English as a medium of instruction in higher education in Spain: A case study at the University of Valladolid Part 1

Abstract

Since the establishment of the University of Valladolid at the end of the 13th century, Spanish was and still remains the official language of teaching and learning. However, current global linguistic transformations are affecting countries world-wide and thus encouraged numerous Higher education institutions (HEIs) to incorporate English medium instruction (EMI) into their educational curriculums. The European HEIs, likewise, started to experience significant changes which were strongly advocated with the introduction of the Bologna declaration in 1999. The Bologna process influenced the steady evolvement of a linguistic transformation within language policies as well as educational frameworks within Europe, Spain as well as at the University of Valladolid itself. There is, however, insufficient empirical research on the factors or policy tools informing UVa’s language policies as well as their internationalization processes. Therefore, this project explores and discusses the implications of linguistic policies and selections plus the use of EMI as a vehicular language at the University of Valladolid. This research project uses the views of 6 participants. These views were collected in the form of two individual interviews and one focus group interview. It will make use of Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Javadi and Zarea, 2016), Discourse Analysis (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2009; Ruiz, 2009) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk, 2009 and Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) as analytical tools to explore the language ideologies and language attitudes of teachers and students in terms of EMI at UVa. The project also utilises policy frameworks from Shohamy (2006), Ingram and Schneider’s (1990) Behavioural assumptions of policy tools as means to analyse the linguistic and internationalisation policy processes at UVa.