ESP, EMI and Interculturality: How Internationalised Are University Curricula in Catalonia?

Abstract

This study analyses Internationalisation at Home (IaH) courses across a wide range of bachelor's degrees, from humanities to hard sciences, in public universities in Catalonia, as an in-depth analysis of a South European context. IaH courses selected for analysis included courses (i) on international topics, (ii) taught in English and focusing on content (English-medium Instruction, EMI) and (iii) focusing on language, i.e. English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Results point to a high presence of international content courses, especially in humanities and social sciences, followed by EMI courses, although quantitatively scarce and mainly found in engineering. ESP courses are the least present despite their potential to prepare students for EMI. Reasons that may account for this IaH picture are presented. All in all, it seems that current policies leave language and intercultural competence in the hands of content lecturers, who may not have explicit language and intercultural learning outcomes in mind while it appears that the potential role of ESP as an internationalisation driver may be neglected. This paper thus argues for giving visibility to ESP courses and lecturers in their role for the promotion of curricular internationalisation.

Engineering students' perceptions of the role of ESP courses in internationalized universities

“…In UPC-1 and UPC-2 (Spain), EMI is espoused as a preferred internationalization strategy to promote the use of English within the disciplines, often at the expense of ESP (Arnó-Macià & Mancho-Barés, 2015). EMI courses are being promoted by institutional policies although their presence is still scarce in bachelor's degrees in the general context in which UPC-1 and UPC-2 are set, probably due to general low proficiency levels among students and instructors (Mancho-Barés & Arnó-Macià, 2017;Arnó-Macià & Aguilar-Pérez, 2018). Specifically in UPC-1, the offer of EMI involves a one-semester capstone project (with accompanying short courses), which is mainly open to incoming international students (and a few domestic students) as well as three EMI courses (in electronics, materials science, and computing, respectively).…”

“…EMI presence is more prominent at the master's level, however, with three fully English-taught master's programs and two programs offering some EMI courses; only one master's program includes an optional ESP course on business English. In both UPC-1 and UPC-2 (two campuses from the same university), ESP courses (as opposed to EMI) are not backed by explicit institutional policies and 'survive' in areas where they have traditionally been present, such as engineering (Arnó-Macià & Aguilar-Pérez, 2018). Thus, ESP teaching is never mandatory, and its existence can be attributed to long-serving teachers.…”

Integrated foreign languages teaching: a concept of the English language textbook for engineering majors

“…This technology used for teaching professional subjects at university presupposes the dependence on university curricula and university teachers' readiness to teach CLIL courses. Typical examples of implementing CLIL in European and Taiwan universities are described in the works by E. Arnó-Macià, M. Aguilar [15] and W. Yang [16].…”