Lecturer identity as a nexus between EMI planning and practice: a case study at the University of Lleida (Spain)

ABSTRACT

The implementation of EMI programmes in Spain has put a strain on content lecturers who need to navigate a series of tensions related to the language of instruction, which have been shown to shape their professional identity. This study aims to explore how an EMI lecturer balances university language policies, ideology, and beliefs about English language teaching and learning and classroom practice in an EMI Strategic Marketing subject taught at the University of Lleida. The results show that, in the absence of explicit guidelines from the university, the EMI lecturer puts forward language-related methodological principles that are rooted in their personal journey of learning English and not so much in their content specialist identity. EMI is a magnifying glass of the challenges involved in enacting language policies in higher education and of the instrumental role of the content lecturer in this process.

KEYWORDS:

• EMI
• language planning
• language practice
• lecturer identity
• EFL
• Catalonia

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the research groups Linguistic Descriptions of English (LINDES) at Universidad de Salamanca and CLA (2021SGR1295) at Universitat de Lleida (Spain). Alexandra Vraciu is a Serra Húnter Programme fellow.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Retrieved from https://www.udl.cat/ca/serveis/ori/estudiantat_estranger/eng/infoeng/teaching/. Accessed 15/01/2024

2 Retrieved from https://www.udl.cat/ca/serveis/ori/estudiantat_estranger/eng/infoeng/subjects/. Accessed 15/01/2024.

3 Retrieved from https://www.udl.cat/ca/organs/vicerectors/vpipe/planificacio/internacionalitzacio/. Accessed 20/01/2024

4 Retrieved from https://seuelectronica.udl.cat/transparenciaPDF/1.UNIVERSITAT/1_3_6%20POI-UdL_12-16.pdf. Accessed 20/01/2024.

5 The authors’ translation. Retrieved from https://www.udl.cat/export/sites/universitat-lleida/ca/serveis/ori/.galleries/Documents-ORI/Fitxers_descxrrega/POI-UdL_12-16.pdf. Accessed 21/01/2024.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under Grant number PID2019-107451GB-I00.

Notes on contributors

Vasilica Mocanu

Vasilica Mocanu is a tenured-track professor at the University of Salamanca. Her mixed methods research within the field of applied and sociolinguistics delves into the relationship between language and identity under globalising processes that trigger human mobility. Vasilica has been a visiting research fellow at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and at the Institute of Multilingualism – University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Alexandra Vraciu

Alexandra Vraciu is a Serra Húnter Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education of Universitat de Lleida (Spain). Her research interests include peer interaction, teacher input quality and content-based language instruction (CLIL and EMI). She is a member of the funded research group CLA (Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada) (2021SGR01295) and teaches EFL Didactics and CLIL for primary education at undergraduate level and Teaching Innovation and Introduction to Educational Research Methods at postgraduate level. She is also the coordinator of the double degree in Pre-primary and Primary Education at the Universitat de Lleida.