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This mixed-methods study aims to explore the assessment strategies and tools teachers use to assess student learning in Virtual exchange (VE) in foreign/second language for specific purposes (FLSP) courses at tertiary level. The quantitative data were collected by means of a purpose-designed questionnaire that focused on assessment tools teachers used in order to give feedback to students involved in a VE project. The questionnaire data was supplemented with oral interviews with language teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds and aimed at eliciting more in-depth information about the planning of the assessment process, the form of assessment (e.g. summative or formative) and feedback provision. The results indicate that the teachers tend to perceive assessment as a formative process and apply assessment tools that focus on both content and language components, and encourage reflective practice and collaboration.

The internationalisation process of higher education institutions has prompted the implementation of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, where instruction occurs in a language other than students’ mother tongue (Coyle, Hood & Marsh, 2010). Previous research on CLIL focused on learners’ outcomes as a final product (Lahuerta, 2020). Nonetheless, current research delves into the learning process itself (Nikula & Moore, 2016). The aim of this study is to examine translanguaging functions in CLIL seminars delivered in History and Nursing degrees at a Spanish university. These practices have been audio-recorded and transcribed for the purpose of this study. As for the participants, there bilingual and multilingual strategies are expected in the learning environment. Results have been interpreted qualitatively to describe participants’ discourse in detail. The analysis of this corpus shows some similarities and differences in terms of interaction and production. Teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction is determined by participants’ command of the target language. These findings may be useful for scholars and educators concerned with the design of effective CLIL programmes in higher education.

Multimodality is at the core of the wide range of digital skills that higher education students need to foster. As interdisciplinary skills, digital skills can help students develop communication skills in general, and disciplinary communication in a foreign language in particular. What this paper sets out to show is that in the context of an ESP class, a multimodal task is an efficient tool to encourage student engagement through the authoring of multimodal texts. Indeed, as Plastina (2013) writes, “The opportunity of authoring multimodal texts by coherently integrating different digital media elements (texts, graphics, sound, animation and video) is becoming a popular practice among the net generation. (…) developing multimodal communicative competence now needs to be at the forefront of ESP.” (pp. 378-379). Using the examples of two ESP task-based projects, that of the creation of a video abstract in a class of ESP for plant biology students at Master’s level on the one hand, and of the creation of a vlog in a class of ESP for trainee physical education teachers, this paper will analyse what is at stake in such tasks, through the concepts of code-switching and creating authoring. I will analyse the efficiency of the digital shift as a didactic tool, making students active participants in the authoring of their video artefacts. Students’ digital skills and disciplinary skills develop at the same time, exemplifying the idea that “digital literacies are critical to fully access the literacies required for disciplinary learning.” (Manderino & Castek, 2016, p. 79).

Dramatization as a technique in the Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE) courses has amply demonstrated its benefits. In this text, a didactic approach is developed for the Spanish courses for medical purposes to ensure that students can successfully carry out a medical consultation. This approach has been put into practice in university courses and the final pedagogical result has been really satisfactory.

Despite a growing interest in English-medium instruction (EMI), research on students’ English language proficiency advancement in EMI has been scarce. Hence, this study investigates the general and business English language proficiency of EMI and non-EMI students at a Croatian university at the beginning and the end of their BA studies, with the aim of analysing and comparing their English language progress. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire looking at the students’ experiences, expectations and language self-assessment, the Oxford Quick Placement Test, as well as a C-test and a business English test designed by the authors of the study. Interviews with the students were also conducted to further enquire into the data gathered from the questionnaire and the tests. The findings point to greater English language proficiency of EMI students at the beginning and the end of their BA studies, and to their better progress in business English. They also reveal non-EMI students’ greater progress in general English.

En la Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, la enseñanza de inglés se centra en la lectocomprensión del discurso científico, por lo que reconoce el rol preponderante de la activación de conocimientos previos para promover así la elaboración de hipótesis de lectura y una posterior conceptualización eficaz. Los artículos de investigación suelen apelar –especialmente en sus títulos– a estructuras compuestas por sintagmas nominales complejos que identifican y refieren al contenido del estudio, por lo que su tratamiento constituye una de las primeras estrategias de nuestro abordaje. Desde una perspectiva contrastiva, las funciones sintácticas que diferencian las nominalizaciones en inglés de las ocurrentes en español suscitan dificultades significativas en el plano semántico-pragmático. Para comprobar si una intervención pedagógica específica propicia la construcción de sentido, se desarrolló una taxonomía de sintagmas nominales según su grado de complejidad. Presentaremos los resultados y las conclusiones de un estudio experimental, aleatorio y controlado respecto de la incidencia de la instrucción específica sobre las nominalizaciones complejas en el que hemos utilizado dos metodologías de análisis diferenciadas: categorización cualitativa y descomposición discursiva en ‘ideas-unidad’.

English-medium instruction (EMI) is a growing trend in Catalan universities. This “internationalization at home” (Nilsson, 2003) context has important implications at several levels regarding university language policy and actual practices. The chief consequence is that the classes are taught mostly in English by local instructors. Also, the presence of international participants in the classroom requires the use of English as a lingua franca when these exchange students interact in the classroom alongside local students in participation settings such as teamwork. The scope of this paper focuses on this second set of practices in order to analyze how local and international students interact in small collaborative groups to jointly produce a task in English, as assigned by the instructor. Using an emic and qualitative approach based on conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992), this paper analyzes how students manage and display the plurilingual resources at their disposal to jointly engage in knowledge construction in internationalized settings (Borràs et al., 2012; Gajo, 2007; Masats et al., 2007). Results seem to indicate that despite asymmetric competences in the English language, students engage in fruitful cooperation towards the resolution of the task assigned by the instructor. The plurilingual practices observed during the interaction in independent teamwork seem to be a help, not a hindrance, towards developing solid competence in the L2.

The global spread of English, which began some time ago, has in recent years come to be fused with the neoliberalisation of higher education (HE) and the introduction and implementation of internationalisation policies in universities worldwide. One key feature of these internationalisation policies is Englishisation, the use of English in an increasing number of domains of activity, English-medium instruction (EMI) being a prime example. EMI is by now a much-researched phenomenon and there has been an exponential increase in publications focusing on it in a range of contexts and from a multitude of angles (e.g. curricular issues, teaching practice, lecturer identity, etc.). Nevertheless, what is too often missing in publications is a questioning of certain taken-for-granted assumptions, not least that EMI should and must exist. In this paper, based on my plenary paper at the 2021 AELFE-TAPP conference, I examine and critique this existential assumption, along with others, drawing on my reading of relevant literature and my participation in a research project exploring EMI in action.

When virtual exchange projects pair up L1 English speakers and ELF speakers, the first can be implicitly positioned as language experts, the second as learners. But ELF speakers are often more experienced in negotiating spoken and written communication. Are speakers of native English equally prepared to accommodate ELF speakers? This consideration inspired a project that connected students in the US with students in Italy. These students recorded spoken interactions that we analyzed to explore how the students used specific communication strategies (CS). Results show that ELF speakers efficiently used CSs, especially self-rephrasing, a key self-repair strategy based on pre-empting problems of understanding in ELF. Compared to L1 English speakers, ELF speakers proved to be more resourceful and more adept at transforming spoken communication into an act of mediation. Training in ELF did help the L1 English speakers adjust their speech, but these students need more extensive and systematic training to develop their communication skills in ELF interactions.

This article draws on Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) collaborations (e.g., [Arnó, 14] [Vandepitte, 16]) to show how students in already-existing technical communication classes can join other classes in realistic transnational projects through ICT and thereby acquire and enhance various types of transversal competences necessary to students’ future performance in a globalized workplace.

© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. To present technical content clearly and effectively for global users of English, engineering students need to learn how. About the case: Technical communication classes in Spain and the US engaged in an international telecollaborative project between cross-cultural virtual teams in which students in Spain developed oral presentations that were then peer-reviewed by counterparts in the US Situating the case: Research on international professional communication and, more specifically, virtual exchange is rapidly growing to explore how instructors can help students gain key competencies such as audience awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and an understanding of English as a lingua franca. Approach/methods: As part of the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project network, this project focused on spoken communication. Data were analyzed from feedback forms used by US students to evaluate oral presentations, and on prelearning and postlearning reports completed by students in Spain, as well as from class discussions accompanying the project. Results/discussion: Through reflections on pragmatic strategies that facilitate exchange and collaboration in English as a lingua franca, the engineering students became more fully aware of the importance of rhetorical and linguistic factors that affect meaning-making for engineers internationally. Conclusion: Results suggest that students who participate in transnational virtual exchange projects integrate their desire to acquire knowledge with an awareness of the importance of sharing knowledge through mindful and inclusive communication practices. Technical and engineering communication instructors from different countries can heighten their students’ audience awareness, and cultural and language sensitivities through such projects

Working in a multidisciplinary collaborative project through virtual exchange encompasses many advantages as well as some disadvantages. One of the many problems that might occur in virtual cooperation settings was identified as cultural mismatches, listed by Chase, Macfadyen, Reeder, and Roche (2002) into nine categories. Some of these mismatches were found during the Trans-Atlantic Pacific Project1 (TAPP), a collaborative and active learning bidirectional platform, where students from Portuguese and North American universities have been cooperating for several years to enhance their technical and linguistic competences whilst developing intercultural skills. By bringing together future Translators and Technical Writers into a multicultural simulated setting, students are given the opportunity to learn from each other and interact via technology-mediated communication. Yet, this endeavour revealed to be extremely demanding mostly due to cultural misunderstandings that occurred during virtual communication exchanges. Accordingly, a cultural mediation intervention plan was developed and implemented by the authors as a strategy to overcome these problems and strengthen virtual teamwork interaction. This plan was designed to raise cultural awareness of the self and the other and was divided into 4 separate phases: 1) the cultural awareness initial stage, followed by 2) peer-to-peer exchange of the pre-learning questionnaires, 3) the completion of the Cultural Self-Awareness Questionnaire, concluding with 4) the analysis of the results and discussion in class. This study addresses the Cultural Self-Awareness Questionnaire. The results and outcomes of this questionnaire are analysed and discussed and new avenues for research will be presented and proposed.

Academic writing is challenging for many university students in any language, but it is especially difficult for students whose instruction language is still on its way to normalisation and has an unstable academic discourse, such as Basque. This paper explains how corpora can be exploited to raise these students' linguistic awareness. To that end, learning objectives are defined, corpora-based exercises are designed, and the difficulties that students overcome are observed. The focus of this paper are students of scientific and technological degrees in the courses on Basque for Academic Purposes, where they are taught how to solve lexical, grammatical, stylistic and register-related doubts. The final aim of the course is that these students become aware of the functional development of Basque, so that they contribute to it in their professional careers.

Teaching vocabulary is particularly important in tertiary English for specific purposes (ESP) education, as technical terms form the foundation for oral and written communication in disciplines, professions, and projects. Becoming accurate and fluent in speaking and writing about subject-specific content requires extended linguistic instruction and opportunities to practise the language, which is why engineering students need to be enabled to participate in ESP courses in their academic degree programmes. This talk, therefore, reviews some vocabulary teaching techniques and illustrates pedagogical scenarios for teaching technical terminology. It thus caters for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in higher education, but its contents may be transferred to other academic subject areas or in-service training courses in industry. The main scenario presented revolves around a TED talk video file on technology and society, whereas two further TED video files adopt a narrower focus on 3D-printing in aircraft design and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. TED talk files are permanently archived, accessible online, and accompanied by transcripts. The teaching sequences under consideration involve discussion questions, note-taking of facts and figures from the talks, an analysis of key vocabulary and phrases, using key terms in discussing aspects of the talks, and preparing arguments and counter-arguments related to the speaker’s view. These teaching scenarios may be complemented with homework assignments or integrated into several lessons treating the same thematic strand. The major objectives of this talk are revisiting an essential area of ESP and exchanging techniques from tertiary pedagogical practice. It may be characterised as a methodological contribution rooted in teaching experience, thus resembling a concept talk rather than a research presentation. Instead of research data and results, it focuses on pedagogical aspects and the spreading of good teaching practice among tertiary ESP professionals.

Translators and technical communicators increasingly perform their work as part of global virtual teams (GVTs). To prepare students for developing critical understanding for such work, instructors can assign readings, asking students to reflect on the importance of building trust (Crisp & Jarvenpaa, 2013), cultural intelligence (Li, Rau, Li, & Maedche, 2017), and strategies for managing multicultural teams (Behfar, Kern, & Brett, 2006). More important for developing critical understanding, however, is the experience of managing a “real” Global Virtual Team (GVT). Research questions for this work include the following: How does attention to and work with international translators influence critical understanding for managing GVTs? and How does situatedness influence critical understanding of the many requirements and factors in a translation project? This article provides a brief theoretical background to the project and then details our redesign of the standard collaborative formats of the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project (TAPP) and associated assignments to focus on student development of critical understanding for managing GVTs. We include identification of themes from a subset of literature relevant to student practice in managing a translation team; description of the TAPP redesign in which University of Minnesota (UMN) students serve as project managers of teams of University of Trieste (UT) students practicing translation; and a brief summary of results from deployments of this model during 2019 and 2020. We conclude with emphasis on the need to redesign the TAPP format to meet evolving learning needs of students.

To promote social consciousness and a sense of responsibility, educational proposals organised around the principles of technology-enhanced project-based language learning (Dooly & Sadler, 2016) should engage students in a process of reflecting upon and responding to crucial social issues. Thus, in this paper we will present a project carried out by two groups of primary education students who launched a solidarity campaign to collect money for four Syrian children living in a refugee camp in Greece. The project was implemented in a cross-disciplinary Arts and Crafts class taught through English and resulted in significant outputs in English (those addressed to the Syrian children) and in Catalan (those targeted at the local community). First, we outline the student-led project and then we analyse some fragments of student plurilingual practices during the project development that demonstrate their learning gains. Our findings reveal that our meaningful contextualised cross-disciplinary project favoured the natural integration of multiple skills, competences, and field knowledge form various disciplines while promoting a sense of social consciousness and empathy. First, it enabled children to put their plurilingual competence into play and take decisions regarding language choices to meet particular communicative objectives. Second, it contributed to the acquisition of 21st century knowledge, competence, and skills, while helping the learners gain social values. Third, it engaged learners in processes of problem solving, decision making and creative thinking that lead to the development of entrepreneurial competencies. To conclude we argue that when young learners are given responsibilities and opportunities to take up socially relevant challenges learning becomes meaningful for them and those around them

This paper focuses on a series of telecollaborative translation-reviewing/editing projects, conducted within the framework of the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP), an academic network linking university classes in workplace-like projects. The projects aim to finetune the language and professional skills and, also, to enhance the trans-cultural awareness of four classes of students in Italy, Greece and the USA. The tasks include translation of published materials by students in Italy and Greece, followed by review and editing of the translations by students in the USA. The materials comprise articles on science and technology from magazines and on international or Italian/Greek current affairs from the local press, with the aim of translating them accurately and appropriately for a readership of American English speakers. The collaborative projects lead students to various linguistic and intercultural gains and can be used as a tool to promote realistic international professional communication by effectively preparing students for workplace collaborations of this type.