Introducing a Changing EMI Landscape
The dynamics and trajectories of human migration, mobility and displacement in the first quarter of the twenty-first century have been accompanied by a considerable upswing of English Medium Instruction (EMI) for external and domestic markets globally. Whereas EMI was for much of the twentieth century a significant feature of education in former British colonies, its reach now extends across most parts of the world, including territories with limited prior exposure to or history of EMI. Simultaneously, the internationalisation of education and global allure of English draw increasing numbers of bilingual or multilingual students from across the world to higher education (HE) in Australasia, Canada, the UK and the USA. These are settings in which HE curriculum and delivery designed for first-language (L1) speakers of English are presented to increasing numbers of students for whom English is not the L1; rather, it is for these students an EMI educational context (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Li, Song, Fenton-Smith, Humphries and Walkinshaw2017, Reference Heugh, French, Arya, Pham, Tudini, Billinghurst, Tippett, Nichols and Viljoen2022).
Critical stances towards EMI, and to a lesser extent similar use of French, Portuguese and Spanish medium instruction in former colonies of European states, have been growing since ‘independence’ for many of these in the 1960s, approximately six decades prior to critiques that currently circulate in the Euro-North. This chapter first contextualises such ‘Southern’ critiques of EMI within antecedents of decolonial debates. This is followed by an illustration of critiques in two former British colonies: the first with critiques that circulated in South Africa from the 1960s; the second with critiques that surfaced four decades later in Australia.
Whereas South African education is readily recognised as an EMI context (90 per cent of people speaking languages different from English at home), in the monolingual imaginary of contemporary Australia it is considered an English-speaking country. Nevertheless, Australia is both postcolonial and multilingual, with upwards of 250 Aboriginal linguistic communities at the time of British colonisation (Curr, Reference Curr1886) and in current demographic data 30 per cent of people born overseas, 23 per cent of people using languages different from English (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021). Most recent migrants, and international students (750,000 in 2019), bring their bi/multilinguality and languages from Asia to HE. This means that HE, and indeed school education, in Australia is now both an English L1 and EMI context. The implications of current migration policy are set to redress the balance between monolingual English-speaking and multilingual citizens within the next two decades. Recurring patterns in the critiques of EMI relate to the monolingual mindset (Clyne, Reference Clyne2004) of those who promote EMI, failure of government agents and policymakers to attend to the voice and research expertise of scholars and communities on the ground, and ongoing cycles of inequality for minoritised and Indigenous citizens. At the same time, it is local expertise and agency in both African and Australian settings that offer opportunities for equality.
Viewing EMI Landscapes from Below
EMI in former British colonies, and similar use of French, Portuguese and Spanish in colonies of other European powers, became a matter of interest once the chimera of political independence from Europe began to wear thin in the late twentieth century. To a large extent, whereas the focus has been directed to the role of English second or additional language or dialect (ESL or EAL/D) programmes in post-World War II school education for migrant and small minority populations in the UK, USA and other predominantly Anglophone contexts, the role of both ESL/EAL and EMI across the curriculum has been the focus of attention in former British colonies and more recently territories never colonised by Britain.
The allure of English in HE and the illusive promise of economic security or academic advancement tied to publication rankings and citation counts spread further than former British colonies. Its reach now traverses former colonial territories administered through the Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish in Africa, the Asia-Pacific and South America. The attention of Northern-facing critical applied linguists has been drawn to the phenomenal advance of EMI and opportunities, including for policy advisers, trainers, programmes, assessment and publications, under the mantle of ‘internationalisation’ and neoliberalism (Phillipson, Reference Phillipson1992, Reference Phillipson2008; Sayer, Reference Sayer2019; Potts & Cutrim Schmid, Reference Potts and Cutrim Schmid2022; Salomone, Reference Salomone2022). Recently this has extended to satellite universities operating through EMI abroad. What had been a lucrative English language industry has expanded phenomenally through the advance of EMI, which requires not only the traditional supply of English language courses, including TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), but teaching through English across the university curriculum. This has opened new avenues for the marketing of English – this time to ensure that beyond the ‘Anglophone world’ teaching staff across HE disciplines are adequately prepared to teach through EMI. The externally facing EMI market is huge. There is also increasingly a domestic, internally facing EMI market. Although not always recognised as such, with the internationalisation of education and a wooing of international students to the UK, USA, Australasia and Canada, EMI is increasingly a feature in HE for both international and swelling student numbers from displaced and migrant backgrounds in these settings.
The role of EMI in advancing the footprint and internationalisation of English as the vehicle of Western and Northern power blocs and global economics (including the international monetary system) has received less overtly critical attention in socio- and applied linguistics. This trajectory, however, is by no means certain in the longer term, and lessons learned from the EMI industry may serve as a template for other global competitors. The increasing international traction of the Chinese renminbi bloc (RMB) and signs of a turn towards Chinese language programmes in universities in Russia, Kazakhstan and other Central and East Asian countries are on the rise (e.g. Yalun, Reference Yalun2019). The long-term implications and lessons learned from the strategic advance of EMI will no doubt be closely observed for economic, political and security reasons by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as the footprint of Chinese interests in the Asia-Pacific, South America and Africa expands.Footnote 1 EMI may well become a model for the expansion of the Chinese language in the future.
Uncomfortable Implicatedness, Dilemma and Resistance
A focus of this chapter is on what some may consider a ‘rent-seeking’ model used to advance EMI in the service of reproducing coloniality through epistemic privileging of and economic dependency on the Anglophone North. This model, used to encourage or persuade newly independent postcolonial states to adopt EMI in HE, has led to a washback phenomenon in which EMI exacerbates the comprehensive failure of EMI in secondary and even primary education systems. In the six decades since independence was granted to countries in Africa, the model, despite numerous pedagogical variations, has delivered neither meaningful nor successful education for more than a small minority of students, especially in low-income countries (e.g. Bamgbose, Reference Bamgboṣe2000). Its success, however, has been to lock postcolonial governments into a cycle of debt-trap diplomacy. This is through the costs of hiring expensive English language advisers and teacher educators from the UK and contractual purchasing arrangements for assessments, curricula, readers and textbooks. Whereas more than a century of African scholarship has alerted policymakers and advisers to the pedagogical limitations of EMI, particularly regarding low retention, completions and academic success (e.g. Ouane & Glanz, Reference Ouane and Glanz2011), policy advisers, particularly from external agencies, continue to advise EMI across the school system, even on countries never colonised by Britain. Little attention has been paid to the agents or agencies that influence policy, implementation and the ‘washback effect’ of EMI from HE into school education in postcolonial settings (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Benson, Gebre Yohannes, Bogale, Skutnabb-Kangas and Heugh2012; see also the ‘ebb tide effect’, Chapter 1, this volume). However unintentional, the net result of recent gesturing towards multilingualism in postcolonial applied and sociolinguistics theory advances rather than disrupts EMI in schools, universities and academic publishing (see Bylund et al., Reference Bylund, Khafif and Berghoff2023).
Scholars whose work has been situated in postcolonial theory, the foundations of which lie in universalist worldviews and the assumed superiority of the Northern academy, now face dilemma and uncertainty. The advance of the English language in education, across the former British colonial empire and beyond, has been to the economic and strategic advantage of the English language industry in the UK, USA and Australia. A substantial portion of this industry includes the externally facing global reach of international assessment instruments – IELTS (International English Language Testing System), TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and the Pearson English Test used as gatekeepers to EMI HE. The largest of these, IELTS, has three substantial shareholders: Cambridge Assessment and Publishing, the British Council and IDP Education. The latter, a company with 50 per cent Australian ownership, seeks and secures lucrative (high-fee-paying) international student enrolments for universities in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, Ireland and Canada. These are EMI educational contexts for bi/multilingual students (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Li, Song, Fenton-Smith, Humphries and Walkinshaw2017, Reference Heugh, French, Arya, Pham, Tudini, Billinghurst, Tippett, Nichols and Viljoen2022). The more successful the advance of EMI in HE, whether off-shore or on-shore, the greater the profits for the associated English language industry, including for each of its components. The field of applied linguistics, with a Euro-North centre of gravity, is implicated in the expansion of English as a second, foreign or additional language, EMI, English language assessment and publishing. This is despite the critical stance of influential linguists and proponents of ‘new literacies’ and ‘critical applied linguistics’ (CAL), who situate their work within postcolonial theory critical of colonial empires, extractivist regimes and administrations that subalternised colonised populations.
Parallel discourses of anti-colonialism and de-colonialism have arisen elsewhere through worldviews quite different from Northern-facing postcolonial theory. These are discourses that call for a dual process of decolonisation. The first is a turning away from the dehumanising effects of colonialism identified by Franz Fanon in Les Damnés de la terre (The wretched of the earth) (Fanon, Reference Fanon2002 [Reference Fanon1961]). The second is a ‘delinking’ from Northern universalist systems (e.g. Mignolo & Walsh, Reference Mignolo and Walsh2018). This requires a return of qualities that Maturana and Verden-Zöller (Reference Maturana and Verden-Zöller1980) refer to as The origin of humanness in the biology of love (1980) and recognition of pluriversal systems and worldviews (Kusch, Reference Kusch1970). These include ‘southern epistemologies’ (Santos, Reference Santos2018) and ‘southern theory’ (Connell, Reference Connell2007). Southern decolonial theory is rooted in an ethics of humanity and careful, invited and slow research. Seeking and striving towards this involve a confronting, jolting journey of humility.
Beyond Dilemma, Unchaining Multilingualisms
EMI has thus far served at best to cast a veil over, and at worst to erase, pluriversal epistemes and knowledge systems, precolonial economies and social networks beyond the audacious imaginary of an English-language-dominant UK–USA–Canada–Australasia vortex of power. A Southern-serving solution is to uncover the multilingualisms that lie beneath the smothering layer of the English language and to set free epistemologies that have for too long constrained the potential of students in HE. A first step is to draw attention to the views, linguistic agency and research conducted by multilingual scholars alongside Southern communities and scholars. These need to be considered alongside the role of key agents who advocate for EMI despite unsatisfactory outcomes for students. Understanding the reproductive technologies of coloniality through EMI and the ongoing erasure of multilingualism(s) from a Northern geopolitical facing but Southern theoretical standpoint offers insights for wider discussions of the English language industry. These concern how and why an ‘Anglophone’ imaginary tied to a universalist epistemic worldview has persisted and continued to gain ground in both Southern and Northern locales. From a longue durée view, linguists may be implicated in a critical oversight of responsibility for generations of children, adults and the futures of Southern as well as Northern societies.
A Critical Stance: Several Tributaries and Entanglements
One of the ways in which linguists are implicated is in the assumption that postcolonial and critical applied linguists have understood the fluidity of language in ways that permit them to instruct Southern scholars through one language, English. Yet linguists from India, Srivastava (Reference Srivastava, Annamalai, Jernudd and Rubin1986, Reference Srivastava and Pattanayak1990), Agnihotri (Reference Agnihotri and Crawhall1992, Reference Agnihotri, Heugh, Siegrühn and Plüddemann1995, Reference Agnihotri2007) and their colleagues, recognised the dynamic multidimensionality of multilingualism and multilinguality decades earlier. Their research, multilingual interventions and contributions to teacher education and policy predate later discussions of translanguaging in Northern contexts. Oostendorp (Reference Oostendorp2022), noting the ongoing invisibilisation of earlier African sociolinguistic scholarship on fluid linguistic repertoires in South African scholarship, expresses impatience towards the continued portrayal of the South as ‘less knowing’, which exerts pressure on Southern scholars to defer to Northern scholarship in order to be published in ‘the academy’ (also see Bylund et al., Reference Bylund, Khafif and Berghoff2023).
Well-known linguists in Africa and India who have contributed to national and transnational language education policy, planning, research and HE for several decades have strong research-based views of what now appear as novel in the Northern academy. And they have strong views of research and evidence-poor implementation of English (French and Portuguese) regimes of language in education, especially for communities who live in remote, rural and urban settings. Yet these views, even when published in English, are seldom acknowledged in the publications of the academy, most especially when their research favours multilingual systems of education (e.g. Obanya, Reference Obanya1999; Bamgbose, Reference Bamgbose2014; Chimbutane, Reference Chimbutane2018).
The Role of Powerful Agents and Resilient Coloniality
Perspectives from both postcolonial and decolonial views of language have spilled across and into debates in the postcolonies and EMI institutions. These are ones in which L1 speakers of English have held and continue to hold disproportionately influential positions compared with L1 speakers of endogenous languages. ‘Soft-power’ strategies of the UK, USA and Canada, designed to shore up Northern economic and political power, have included generous academic scholarships to the intellectual and promising political elites of Africa, Asia and Latin America (Nye, Reference Nye1990). In return, these have invariably contributed to the advance of EMI and pro-UK and -US trading partnerships in their more benevolent form, and in debt-trap diplomacy for less benevolent purposes (e.g. Phillipson, Reference Phillipson2008; Salomone, Reference Salomone2022). The prominence of English in HE has been bolstered through returning scholars of applied linguistics, second language acquisition and the teaching of ESL convinced of the salience and advantages of EMI to deliver economic or educational deliverance from marginality and poverty (Coleman, Reference Coleman2011). Yet scholars including prominent Kenyan author Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o have articulated the cognitive dissonance for proponents of EMI when most people in Africa continue to use African languages for most communicative purposes (Ngũgı̃ wa Thiong’o, Reference Jussawalla and Dasenbrock1992).Footnote 2
Out of Africa: Antecedents of Critical Responses to EMI
Perspectives that are both strongly critical and supportive of EMI have circulated in postcolonial territories in Africa and South Asia for approximately two centuries, although more noticeably so in the decades after the Partition of India in 1947 and the relinquishing of direct power over former British colonies and territories in Africa from the mid-1960s. The nature of the critiques and promotion of EMI in the ‘Southern’ postcolonial settings of Africa and Asia, contexts from which approximately 86 per cent (Eberhard et al., Reference Eberhard, Simons and Fenning2022) of the world’s linguistic communities originate, is contextually, historically and politically different from those of Europe and North America.
For this reason, the discussion now moves to a historical overview and perspective of EMI in postcolonial Africa to illustrate a deep-seated colonial habitus. The analysis is based on a synthesis of several sources of data collated by this author over a period of four decades (1982–2022), each reported elsewhere. The first includes close observation of and engagement with key agents in national and transnational bodies that have influenced language education policy in sub-Saharan Africa during this period.Footnote 3 The second source includes multiple and extended fieldwork studies undertaken first hand in local, regional, national and multicountry evaluations of literacy and medium of instruction policies and their implementation. In each of these fieldwork has been undertaken in multiple sites – metropolitan centres of government, urban, rural and remote settings.Footnote 4 The third source concerns national data records of enrolments, retention and successful completions of primary and secondary schooling, as well as the scholarship of African scholars and educators (see Alidou et al., Reference Alidou, Boly, Brock-Utne, Diallo, Heugh and Wolff2006; see also Bamgbose, Reference Bamgbose1984, Reference Bamgboṣe2000, Reference Bamgbose2014; Chumbow, Reference Chumbow2009; Fafunwa, Reference Fafunwa1975; Heugh, Reference Heugh1987, Reference Heugh, Ouane and Glanz2011, Reference Heugh2013). These have implications for the socio-economic and linguistic identity and the proportion of students who can access and graduate from HE. EMI requirements in HE are usually unrealistic, especially in the absence of multilingual pedagogies attuned to local linguistic ecologies. EMI-only regimes, furthermore, exert washback pressure on EMI in teacher education, secondary schooling and into primary schooling (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Benson, Gebre Yohannes, Bogale, Skutnabb-Kangas and Heugh2012). The fourth source of data concerns twelve years of research and postgraduate teaching (applied linguistics and teacher education) in an ‘Anglophone’ university in South Africa (1993–2005) (discussed later).
Proponents: Prolonging Coloniality
Several arguments advance English as necessary in postcolonial Africa, none of which has credible or reliable supporting evidence:
(1) English is put forward as a politically ‘neutral’ language to forge political unity and liberation in a newly formed state, and to circumvent ethnolinguistic rivalry and conflict in the territories previously under colonial administration. This claim is not supported by evidence, but rather the reverse (e.g. Heugh, Reference Heugh1987; Tripathi, Reference Tripathi1990).
(2) It is suggested that English can perform this role even where there is no prior history of British colonial administration or societal use of English. Numerous studies that evaluate this claim find only evidence that disproves its validity (e.g. Coleman, Reference Coleman2011, Reference Coleman2022; Rosendal & Amini Ngabonziza, Reference Rosendal and Amini Ngabonziza2023).
(3) English has been promoted as the aspirational language of access to the international world of knowledge, scholarship and economic advancement (escape from poverty). Evidence indicates advantages only for a very small elite minority (e.g. authors in Coleman, Reference Coleman2011; Ouane & Glanz, Reference Ouane and Glanz2011).
(4) It is frequently asserted that parents want their children to have the earliest access to learning English and they believe that EMI is essential. There are no reliable large-scale or system-wide studies that show this.Footnote 5
(5) New administrations have been encouraged to accept that monolingual education is more affordable than multilingual education.Footnote 6
Detractors: Resisting the Coloniality of Language
The detractors of these arguments have been African linguists and scholars tracking the relationship among EMI, low primary school enrolment, high rates of attrition in early to mid primary years, low enrolment and retention in secondary school, and minimal throughput to HE (e.g. Obanya, Reference Obanya1999; Bamgbose, Reference Bamgboṣe2000). The Nigerian Six Year Primary School Project (Fafunwa, Reference Fafunwa1975) was the first longitudinal study to reveal that students require a minimum of six years of well-resourced instruction in their home or local language, plus six years of learning an additional language, such as English, before they can transition to EMI (see also Bamgbose, Reference Bamgbose1984, Reference Bamgboṣe2000). Students afforded adequate provision of this kind, taught by well-prepared bilingual teachers (familiar with the local language and English), have the best chance of entry to and retention in secondary school and thereafter HE (Heugh, Reference Heugh, Ouane and Glanz2011; Ouane & Glanz, Reference Ouane and Glanz2011).
Subsequent studies demonstrate similar findings, although under less well-resourced conditions students benefit from eight or more years of local language medium of instruction, plus English as an additional language, in a twenty-five-country study in sub-Saharan Africa (Alidou et al., Reference Alidou, Boly, Brock-Utne, Diallo, Heugh and Wolff2006; Ouane & Glanz, Reference Ouane and Glanz2011) and in Ethiopia (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Benson, Gebre Yohannes, Bogale, Skutnabb-Kangas and Heugh2012). Nevertheless, in Ethiopia the use of EMI in HE, where less than 1 per cent of people use English in their daily lives, has been shown to exert a negative washback effect of EMI into teacher education colleges, secondary and even primary schools (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Benson, Gebre Yohannes, Bogale, Skutnabb-Kangas and Heugh2012; Woldeyes, Reference Woldeyes, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson2022; and see later discussion).
Key Agents and Their Critics
The presence of English language advisers to newly independent ‘postcolonial’ governments from agencies including the British Council, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), USAID and the World Bank (Heugh, Reference Heugh1987; Phillipson, Reference Phillipson1992; Salomone, Reference Salomone2022) have contributed to notions of the superiority of English in fulfilling several functions (mentioned earlier). The ideas of English as the path to international educational success and as a single language to forge national unity and circumvent social fracture in multilingual postcolonies is one that has circulated for more than a century in South Asia and Africa. Both claims, however, were shown to be flawed by scholars such as Tripathi (Reference Tripathi1990) and Siatchitema (Reference Siatchitema and Crawhall1992). Their research in Zambia (1970–1990) revealed increased social fracture and class division between the very few people who managed to travel through the EMI system and most citizens who found themselves excluded – not only from educational retention and completion, but also from participatory citizenship conducted through the official language, English.
Heugh (Reference Heugh1987) traced the knock-on effect of the adoption of English as the only language, or one of two official languages, from Tanzania to Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia, by way of anticipating language education policy changes that would follow in the post-apartheid years. In her study English language advisers initially from the UK played a significant role in persuading new governments to adopt English-mainly education policies. Prominent English-speaking South Africans living in political exile, supportive of the African National Congress (ANC), had taken up senior roles in the Ministry of Education in Zambia. Not only did they encourage Zambia’s English-mainly education policy (critiqued earlier), but they advised the United Nations Institute for Namibia to recommend English as the official language and the only language of education ahead of that country’s independence from South African administration in 1990. This was despite less than 1 per cent of the Namibian population being familiar with the language. These advisers returned to South Africa in 1990 and accepted influential roles in the ‘Education Desk’ of the ANC, determined to ensure an English-dominant education system after the first democratic elections in 1994, despite research and advocacy promoting a multilingual education policy (Crawhall, Reference Crawhall1992; Heugh, Reference Heugh2013). As already mentioned, since 2004 UK-based advisers have contributed to the increased anglicisation of the education system in Ethiopia, increasing the washback of EMI in universities to teacher education colleges, secondary and primary schooling, with little return on investment for Ethiopian students (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Benson, Gebre Yohannes, Bogale, Skutnabb-Kangas and Heugh2012; Woldeyes, Reference Woldeyes, Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson2022). Since 2008 British Council advisers have taken on the role of advising the Rwandan government to switch from French to English as the official language of the country and from French Medium Instruction to EMI (Simpson & Muvunyi, Reference Simpson and Muvunyi2012). This is on the basis that English has been portrayed as a neutral language, in a country where more than 99.4 per cent of the population speak one language, Kinyarwanda (Rosendal & Amini Ngabonziza, Reference Rosendal and Amini Ngabonziza2023). That Kinyarwanda was never implicated in earlier conflict and genocide in Rwanda makes the positioning of English and its use in education from an ethical and social justice perspective difficult to comprehend.
Multilingualisms and Multilingual Pedagogies Emerge from Below
Long-anticipated political changes in South Africa, accompanied by a human rights-based constitution, enshrining linguistic human rights (LHRs), and promoting multilingualism including in education, were legislatively finalised in 1996. These were followed by a new multilingual policy for schools (1997) and HE (2002). One response from the University of Cape Town, via a non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa, was to initiate an in-service teacher education certificate in multilingual education (1998–2001). Since earlier Nigerian research (Akinasso, Reference Akinnaso1991) had cautioned regarding the propensity of education officials to subvert language policy implementation, a second initiative for senior education officials and teacher educators from fifteen sub-Saharan countries was also initiated. Participants could elect to undertake the equivalent of a one-year postgraduate diploma and/or a two-year Master of Education in multilingual education (2001–2005; see Benson & Plüddemann, Reference Benson and Plüddemann2010).
Pedagogical innovations in both programmes included multilingual tutorials and knowledge exchange among participants (students, mentors and scholars). For several reasons, the value of discussing and translating key concepts (mostly available in literature published in English, and also in French and Portuguese) among the participants from different African contexts, and local and cross-border Malawian, Mozambican, Namibian and South African languages, was important. Participants, initially intimidated by an EMI university, swiftly asserted their linguistic and epistemic agency, contesting scholar-led perspectives, and took on the role of tutors and mentors. Reciprocity in exchanges of knowledge and language changed unequal power relations with discourses of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) surfacing, although under-represented elsewhere in the institution.
After initial trialling by the NGO, the university had intended to mainstream both programmes to comply with the legislative requirements for multilingual education in HE. However, this step was blocked by two sets of senior academics. The first included applied linguistics and English language lecturers. The second were close associates of the English language advisers, previously to the Zambian Ministry of Education and for the English-only education policy for Namibia, and recently recruited as senior officeholders in the South African national Department for Education (see Taylor & Vinjevold, Reference Taylor and Vinjevold1999). Their antipathy towards multilingual education, and that of subsequent appointments of English-only or EMI proponents as lecturers, blocked the further development of multilingual education in this institution at the time (Heugh, Reference Heugh2003, Reference Heugh2013).
Coloniality Reproduced in an Australian University
A decade later, the multilingual pedagogies trialled in South African HE discussed earlier were further developed in a five-phase sequence of action-research interventions (2008–2022) in Australia. In this HE context, 25–30 per cent of enrolments are domestic (migrant) or international bilingual or multilingual students. Since the early 2000s these students could elect to take one or more of eight conventional ESL/EAL courses within their major programme of study, or as a sequence of courses for a minor, sub-major or major in an undergraduate BA degree. This author, recognising the EMI face of teaching and learning in this context, recognised also the multilingual underbelly of students’ epistemic and linguistic agency and repertoire. Through early trialling of multilingual assessment, recognition of the value of translation and reciprocal exchange of knowledge, ‘transknowledging’ has emerged as complementary to translanguaging in understanding multilingualism in educational settings. Changes were made during this study to merge four third-year English language courses with two other majors: applied linguistics (three courses) and English and creative writing (one course).
During Phase 1 (2008–2014) international and multilingual students’ reticence and silences in tutorials were found to be indicative of alienation, anxiety, a sense of exclusion and often vulnerability. Tutorial invitations to share spoken and written expertise from their home countries, as well as their backgrounds of faith, knowledge and language, resulted in multilingual conversations with students making linguistic accommodations to secure peer-to-peer inclusion. Explicit experimentation with horizontal (more) spoken and vertical (more) written translanguaging in tutorials included small research projects requiring interviewing community members in students’ preferred languages, translating and editing responses in English, drafting assignments using translanguaging practices, and delivering assignments in a sequence of drafts, approximating as closely as possible to ‘standard Australian English’ at the point of submission (2008–2012). Two PhD students assisted in the analysis of the different translation and translanguaging practices and processes that students used in written tasks (2012–2014; Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Li, Song, Fenton-Smith, Humphries and Walkinshaw2017). A summary of the five phases of the study is given in Table 13.1.
Table 13.1 A longitudinal study in five phases, 2008–2022
| Phase 1, 2008–2014 | The English Language Project involved a shift from an EAL pedagogy for international students to bilingual and multilingual capabilities in eight courses in an English major (two third-year courses shared with an applied linguistics major). A strong link was found between high-level proficiency in L1 and L2 and high-level translation capability. A strong association was found between low attainment in L1 and L2 and poor translation capability. Students asserted agency and voice when invited to bring and exchange international knowledge with peers in tutorials and in assignments (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Li, Song, Fenton-Smith, Humphries and Walkinshaw2017) |
| Phase 2, 2015–2016 | Academic proficiency in English was found to correspond with two-way capability in translation L1 ⇔ L2 English. The cognitive and linguistic demands of paraphrasing and summarising, key capabilities in HE, were identified as blockages to learning in EMI. Two-way translation was found to decrease or release EMI blockages in paraphrasing and summarising and reduce the need to copy and paste, thus reducing the incidence of breaches of academic integrity. Stronger L1 = stronger L2 was noted again. Reciprocal knowledge exchange among students increased student participation (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, Li, Song, Fenton-Smith, Humphries and Walkinshaw2017). |
| Phase 3, 2017–2019 | Further research informed the development of an English Language & Intercultural Learning & Teaching Framework for a large division of the university (Nallaya et al., Reference Nallaya, Heugh and Fazakerley2019). Academic proficiency in English, translation, translanguaging and international knowledge exchange featured prominently in student feedback in follow-up research data (student interviews, tutorial data, assessments). The decision was taken to consider these more closely in further research. |
| Phase 4, 2018–2019 | English Language, Intercultural Learning & International Knowledge Academic proficiency in English, (human) translation, translanguaging and transknowledging featured strongly for all students. Intercultural learning was perceived as less significant. The use of human language technology for purposes of translation was noted by researchers. |
| Phase 5, 2019–2020 | Using Human Language Technology (HLT), a project funded under an institutional Digital Learning Strategy (Heugh et al., Reference Heugh, French, Arya, Pham, Tudini, Billinghurst, Tippett, Nichols and Viljoen2022). Multilingual students used translation (human and machine) for access to international knowledge and frequently engaged in translating and exchange of knowledge (transknowledging). Some were unsure about how to comply with academic integrity protocols. Others expressed clear agency in and their ‘right’ to use HLT to complete assignment readings and tasks, and to support their sense of inclusion and well-being. Domestic monolingual speakers of English valued knowledge exchange with multilingual students, while multilingual students mentored/tutored monolingual students in HLT and other language-related technologies. Unequal balance of power changed among students, reduced linguicism and potential racism, increased co-dependency and respect. Value for monolingual and multilingual students and staff. Risk: HE academic integrity protocols changing to ‘discourage’ use of machine translation. |
This initiative led to a consultative process with staff across the four schools in the division of this institution over a period of three years (2016–2019), concluding with a launch of the English Language & Intercultural Learning & Teaching Framework (ELILT). The framework is intended to guide university staff to understand that the optimal way for multilingual students to develop high-level academic capability in English is for academic language development to occur in both their primary language and English simultaneously.
Findings from the HLT project, completed in late 2019, were circulated through the university and complemented the ELILT Framework on a site available to all staff. For multilingual students to thrive, the data show that the academic environment needs to encourage multilingual strategies, including translation (human and machine) and knowledge exchange (transknowledging). However, a new set of academic integrity protocols developed in a different area of the university took a different stance, entirely antithetical to translation technology. Shortly after the onset of COVID-19, a decision was taken to withdraw the English language major from the BA by a senior colleague who identifies with intercultural communication and social justice. The English language students were diverted directly into the applied linguistics major to bolster enrolment numbers in that major. Whether intentional or not, this terminated the use of multilingual pedagogies for multilingual students from their first year, removed an English language programme of courses intended to support multilingual students, and removed multilingual pedagogy from the entire applied linguistics major. The arrival of COVID-19 allowed interest in ELILT to wane across the university. The surfacing of ChatGPT in early 2023 threw teaching staff across the sector into an unprepared quandary of how to deal with and understand student use of artificial intelligence (AI), including machine translation. Ironically, it is the students from the HLT project who have valuable expertise in the use of a range of digital technologies and already know how to acknowledge their sources, integrate these into their assignments and maintain academic integrity.
Coloniality and Linguicism Are Difficult to Shed
At each stage of the sequence of these and many other incidents, rubbing up against a coloniality of the mind and what is an extraordinary sense of linguistic and cognitive superiority was viscerally confronting and painful. The discussion here brings together close observation of students’ multilingual agency and voice that have precipitated some pedagogical change at the local level in two HE contexts.Footnote 7 It also reveals deep-seated resistance to multilingualism in EMI institutions and how influential agents can influence decision-making. Many of the agents that I have observed over the last forty years have interests in a growing English language industry, of which EMI is one of the most lucrative or promising. However, the habitus of English has an even more powerful grip than this. At times it is entangled with barely visible categories of division, exclusion and race (Windle et al., Reference Windle, Heugh, French, Armitage and Chang2023). Institutional resistance, and the interests of key agents that instrumentalise EMI and simultaneously invisibilise multilingual students, may not always be recognised by well-meaning postcolonial scholars who strive to enact pedagogies of justice and inclusion.
The illustrative data from one institution in each of two contexts reveal some of the technologies and moves of resistance to change a monolingual stance towards EMI despite institutional discourses and even policies that assert an ethics attentive to diversity, equality and inclusion. This is one of many stories of multilingualism uncovered and seen from a Southern vantage point. It is also a winding story of EMI and the often unintended consequences of washback across education systems – illustrated through examples in two different settings in which EMI predominates. The data do signal hopefulness, in that they demonstrate how students and teaching staff can and do employ collaborative multilingualisms and transknowledging to slip beyond borders of coloniality and cognitive capture when they find institutional cracks to work from below (e.g. Bock & Stroud, Reference Bock and Stroud2021; Dobinson et al., Reference Dobinson, Dryden, Dovchin, Gong and Mercieca2024). Turning the gaze Southwards and seeking to understand the process of decolonising the mind is not easy. The deep-seated coloniality that lingers even in postcolonial discourses of social justice and inclusion must be scraped off, exfoliated, layer by painful layer that those of us who have been nurtured into the academy must endure. It is most difficult for those of us who have become accustomed to teaching and encouraging students to read academic texts that present scholarship rooted in the Northern episteme – only in English.
