English in Europe: Opportunity or threat?
Attitudes towards the role and status of English in Europe have changed over the past century and continue to change today. Many people regard the English language as an opportunity for speakers of other languages to participate on the world stage. The increased dominance in world affairs of the USA meant that English has assumed a lingua franca role in business, higher education, research and tourism, to mention just a few of the more economically significant domains of language use. Others, however, see it as a threat to the national languages of Europe and even as a threat to national cultures and identities.
Aim
The English in Europe (EiE) project investigates the position of English in today’s Europe by hosting five conferences in contrasting European regions. Each conference will examine the role of English in a particular context in order to understand more fully the relationships between English, other languages and their users.
Participants
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the project, directed by Professor Andrew Linn, is coordinated by the Centre for Linguistic Research, University of Sheffield, and represents a collaborative network between five European universities: University of Sheffield (UK); University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Charles University (Czech Republic), University of Zaragoza (Spain) and the South - East Europe Research Centre (SEERC), CITY College, Thessaloniki, (Greece).
Find more information about the network on EiE's website.
Activities
The Copenhagen conference (19 – 21 April 2013): The English Language in Europe in Teaching in European Higher Education
The theme of the Copenhagen conference, arranged by CIP, was “The English Language in Teaching in European Higher Education”. Papers on all topics relating to this theme were invited, including but not limited to:
- Ideologies of English in higher education
- Language policy in higher education
- English medium instruction in higher education
- Consequences of English medium instruction for local languages
- Parallellingualism and multilingualism in higher education
- English as an academic lingua franca
- Content and language integrated learning (CLIL)
- English for academic purposes (EAP)
- English language testing in higher education
Previous network activities
Conference in Sheffield: The English Language in Europe: Debates and Discourses
Conference in Zaragoza: English as a Scientific and Research Language