Drawing on usage-based approaches this paper addresses the challenge of capturing EMI teachers' linguistic needs for the purposes of teacher training in international Medical Education. The focus is on EMI medical teachers in various instructional formats. Each format requires a specific linguistic repertoire resulting dynamic interactions of linguistic, didactic, and intercultural competence, which is difficult to define in linguistic modules such as syntax and lexicon. Moreover, a generic native speaker standard of language proficiency is questionable in this ELF context. Capturing the relevant EMI competence as linguistic units that can be taught in teacher training programs is therefore a challenge.The paper builds on central tenets shared by a number of usage-based approaches to propose that linguistic units of EMI competence can be conceptualized as highly specific language functions arising from a specific EMI instructional context and mapping onto suitable formulations in ELF.This conceptualization was applied in a local teacher training initiative. First, subject-specific language functions were identified through a combined analysis of the EMI instructional context and the teachers' instructional practices. Second, the identification procedure formed a starting point for a collaborative teacher training program. Third, a policy document was drafted, taking into account institutional limitations.

Development of chunks in Dutch L2 learners of English. In Usage-Based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Language Teaching (pp. 235-264). Walter de Gruyter GmbH.

This paper argues that the cognitive usage-based model enhanced by a complexity theory perspective can provide useful insights into L2 learners’ non-target-like use of L2 phraseological chunks. Firstly, L2 chunks are conceptualized here as L2 complex form-meaning mappings subject to developmental schematization and entrenchment, as well as productive cut-and-paste mechanisms. Traces of these mechanisms at community level are interpreted as emergent patterns, a complexity theory concept in line with the cognitive usage-based model. Next, learner expressions for two task-elicited notions (depositing money and donating money) in a community of L2 English learners (N = 167; L1 Dutch) are analyzed for emergent patterns at different levels of schematicity. The findings indicate that L2 phraseological chunks are not constructed from a target-like initial exemplar that becomes entrenched or schematized. The paper concludes that within the cognitive usage-based model this is a major impeding factor in L2 learners’ target-like use of L2 phraseological chunks.

The teaching of technical writing to novice STEM researchers in two technological institutes, in Brazil (IFSP) and in Norway (NTNU), has been an interdisciplinary effort that integrates linguistic and technical disciplines, while building on the local context and fostering student autonomy. Within this approach, we use two tools: the career-related Design Thinking framework, in a pedagogical application that teaches writing alongside project development for problem-solving (RODRIGUES; BAPTISTA, 2019); and the Writer’s Wheel (HAAS, 2009), a writing model that guides students to the understanding and management of their own technical scientific writing process. We show how an integrated approach involves drawing appropriately from several disciplines, leading students from convention to innovation, from the development of linguistic, cognitive and technological strategic competence towards autonomy, based on their needs. We find that teaching writing in parallel with project development guides students to understand and manage their own communication process. We outline possible next steps in the improvement of the approach, with regard to theory and educational practice.