Europe's Push to Teach in English Creates Barriers in the Classroom

By Aisha Labi. As universities on the continent try to make English academe's lingua franca, students might be losing out.
Like a growing number of scholars in Europe, Philipp J.H. Schröder, a popular professor of economics at Aarhus University, is something of a polyglot. A native of Germany, he earned his undergraduate degree in England and now lives and teaches in Denmark's second-largest city. His English, though moderately accented, seems flawless in conversation, so he would appear the ideal candidate to preside over an increasingly common type of classroom in Europe: one with few native English speakers but where English is the language of instruction.
Mr. Schröder estimates that about 80 percent of his teaching is now in English, but he has few illusions about how fluent he truly is. "I prefer to speak German, or Danish, for that matter," he confesses. "I have frustrations in English."
He is not alone. As universities across Europe offer more programs in English to attract an international student body and raise their international profiles, the growing pains are becoming evident. Some students complain that their professors' language skills are not classroom-ready. Some professors complain that their students, many of whom come from different countries and cultures, aren't adapting well to their new environment. With more than 2,000 programs being taught in English, several experts are beginning to discuss these concerns.
Critics of the growing use of English include nationalist politicians, students and professors, and pedagogical experts, who have argued that adopting English as a lingua franca imperils other languages and creates classrooms and lecture halls in which cultural differences hinder communication and comprehension. Even supporters of the practice acknowledge that the swift embrace of English has often taken place with insufficient preparation, and that universities must do more to deal with the complications that can arise. The internationalization of higher education, in which students come together speaking different languages and are accustomed to radically different learning styles, has produced a "Bermuda Triangle of pedagogy, culture, and language" in many universities, says Karen M. Lauridsen, an associate professor at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, who has developed training programs at her university to help professors deal with such challenges.
Profound Cultural Differences
When European universities began offering programs in English, Ms. Lauridsen says, it was assumed that some of the initial hurdles would disappear as older professors retired and younger professors, with more international experience, took their places. In Denmark, for example, previous generations of academics had relatively little experience studying or working abroad, but all doctoral students are now required to spend at least a semester in another country. Instead, Ms. Lauridsen says, it has become apparent that teaching difficulties are not simply a question of language but are rooted in profound cultural differences.
For example, she says, "here in the northern part of Europe, we place great emphasis on autonomous learning, and expect students to work independently and critically present the information they are presented." Elsewhere in Europe, teaching methods emphasize students' listening to lectures, taking notes, demonstrating their learning through written tests, and being able to repeat what they have learned from professors' lectures. Moreover, information that some students might grasp immediately could leave those from another culture befuddled. Students' ways of handling that kind of confusion also vary widely. "In a lot of Asian cultures, there is a big thing about not losing face," Ms. Lauridsen notes, "and students don't want to admit that they don't know what they need to know."
In such cases, even if students do end up trying to confront the issue head-on, meeting with their professor might not solve the problem. Because many Asian students tend to "always nod and smile like they have understood," she says, "it takes a while to decode some of these students, for those of us who are used to more direct ways of interacting..."
The Future of English
The fate of French and German, and before that Latin, as dominant languages of European higher education, holds potentially sobering lessons for the future of English. In a recent book, The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel, Nicholas Ostler, chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, argues that the ubiquity of English will lead to its eventual demise as a global lingua franca, long before other, more ostensibly vulnerable languages.
The kind of simplified, lowest-common-denominator English that is increasingly spoken by non-native speakers in university classrooms throughout Europe represents a failure, not a triumph, for the language, Mr. Ostler argues. Mr. Schröder's own experience would seem to back up that hypothesis.
He recently co-taught a one-day course with a native English speaker. One of the students praised his language abilities on the evaluation form, saying he couldn't even understand the other instructor. "For these audiences," he observes, "my having an accent and using more limited vocabulary is not necessarily a disadvantage."