Analysis Of English-medium Instruction Policyand Practice In German Higher Education

In recent years,with the rapid development of English-medium instruction(hereafter EMI)in non-native English speaking(hereafter NNES)countries of Europe and Asia,EMI in higher education has become a central aspect of language policy and planning in NNES contexts(Dang et al.2013).Since it was formally introduced into the field of German HE in 2002,EMI has developed with great momentum in Germany,and Germany has become one of the most popular study destinations in Europe.This thesis will combine Spolsky’s(2004)framework for language policy analysis and Shohamy’s(2006)language policy mechanism to analyze the EMI policy and practice of German HE and the mechanism between them,from the three levels of Europe,Germany,and German universities.The main research method is document analysis,supplemented by corpus-assisted discourse analysis.This thesis collected in total 236 pieces of texts(including the 171 internationalization strategies of universities),which are 1,642,750 words in length.Language policy is divided into explicit and implicit dimensions.The explicit dimension includes the explicit language-related policies introduced by the European Commission,Council of Europe and European Council between 1982-2016.The implicit dimension refers to the HE internationalization policy documents of all levels,including the communique?s of the Bologna Process and the annual reports of the Erasmus project from 1999 to 2018,the reports/annual reports between 2001-2019 of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research(Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung,hereafter BMBF),German Academic Exchange Service(Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst,hereafter DAAD),and the German Rectors’ Conference(Hochschulrektorenkonferenz,hereafter HRK)and the German HEIs’ internationalization strategies and the number,types and language requirements of their EMI programs.This study has drawn the following conclusions.Firstly,explicit languagerelated policies at the European level support “multilingualism”,while the internationalization policies equate mobility with internationalization and high HE quality,which fosters the development of EMI implicitly.Though the three German institutions at the federal level have realized that EMI hampers German language,their ideology of equaling EMI with high-quality HE internationalization has implicitly fostered English.At the university level,internationalization strategies equate EMI with the international profile,international attractiveness,and high quality,which promote the use of English in practice.Secondly,a comparative analysis of language ideologies/attitudes at these three levels shows that all institutions at the three levels recognize the role of EMI in promoting the internationalization of HE,but their policy documents adopt evasive attitudes to EMI to varying degrees.The frequency of language-related words of “English”,“language/linguistic”,and “multilingual(ism)” is decreasing in Europe,Germany and German universities.Therefore,the European documents show the highest tendency to avoid English,and the German,the second.Thirdly,the global trend of EMI in the HE sector has been embraced by Germany through its distinctive language policy mechanism.Through the measures of funding,marketing,qualification standards and prize awarding criteria,the BMBF,DAAD and HRK have formed the mechanism covering four aspects of “internationalization”,“mobility”,“quality”,and “German language”,which helps to turn the implicit linguistic ideology underlying policy into language practice.This thesis proves that Spolsky’s framework for language policy analysis can be applied to explore German EMI from the multilayered perspective.This case study enriches the application of Shohamy’s language policy mechanism,sheds light for the exploration of EMI policy and practice in other countries,and provides inspiration for the development of EMI in universities.