AILA Review - Volume 25, Issue 1, 2012

Today, more and more universities in Spain are starting to design language policies, usually including Spanish and English. At the same time, Spain has a special socio-political context since part of its territory is already bilingual. This paper examines the opinions and attitudes of academics at a bilingual Valencian-Spanish university which is about to implement a multilingual policy adding English as a third language of instruction. Therefore, in order to start planning the implementation of the teacher development programme and complementary communication campaigns that are part of the recently approved policy, it was considered important to determine the beliefs of academics regarding their proficiency in the three languages involved and the ways to teach in them (Borg 2003). A questionnaire was distributed to a stratified sample of the lecturers at Universitat Jaume I in order to find out what lecturers believed to be their competence in the three priority languages and to identify what they regarded as the main pedagogical styles used in their discipline. Additionally, lecturers were asked, by means of a semi-structured discussion, about their attitudes towards multilingual teaching. The results of this study shed some light on teacher training needs regarding language and pedagogy and allow for suggestions as to possible measures in support of implementing multilingual language policies.

Internationalisation processes have accelerated the implementation of English-medium programmes (EMPs) across European higher education institutions. The field of business and management studies has been particularly affected by this trend (Wächter & Maiworm 2008: 46) with numerous new EMPs introduced each year. This paper presents key findings of a quantitative status quo survey on the spread of EMPs across Austrian business faculties as well as those of a qualitative case study on English-taught programmes at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). The macro data regarding degrees, implementation years and entry requirements confirm trends identified by precedent studies: There are no English-taught BA programmes, nearly 30% of all programmes were implemented at the peak of the Bologna reforms and there is no uniform admission policy. On the micro level, the study identifies key facts concerning the curriculum design of EMPs. The results point towards a lack of awareness of the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) element in English-medium business education, as only 11% of the courses can be classified as ESP. Despite the lack of focus on ESP, the analysis also shows that about a third of all content classes explicitly state language learning aims in their course descriptions.