice

This book is guided by two primary objectives, namely to “foster … reflection on the importance of paying attention to language in EMI experiences” and “to translate research findings into practice so that teachers find themselves in a stronger position to make optimal choices in their everyday teaching” (Lasagabaster & Doiz, this volume, p. 00). These objectives are supported by the inclusion of a final section in each chapterarticulating specific recommendations for EMI teacher practice. We will use this space to focus attention on these practical recommendations.\ua0The objective for this epilogue is thus consistent with the overarching purpose of the book: engaging readers in further discussion of what these recommendations regarding language (broadly speaking) mean for EMIpractice. Our discussion here is facilitated by viewing these recommendations through the theoretical lens of disciplinary discourse and disciplinary literacy (Airey, 2011, 2012, 2020; Airey & Linder, 2009; Airey et al.,2017; Becher, 1987; Linder, 2013)

Language choice and internationalisation: The roles of Swedish and English in research and higher education

How strong is the status of English at Swedish universities today?The growing footprint of English over Swedish was one of the clearest drivers for Sweden’s 2009 Language Act. In the debate attending the Language Act, higher education and research were the societal domains widely perceived to have seen the greatest spread of English.The report Language choice and internationalisation presents the results of a study of the languages used for teaching and publication at Swedish universities. It is a follow-up to a similar study from 2010.The results show that the use of English at Swedish universities has continued to increase since 2010. The increase has been particularly great in the humanities, where Swedish was previously the dominant language of instruction. The trend is the same for language of publication. The proportion of doctoral theses and articles written in English has long been very high in some disciplines, such as the natural sciences and engineering and technology; now, a sharp increase has occurred in the volume of English-language research writing in the humanities and social sciences

Preaching in uncertain terms: the place of hedging language in contemporary sermonic discourse

This study investigates hedging (standardly assumed to express uncertainty, plausible reasoning and the like) in contemporary sermonic discourse as represented by sermon manuscripts and transcriptions of preacher interviews from three Christian denominations in the UK. The article addresses three research questions: (i) To what extent is preaching employed as a discursive resource during preaching; (ii) What form does hedging take in sermonic discourse; and (iii) What are preachers’ rationale for hedging? The results suggest that hedging is indeed of central concern in sermonic discourse with some kind of hedging device being called upon once every 32 seconds. When preachers hedge they rely on standard and transparent linguistic expressions that typically perform this discourse function, and the repertoire includes both ‘conversational’ hedges and hedges that recall practices characteristic of written academic discourse. When preachers self-report on their rationale for hedging a multitude of different discourse functions become apparent. However, it seems that hedging is rarely used to convey lack of epistemic confidence; rather, hedging is seen as a productive interpersonal means to address one of the main objectives of contemporary, turn-to-the-listener, preaching – namely acknowledging sermon listeners as active partners in a sermonic experience

Introducing the Journal of English-Medium Instruction

[...]\ua0The contributions to this inaugural issue of JEMI all embody this broader understanding of EMI and speak to a varied group of stakeholders, including researchers in EMI and related fields, and practitioners in contexts of EMI, e.g., teachers, students, and university management. The authors of these contributions were invited by virtue of their expertise in six areas central to EMI: language policy, multilingualism, English language teaching, teacher preparation and (higher) education pedagogy, and assessment.[...

‘It becomes increasingly complex to deal with multiple channels’: materialised communicative competence and digital inequality in English-medium higher education in the digital era

This article explores university students’ communicative competence for English-Medium Instruction (EMI) at a Swedish university in the era of digitalisation and blended learning. Based on a linguistic ethnography, we present an argument for communicative competence as repertoire assemblages orchestrating digital materiality and human language to construct meanings. The study shows how diverse digital multimodalities and AI-language tools are essential features of spatial repertoires for academic communication, and how they cooperate with and mediate students’ personal repertoires to accomplish interactive learning tasks in EMI contexts. The study also highlights how digital diversity in EMI causes a ‘digital divide’, potentially impacting power relations among students. These findings underline the importance of acknowledging the communicative value of digital materiality and negotiating difference and normativity for intercultural academic communication in EMI

What is your darkness? An empirical study of interrogative practices in sermonic discourse

This paper is an interdisciplinary (linguistic-homiletic) data-driven analysis of interrogative practices in contemporary preaching, where questions are treated as devices evoking sermon listener engagement. The analysis focuses on the distribution of questions in preaching, the types of questions used, and the location of questions in sermons, all of which are aspects of interrogatives with direct implications for the interpersonal nature of preaching. The investigation concludes by considering preachers\u27 rationale for using questions, highlighting the multifunctional potential of sermon questions. The findings and the discussions in here will contribute to a more nuanced continued discussion within the homiletics community concerning the "place" of questions in preaching

Appraisal, preaching and the religious other: The rhetorical appropriation of interreligious positions in sermonic discourse

This paper explores preachers\u27 deployment of Appraisal (affect, judgement, appreciation, and dialogic engagement) in preaching on interreligious themes. Adopting a comparative discourse analysis, the paper investigates two American sermons representing diametrically opposed theological responses to other religions, a pluralist sermon in the Unitarian Universalist tradition and an exclusivist sermon in the biblical-evangelical tradition. An analysis of the two preachers\u27 Appraisal choices reveals two distinct Appraisal profiles. A discussion is then offered demonstrating how Appraisal is conducive to the appropriation and conservation of a specific interreligious persona during preaching

“Listen and Understand What I Am Saying”: Church-Listening As a Challenge for Non-Native Listeners of English in the United Kingdom

This article uses computer-assisted analysis to study the listening environment provided by Bible readings and preaching during church services. It focuses on the vocabulary size needed to com- prehend 95% and 98% of the running words of the input (lexical coverage levels indicating comprehension in connection with listening) and on the place of infrequent vocabulary in liturgi- cal discourse. The finding that 4,000 words and 7,000 words, respectively, are needed to reach the target levels for lexical coverage suggests that non-native listeners with vocabularies of just a few thousand words may be seriously challenged by church listening

Covarage and development of academic vocabulary in English medium instruction

This paper is centred in the context of English Medium Instruction (EMI) and is primarily concerned with advanced students’ productive knowledge of English academic vocabulary, widely regarded as a crucial dimension of successful academic communication. The study problematizes the claim that EMI is beneficial for students’ development of academic vocabulary knowledge. The investigative context is a technical university in Sweden where all degree programmes at graduate level use English as the medium of instruction. The corpus data include texts (n=80, approx. 720,000 words) produced by Master of Science students in their first and second year of study, written by home and international students. The study, using the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner/Davis 2014), sets out to answer three research questions relating to knowledge and development of academic vocabulary in EMI: 1. What is the lexical coverage of advanced (master’s) level student writing, i.e., what proportion of words in students’ texts is academic? 2. Are home students and international students (all of whom have English as a foreign language) comparable in terms of their productive academic vocabulary knowledge? 3. Does students’ productive knowledge of academic words appear to develop during their studies? The results of the investigation can be summarized as follows: In the corpus as a whole, academic vocabulary items account for approximately 20% of all tokens. This figure is considerably higher than that found in many earlier studies. There are no significant differences between home and international students in any of the measures of vocabulary used (pertaining to lexical sophistication and diversity). Finally, the findings regarding lexical development across years of study are somewhat mixed; however, the overall picture presented by the various measures is one of significant but very modest gains in some areas and none in others. These findings call into question the actual effectiveness of EMI for academic vocabulary development. The overall contribution of the paper is an important step towards more comprehensive understanding of what expectations we may reasonably have of the development of English language competency in EMI

Covarage and development of academic vocabulary in English medium instruction

This paper is centred in the context of English Medium Instruction (EMI) and is primarily concerned with advanced students’ productive knowledge of English academic vocabulary, widely regarded as a crucial dimension of successful academic communication. The study problematizes the claim that EMI is beneficial for students’ development of academic vocabulary knowledge. The investigative context is a technical university in Sweden where all degree programmes at graduate level use English as the medium of instruction. The corpus data include texts (n=80, approx. 720,000 words) produced by Master of Science students in their first and second year of study, written by home and international students. The study, using the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner/Davis 2014), sets out to answer three research questions relating to knowledge and development of academic vocabulary in EMI: 1. What is the lexical coverage of advanced (master’s) level student writing, i.e., what proportion of words in students’ texts is academic? 2. Are home students and international students (all of whom have English as a foreign language) comparable in terms of their productive academic vocabulary knowledge? 3. Does students’ productive knowledge of academic words appear to develop during their studies? The results of the investigation can be summarized as follows: In the corpus as a whole, academic vocabulary items account for approximately 20% of all tokens. This figure is considerably higher than that found in many earlier studies. There are no significant differences between home and international students in any of the measures of vocabulary used (pertaining to lexical sophistication and diversity). Finally, the findings regarding lexical development across years of study are somewhat mixed; however, the overall picture presented by the various measures is one of significant but very modest gains in some areas and none in others. These findings call into question the actual effectiveness of EMI for academic vocabulary development. The overall contribution of the paper is an important step towards more comprehensive understanding of what expectations we may reasonably have of the development of English language competency in EMI