Plurilingual teaching and learning practices in ‘internationalised’ university lectures

Abstract

This article explores how participants in ‘internationalised’ university lectures draw on the different plurilingual (and multimodal) resources available to them in accomplishing teaching and learning activities. The data are from lectures that took place in four different technology subjects at two Catalan universities. Two aspects of the corpus are focused on in the analysis. On the one hand, what is referred to as a plurilingual multimodal design of the lectures studied is presented. On the other, some ways in which the recurrent emergence of code-switching in the corpus may be considered a resource for the construction of disciplinary knowledge are sketched out. In this regard, the analysis focuses on three features: the management of participation, the management of comprehension and attention and the management of complexity. The practices studied in the article offer empirical insights into how internationalisation of universities in Catalonia and elsewhere – and in particular the teaching of subjects in a second language – can be achieved in harmony with existing plurilingualism and ensuring complexity of disciplinary content teaching and learning.

Keywords:

• internationalisation
• higher education
• L2 vehicle lectures
• conversation analysis
• plurilingualism
• code-switching

Notes

1. We use the terms first language (L1) and second language (L2) only to facilitate description. In most cases, participants in the research are bilingual L1 users and the L2 is actually a third or fourth language for them.

2. We use the term multilingualism to refer to the social or institutional presence of two or more languages. Multilingualism can be materialised in actual practice in either a plurilingual mode, involving the use of two or more languages within the same interaction, or in unilingual mode, involving the use of just one available language (Lüdi and Py 2003, 2009).

3. Transcription conventions:

1.	Intonation: a. Falling: \ b. Rising: / c. Maintained: _
2.	Pauses: a. Timed: (no. of seconds) b. Micro (less than tenth of a second): (.)
3.	Overlapping: [text]
4.	Latching: =
5.	Interruption: text-
6.	Lengthening of a sound: te:xt
7.	EMPHATIC
8.	°soft°
9.	Incomprehensible fragment: xxxx
10.	Approximate phonetic transcription: +text +
11.	Dubious transcription: (text?)
12.	Language: a. Catalan b. English c. Spanish
13.	Continuation of a previous turn: speaker>
14.	Transcriber's comments: ((comment))
15.	Translation below a turn: &PROF:
16.	Symbolic and photographic transcription of multimodality: a. Participant: abc: b. Approximate instant when action starts or finishes/screen shot was taken: * c. Action described continues across subsequent lines: *–> d. Action described continues beyond end of fragment: *–>> e. Description of action: abc: *-description->

4. Multimodal data are included in the transcripts when available and relevant to the analysis.

5. A more extensive introduction to this corpus of univeristy lectures can be found in Borràs et al. (2012).

6. Project reference: CIT4-CT-2006-028702. Over the period 2006–2011, researchers from universities across Europe sought to identify the precise conditions in which Europe's linguistic diversity may be considered an asset, across three terrains: European companies, political institutions and universities. The authors participated in the latter field, undertaking qualitative investigations at two universities in Catalonia. For more information, see: www.dylan-project.org.

7. Project reference: R+D+i EDU2010-15783. The project, running from 2011 to 2013, explores the integrated acquisition of scientific and foreign language communicative competences in Spanish primary, secondary and tertiary CLIL classrooms. For more information, see http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/clilsi/content/dale-apecs path=http://grupsderecerca.uab.cat/clilsi/content/dale-apecs.

8. The collection of the lecture data presented in this article followed broadly ethnographic methods. In this sense, the authors were involved in both formal and informal discussions with the participating professors, as well as others interested or involved in teaching their subjects through English. This affirmation is based on those discussions.