The TRANSLINGUAM-UNI project addresses one of the challenges in Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020, namely, Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades y Ciencia con y para la Sociedad (Reto 6). The project aims at generating knowledge about a new reality in our country’s higher education: the multilingual and multicultural undergraduate university classrooms with full EMI. Classrooms make-up is affected by social changes triggered by (1) recent international migratory fluxes, (2) credit mobility promoted by EU policies and American universities, and (3) increasing degree mobility of students across countries and continents. 

Such a new learning and socializing context, affecting young citizens across the globe, presents challenges as regards communication, teaching quality and social relationships in the classroom. Therefore, the consequences of these strategies need to be evaluated since such classrooms may, or may not, act as vehicles of positive social transformation. Ultimately, this analysis is much needed within a European Union that aspires to integrate citizens and residents harmoniously, regardless of where they have been born.

The research will contribute to propose solutions to several basic social problems in contemporary educational systems, not only in Catalonia, where we will be collecting our data, but also in Spain and other European countries:

(1) the complex linguistic ecology in classrooms resulting from the spontaneous use of (a) local students’ heritage languages; (b) local official language(s); (c) English as medium of instruction and of informal communication; and (d) the languages spoken by international students;

(2) the communicative and social conflicts derived from a social network with members from different cultural profiles, sensibilities and ideologies;

(3) the still low level of English competence of many non-native speakers when they start undergraduate studies;

(4) the heterogeneous levels in English competence of classmates from diverse family, cultural and social backgrounds;

(5) the urgent need to educate future professionals with the necessary transcultural and translingual skills and attitudes that will allow them to work in transnational companies and to negotiate with international interlocutors, and

(6) the complexity of designing appropriate language and educational policies providing effective solutions to all of the above while reassuring the quality of instruction at all educational levels.