Hedda Söderlundh

Language Choice and Linguistic Variation in Classes Nominally Taught in English

This chapter presents a study of the linguistic milieu that is generated when students from different parts of the world meet and interact in international university settings. The study is conducted in nominally English-medium courses at a Swedish university, and focuses on how students use Swedish and other non-authorised languages in addition to English. The multilingual characteristics of the milieu are exemplified and discussed, and it is demonstrated that the language of the surrounding society holds a special position. In the era of globalisation, universities are part of internationalisation processes, but yet situated in a local context marked by a certain history and specific linguistic resources.

Internationalization in the Higher Education Classroom : Local Policy Goals put into Practice

Nowadays, most universities have policies for internationalization, and in such policies, attention is increasingly given to internationalization as an aspect of students’ learning. However, there have so far been limited efforts to study how such student-centered internationalization can be carried out in practice. This article explores linkages between policy and practice, and it reports on a case study of how local policy goals of internationalization are carried out at the classroom level in a university in Sweden. Through fine-grained analyses of classroom interactions, it is demonstrated how a teacher and his students put policy goals into practice and what aspects stimulate them to do so. More generally, the results contribute to knowledge of how internationalization of higher education can be encouraged and practiced in local learning settings in the form of social actions and how it is carried out in a certain context at a certain time.