English as a lingua franca

ELF has been studied for decades by a number of researchers. Barbara Seidlhofer (2005: 339) defines ELF as “a way of referring to communication in English between speakers with different first languages”. In general, ELF seems to be a simplified version of English as native language (henceforth, ENL). Seidlhofer (2005: 339) points out that English is constantly being shaped and developed not only by its native speakers, but also by its non-native speakers. She also finds that a paradoxical situation has been reached: while the majority of verbal usage in English does not involve native speakers, they are still regarded as its experts and even rulers

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of what is correct use of English. Sowden (2012: 89) remarks that in this situation some academics have purposely encouraged the teaching of ELF in order to reduce the native speaker dominance of global English. Similarly, Hewson (2009: 110) notes that there are scholars who wish to analyse ELF in its own terms rather than by comparing it to ENL. However, according to Jenkins (2013: 5) there is resistance to the ELF-oriented view especially in the Anglophone countries – even among scholars who recognize the different types of Englishes around the world. As an example, Philipson (2008: 5) calls the idea of a culturally neutral medium language simply deceitful, and does not consider all speakers of English to be equals.

Research on ELF has been carried out from several different perspectives, such as phonology (see for example Jenkins 2000), pragmatics (see for example Meierkord 1996), and lexicogrammar (see for example Seidlhofer 2004). According to Ranta (2010: 84), ELF has been criticized as being nothing more but a variant of second language acquisition (SLA).

Mauranen (2012: 4) remarks that although ELF and SLA have many features in common, it should be noted that using a lingua franca language means using a second language (L2), but its speakers are not necessarily learners. For instance, lingua franca users may not be corrected for their errors since the purpose of language use is not to learn but to find an instrument for communication (Mauranen 2012: 6).

Ranta (2010: 88) seems to dislike the approach of evaluating ELF speech against ENL speech, but admits that in order to explore the differences and similarities between them, comparing ELF and ENL speech is natural. Karppinen (2013: 298) also considers the evaluation of lingua franca conversations to be problematic, and would like to explore how the participants of a discussion are able to adapt their language resources to any given interactive situation accordingly. There are several notable characteristics that are ‘particularly English’ but that are often misused by ELF speakers (Seidlhofer 2005: 340). In fact, Seidlhofer (2004: 220) labels some features as typical of ELF. These include for example: a) ‘dropping’ the third person present tense -s, b) ‘omitting’ definite and indefinite articles where they are obligatory in ENL and inserting them where they do not occur in ENL, c) inserting ‘redundant’ prepositions (as in We have to study about…) and c) ‘replacing’ infinitive constructions with that-clauses (as in I want that…). Since there are always two languages present in situations with ELF speech (the L1 and English of each language user), interference and code-switching are very likely to occur in each ELF conversation (Klimpfinger 2010: 350).

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ELF might raise negative connotations (e.g. people using “poor” English), but some researchers clearly focus on its positive sides. For instance, Seidlhofer (2005: 339) notes that even though ELF speakers may not succeed in using grammatically correct English, it does not always cause misunderstandings or communication problems. Ranta (2010: 88) maintains that in ELF research, the focus is not only on studying how L2 speakers could improve their language skills to better resemble that of the native speakers. Furthermore, the main objective the ELF speakers is not typically to learn more English but to handle whatever professional or personal business they have at hand with NES or NNES. In Sowden’s (2012: 91) opinion, there is a clear purpose for the simplification of English: “to exclude culturally restricted items and therefore ease the process of communication”. Hewson (2009: 111), however, considers ELF from the translator’s perspective, and strongly suggests that it does not always serve its purpose as a language simplifier. On the contrary, he suggests that when an ELF text becomes a source text for a translator, it creates more challenges than assistance (Hewson 2009: 111).

According to Mauranen (2012: 6), ELF is typically regarded as a brief encounter between strangers, but there are also situations where ELF becomes a working language for more long-lasting communities, such as in business life and academia. In fact, in the research on ELF, special focus has been cast at ELF in academic settings – ELFA for short. There is even an ELFA corpus available for all researchers that was completed in 2008 by the University of Tampere and the University of Helsinki, comprising 1 million words of transcribed spoken academic English (http://www.helsinki.fi/elfa/elfacorpus). In the case of ELFA, a significant number of language users are NNESs who use English in an international setting, most likely with other NNESs (Jenkins 2013: 42). As Jenkins (2013: 42) points out, ELFA occurs not only in Anglophone countries, but also in other parts of the world – as is the case with this very Thesis and in all doctoral degree programmes at the UEF. Jenkins (2013: 61) regards ELFA as a challenger for the dominant assumption of academic English where NESs act as gatekeepers of correct English usage, but points out that ELFA still has a long way to go to be fully accepted in the context of HE and English for academic purposes (EAP). However, Mauranen (2012: 69) correctly points out that “There are no native speakers of academic language”. In an academic setting, whether it be L1, L2 or ELFA users, all novices need to learn the correct terminology, the appropriate ways of communication as well as how to present arguments and ask questions in order to be taken seriously (Mauranen 2012: 69).

11 2.2 Multilingualism and internationalisation

In this section, I discuss multilingualism and internationalisation – the latter especially by demonstrating different ways in which it is present in universities around the world. I also discuss three different approaches to how international universities can be divided into groups according to the characteristics of their international programmes.

The Oxford English Dictionary (2016) defines ‘multilingualism’ as “[t]he state or condition of being multilingual, or the policy of promoting this; the ability to speak many languages; the use of many languages.” Obviously, multilingualism is not a new phenomenon. According to Koskinen (2013: 11), as the linguistic scenery around the world has gone through drastic changes, the phenomenon is often characterized as a superdiversity. The term refers to the impossibility to determine homogeneous minority groups in communities that keep getting more and more ethnic, because there is linguistic variation even among the minorities (Koskinen 2013: 11). In fact, Blommaert et al. (2005: 199) strongly emphasize that multilingualism is not equivalent to “full competence in different languages”, but that speakers can communicate across language boundaries even with very limited knowledge of the languages in use. According to Cronin (2006: 68), the urban and ethnically rich spaces should be regarded as a place for translation, which is when the focus shifts from “us” and “them”

within cultural groups to interactions between people and communities with different backgrounds.

‘Internationalisation’ is defined by The Oxford English Dictionary (2016) as “[t]he action or process of making something international in character, composition, or scope.” According to Harris (2011: 61), internationalisation can be associated with universities in a variety of ways – most importantly by considering the international reputation of HE institutes. The reputation of a university is also related to globalisation and competition between HE institutions (Harris 2011: 61). Notably, the situation is very different from the origins of HE from earlier centuries.

According to Harris (2011: 18), in the medieval university, central thoughts surrounded around religion whereas the modern universities place their focus more on science. Furthermore, Harris describes the modern university as an important part of global industry:

…In the case of the UK, for example, they [vice-chancellors and senior members of the university] have to (i) ensure their institution’s survival in a highly competitive market environment; (ii) attract more students, with the result that there is now a far broader and more

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diverse population than ever before, with first generation students and large numbers of international students from across the world; (iii) device new courses for new student markets;

(iv) generate more income; (v) demonstrate and increase the international reputation of individuals and the institution through research and teaching; (vi) establish partnerships and collaborations with a wide range of bodies and organizations across the world; and (vii) engage in knowledge transfer. (Harris 2011: 18–19)

Although these examples concern the universities of the UK, they are very relevant aspects for all international HE institutions. From a student’s point of view, I think experiencing international studies is the best way to prepare oneself for the international job market in today’s globalized world. In such a multilingual continent as Europe, language teaching and learning has become an important issue (Räisänen and Fortanet-Gómez 2008: 11). Furthermore, the European HE policy strongly values the implementation of joint degrees and joint degree programmes (Hyppönen 2007: 11).

According to Räisänen and Fortanet-Gómez (2008: 14), there have been attempts to improve the relationships between the European countries for decades, and university students in particular are regarded as potential ambassadors to gain new knowledge from other cultures whilst promoting their own. European student exchange programmes have been around since the late 1970s, and today one of the most popular exchange programmes for students and teachers is the Erasmus programme, founded by the European Commission in 1987 (Räisänen and Fortanet-Gómez 2008: 14). The European co-operation deepened in 1999 with the Bologna Declaration, which was a step towards a new HE collaboration system – establishing objectives for promoting mobility of students and teachers, constructing easily readable and comparable degrees as well as establishing a common credit system (Räisänen, Fortanet-Gómez 2008: 15).

One form of the deepened collaboration is the foundation of European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), which is a standard comparing the performance of HE students in Europe and enabling easier transfer of study credits across international borders (European Commission 2015c: 3). There are specific guidelines for implementing the ECTS. For example, the institutions are expected to provide an accessible course catalogue that includes course information in the national language of the institutions as well as English (European Commission 2015b: 54). HE institutions that correctly implement the ECTS are awarded the ECTS Label, which has been received by three HE institutions in Finland: the Arcada University of Applied Sciences, the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and the University of Oulu (European Commission 2015a: 1).

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Foskett (2010: 44–45) who analysed 23 universities in the UK and Asia, places universities into five categories according to their level of internationalisation:

1) Domestic universities – focusing on their own local context – no internationalisation.

2) Imperialist universities – strong international recruitment activities, but not much action to change the organization.

3) Internationally aware universities – organization is changed to fit the international profile better, but there is no engagement with ‘overseas’.

4) Internationally engaged universities – curriculums are prepared as ‘global’ and staff is encouraged to seek research and education partnerships overseas.

5) Internationally focused universities – level of achievement in internationalisation is strong in many dimensions.

Ferguson (2007: 13–14) argues that many international universities in mainland Europe have features from the second group – implying that the universities’ interests lie largely in the economic rewards provided by recruiting international students. Wächter and Maiworm (2002:

79) maintain that the HE institutions offer EMI for four different reasons: 1) to attract foreign students, 2) to prepare the domestic students for global or international markets, 3) to provide study programmes that have not been in the country before, and 4) to increase more revenue with tuition fees. Quite surprisingly, although there is an official non-fee policy in Denmark and Germany, according to the survey, their institutions still regard the fourth factor as a valuable reason to attract foreign students (Wächter and Maiworm 2002: 79). The reason might be that the revenue of Danish and German institutions does not depend so much on tuition fees, but is in some other way connected to their funding model.

According to Wächter and Maiworm (2002: 79), the economic rewards play no role in Finland, where no tuition fees are gathered from the students. However, there are two reasons why this view is invalid and out-of-date. First, the majority of the Finnish universities’ funding has been received directly from the Finnish government (approximately 64%), which instructs and supports the objectives of Finnish HE institutions (regarding impact, quality and internationalisation) (Ministry of Education and Culture 2014). As an example, the number of degrees produced by international students has had a greater effect on the funding that the universities get from the Finnish government than the number of degrees produced by Finnish students (University of Eastern Finland 2014a: 7). Secondly, on 11 December 2015, the Parliament of Finland accepted the Finnish government’s proposal to make legislative changes regarding the tuition fees (Parliament of Finland 2015). According to the proposal, “institutes of higher education may charge tuition fees from students coming from outside the European

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Union and the European Economic Area” (Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2015a).

Moreover, the tuition fees are to be at least the size of 1,500 euro per year, but set by the HE institutes themselves accordingly with the school's internationalisation strategy (ibid.). Notably, the tuition fees only concern those studying in a language other than Finnish or Swedish (ibid.).

Since the publication of the proposal, some of the Finnish universities have announced their decision to introduce tuition fees in autumn 2017 for non-EU/EEA students: tuition fees for the students at the University of Helsinki range from 10,000 to 25,000 euros (University of Helsinki 2016) and the tuition fees for the students of UEF range from 8 000 euros to 20 000 euros depending on the study programme (University of Eastern Finland 2016c). I think it is clear that today there are financial reasons for arranging EMI in Finland as well. Naturally, it remains to be seen what sort of effect the new legislative changes have in the attraction and position of Finnish HE institutions in the global competition of international students. The tuition fees concern students that start their studies on or after 1 August 2017. The possible effects of these legislative changes are contemplated more thoroughly in the analysis part of this study in Section 4.3 and in the conclusion of this study in Section 5.

Internationalisation is a major part of HE, and it has become an aspect that sets the global HE institutions in rival positions. The number of international students has increased worldwide:

according toone estimation, the number of students studying abroad will be six million by the year 2020 (Hughes 2007: 1). HE institutions have strong competition for the fee-paying students from abroad, and Anglophone countries are in the lead when it comes to attracting international students. According to Hughes (2007), this leads to questions of equity and quality on many levels. Small countries (such as the Nordic Countries) can only compete in the international HE market by arranging English language instruction. As Wächter and Maiworm (2002: 81) phrase it, they have no chance of attracting foreign students if they only offer programmes in their disadvantageous native language, so they are bound to offer EMI. As can be seen from Foskett’s (2010) category, universities have different ways to handle internationalisation, which means that marketing a university as being “international” does not necessarily describe many of its actions as an internationalized institution. According to Harris (2011: 62), there is a lot of variation between European countries regarding their policy on arranging international HE.

While Finland has no other choice but to offer EMI, the emphasis in Sweden is on non-English modern languages, since English is already more widespread (Harris 2011: 62). Furthermore,

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in Portugal, the problem is solved either by offering courses in other languages than Portuguese, or by doing cooperation with foreign universities in terms of offering joint degrees (ibid.) Interestingly, according to the analyses carried out by the European Community in 2005 and 2006, the attractiveness of the European universities is remarkably less than that of the United States, China and India (University of Eastern Finland 2012b: 3). Furthermore, the cooperation between European universities and companies is considered insufficient (ibid). Therefore, the EU encourages European HE institutions to promote internationalisation by various measures, e.g. encouraging cooperation between HE institutions, promoting the mobility of students, teachers, researchers and other staff, improving the visibility and attractiveness of the European Research Area and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) as well as creating programmes that offer labour market driven competences (ibid.). In order to face these challenges, The Finnish Ministry of Education attempts to lead Finland into becoming “one of the world’s leading education-based economies”, and to specifically concentrate on increasing the share of education and knowledge as an export (Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2010: 3–4). In the Internationalisation Policy of the University of Eastern Finland 2012–2015, the UEF (2012b: 5) also expresses the aim of becoming an internationally recognized research university and to be ranked among “the three most important universities in Finland and among the leading 200 universities in the world”.

As universities have different reasons to hold international programmes, it is important to note that the programmes are also arranged to serve different purposes. Therefore, international programmes can be divided according to their use of foreign language, as has been done by Alexander (2008). Firstly, there are replacement types in which both the students and staff members use foreign language throughout the programme – as in Finland, for instance (Alexander 2008: 82). Secondly, in the cumulative type of international programme, the use of foreign language is steadily increased, as is done in Poland (ibid). Thirdly, there are international programmes that represent the additional type, which are designed to help the students get accustomed to courses held in the local language much like in Germany (ibid).

According to a study carried out by Wächter and Maiworm (2002: 30), Finland and the Netherlands are the leaders in providing EMI in Europe. Their study (which excluded the Anglophone countries) measured, for example, the share of programmes taught in English in contrast with all other programmes (Wächter and Maiworm 2002: 24–30). Then again, Jenkins

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(2013: 4) provides a table that displays a categorization of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and partner countries in accordance with the number of English-speaking programmes offered by the countries’ universities.

Table 1. OECD and partner countries offering tertiary programmes in English (2008). Source: Jenkins (2013: 4).

Use of English in instruction OECD and partner countries All or nearly all programmes Australia, Canada, Ireland,

offered in English New Zealand, UK, United States

Many programmes Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands,

offered in English Sweden

Some programmes offered in English Belgium (Fl.), Czech Republic, France,

Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Japan,

Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal,

Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Turkey

No or nearly no programmes Austria, Belgium (Fr.), Chile, Greece,

offered in English Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico,

Portugal, Russian Federation, Spain

Because of the increase of EMI, Jenkins (2013: 5) argues that the number of NNESs may have surpassed the number of NESs in universities around the world. Furthermore, she questions whether the international universities consider the linguistic consequences of recruiting ethnically diverse students and staff (Jenkins 2013: 5). In fact, Jenkins (2013: 7) claims that the process of internationalizing the curriculums in universities has not currently gone very far.

This is something that has to be considered also when carrying out the research on UEF as an international university.

2.3 Language policy

In this section, I discuss the concept of language policy. In general, the term is used to cover all the language-related choices and actions, as defined by Johansson, Nuolijärvi and Pyykkö

In this section, I discuss the concept of language policy. In general, the term is used to cover all the language-related choices and actions, as defined by Johansson, Nuolijärvi and Pyykkö