English as the lingual franca of engineering education

This paper investigates the use of spoken lingua franca English (ELF) by lecturers and students at a Swedish technical university where English is increasingly used as a medium of instruction. English in this setting is a vehicular language for speakers from a wide range of first languages. The present project has investigated the language skills of the teachers and students in this setting, namely non-native-like usage of spoken lingua franca English. The main aim has been to find out what aspects of language cause communication failure. The material comprises 76 hours of digital recordings, of naturally occurring, authentic high-stakes speech from content courses. The results show a clear tendency by engineers to reduce redundancy and to focus on function, thus disregarding standard forms. There is little communication failure considering the relatively high frequency of non-standard forms. This round-table discussion will use the results of this investigation as a starting point. Suggested questions for the round-table discussion: What do you think are the main problems of lecturing in a foreign language? What kind of problems do students encounter when communicating with each other through a lingua franca? Are the problems lingua franca speakers face generally problems of grammar (syntax), vocabulary or pronunciation? Do you think speakers in lingua franca settings get irritated by issues that do not interfere with communication? Do you think people in lingua franca settings have prejudices against any aspects of each other’s English? Do students’ language backgrounds matter when they are assigned group-work projects? Is this relevant and should it be taken into consideration? How can we ensure that teachers’ and students’ language skills are adequate for English-medium education? What type of remedial work can be carried out for lecturers and students who operate in lingua franca settings? 1 Parts of this paper come from the author’s doctoral thesis ‘Spoken Lingua Franca English at a Swedish Technical University: An investigation of Form and Communicative-Pedagogical Effectiveness’ and the two papers below by the