Educator attitudes to English as a lingua franca in the international university: A Q-sort intervention study

While consideration of language issues arising out of ongoing internationalisation has long been a feature of higher education in non-native-English-speaking (NNES) contexts, discussion within universities who receive NNES students from abroad is less developed. As English on these campuses increasingly becomes a lingua franca, this research examines the dynamics of attitude formation and their potential practical effects.

The overall research design is based around a comparison of the attitudes of a group of novice English language teachers completing the CELTA qualification to those of an equal cohort of established university lecturers. Employing the techniques of Q-methodology, four distinct patterns of belief (or ‘mindsets’) were identified, corresponding to orientations attested in Communication Accommodation Theory research: Convergent, Divergent, Maintaining and Over-Accommodating. A two-stage approach to data-gathering was employed to investigate the stability of these attitudes and the effects of training. Data gathered showed that adherence to each of the four mindsets identified did not divide along professional lines, with each being exemplified by educators from both academic and CELTA trainee groups. However, by the end of their training period, while academic lecturers held firm on their mindsets, the CELTA group showed a marked shift from a Divergent to a Convergent mindset, a development accompanied by new perspectives on the role of the instructor, the realities of English as a lingua franca, and the linguistic experience of the NNES student within the international university.

The practical implications of these mindsets were then investigated by looking at educators’ perceptions of the level of difficulty in instructional language, as they would be experienced by NNES students. The research generated casts some light on practical issues of communication in the modern university, by considering the effect of attitudes, experience, context and training on the ability of educators to co-construct meaning in the lingua franca environment.