Objetives

The project intends to investigate whether the context of a multilingual and multicultural undergraduate university classroom with full English-medium instruction triggers the development of transcultural competence among its students, and to what extent. This competence will be explored along four dimensions: linguistic, attitudinal, interculturality and identitary.  As we will measure such competence along four dimensions, we have formulated the following four research questions:

Does the context of multilingual and multicultural classroom with full EMI foster, among undergraduate university students, the development of: 

1. Multilingual practices (including the translingual use of various languages and progress in English) and, if so, to what extent?
2. Cosmopolitan linguistic attitudes; and, if so, to what extent?
3. Intercultural sensitivity; and, if so, to what extent?
4. A cosmopolitan identity (not necessarily opposed to a local identity) and, if so, to what extent?

As a transfer objective, we will design a model of quality certification for EMI at university: the EMICERT Certificate. This certificate is conceived as part of the internationalization mission of the university and its ultimate aim will be to certify the quality of EMI in multilingual and multicultural classrooms. In accordance with that mission, the certificate will be used, first, to objectively evaluate and critically assess teaching skills. Second, this critical assessment will be used as a platform for self-reflection, which should facilitate the professional development of instructors. 

Methodology

The project will be developed with an interdisciplinary perspective that combines four approaches: (1) educational sociolinguistics, which explores the relationship between linguistic practices and educational context; (2) language acquisition, which investigates language development in an additional language; (3) social psychology, which investigates the existence (or not) of intercultural sensitivity and the role of social networks; and (4) linguistic anthropology, which explores the relationship between linguistic practices, attitudes and identity affiliations. These disciplines provide us with both the bases for our theoretical framework and a variety of research instruments for exploring the educational context under investigation from complementary angles, that is to say, for us application of a mixed-methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Therefore, as in previous projects, we carry out a case study of an undergraduate classroom with full teaching in English which exemplifies the linguistic and cultural diversity of university classrooms of the 21st century. The design will also include a control group and a longitudinal component. As qualitative data, observations in the classroom, recording interactions, linguistic landscape data and interviews with students and teachers are collected. As quantitative data, questionnaires, responses to a social media generator and proficiency tests in English are collected.

The richness of our methodological apparatus is not only provided by a wide variety of data collection methods but also of methods of analysis (1) thematic analysis of interviews and field notes, (2) descriptive statistics applied to questionnaires and the social network generator; and (3) inferential statistics applied to the data collected through written and oral English production. This multifaceted approach, which uses complementary methods, will facilitate (a) the triangulation of the data, (b) the multidimensional exploration of our object of study, and (c) the ultimate well-grounded achievement of our transfer objective: the EMICERT.

Ethics and Informed Consent 

This project has received the ethics review certificate issued by the Institutional Committee for Ethical Review of Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

To participate in the project, the project's consent form must be filled in and sent to the researchers. Examples of Consent Forms: in Catalan, in English, in Spanish and in Chinese.