The use of the English language to teach and learn academic subjects in non-English speaking countries has greatly increased over the last few decades, raising linguistic, pedagogical, and intercultural questions (Dimova et. al., 2020). Since most English-medium instruction (EMI) stakeholders are not English native speakers (Pecorari & Malmström, 2018), code-switching is often employed as an alternative strategy to facilitate vocabulary and content learning as well as to ensure meaningful communication and interaction in class. The main goal of this chapter is to explore how EMI lecturers from five university settings in Europe resorted to their multilingual repertoire to enhance academic learning, interaction, and engagement in class. To address these issues, data were taken from the TAEC corpus, which contains the transcription of thirty EMI classes on different academic subjects, offered at five European universities, namely Copenhagen, Lleida, Maastricht, Rijeka and Turin. The findings show which languages are mostly employed, their proportion with respect to the participants’ L1, and the most frequent functions of code-switching. The results indicate that switching between languages fulfills various communicative and pedagogical functions, including, in frequency order, lexical gap fillings, vocabulary explanation, cultural references, lesson management, explanation of jokes and anecdotes, and comprehension checks. Taken together, these results offer a better understanding of the role played by multilingualism in EMI settings
Episodes of code-switching in EMI across European contexts
Cicillini S.
2023-01-01
Abstract
The use of the English language to teach and learn academic subjects in non-English speaking countries has greatly increased over the last few decades, raising linguistic, pedagogical, and intercultural questions (Dimova et. al., 2020). Since most English-medium instruction (EMI) stakeholders are not English native speakers (Pecorari & Malmström, 2018), code-switching is often employed as an alternative strategy to facilitate vocabulary and content learning as well as to ensure meaningful communication and interaction in class. The main goal of this chapter is to explore how EMI lecturers from five university settings in Europe resorted to their multilingual repertoire to enhance academic learning, interaction, and engagement in class. To address these issues, data were taken from the TAEC corpus, which contains the transcription of thirty EMI classes on different academic subjects, offered at five European universities, namely Copenhagen, Lleida, Maastricht, Rijeka and Turin. The findings show which languages are mostly employed, their proportion with respect to the participants’ L1, and the most frequent functions of code-switching. The results indicate that switching between languages fulfills various communicative and pedagogical functions, including, in frequency order, lexical gap fillings, vocabulary explanation, cultural references, lesson management, explanation of jokes and anecdotes, and comprehension checks. Taken together, these results offer a better understanding of the role played by multilingualism in EMI settings
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