- 1 Our translation for : “échanges de diverses natures, économiques, politiques, culturels, entre Nati (...)
Canadian sociologist Guy Rocher defines “internationalisation” as referring to “the exchanges of various types, be it economic, political and cultural, that take place between Nations and to the resulting relations that can be peaceful or conflictual, complementary or competitive”1 (2001: 19).
Being the place for cultural exchanges, as well as economic and political ones, higher education is directly related to internationalisation, and language teachers are directly concerned by this on-going process of internationalisation of training in their own courses. Command of one or more languages for specific purposes (LSP) directly contributes to improving students’ mobility and employability: more often than not, the content of LSP courses are a direct response to the needs of the business world for greater skill-based knowledge and know-how. It is also a response to the growing demand from students for more professional courses with an international outlook.
Both in Europe and throughout the world, the ever-closer relations between different institutions within higher education has undeniably been beneficial to students. Internationalisation has become a priority of institutional policy (Beacco 2018) and more and more Master’s degrees throughout the non-English world are being “internationalised” and taught in English (Derivry-Plard & al. 2013), in order to gain the requisite international recognition. This prevalent trend is most often accredited to the increasing need by institutions to attract both students and international researchers as well as to enhance their reputations for excellence. Language centres have therefore taken on a more central role in such strategising on professionalisation in the international context.
The language teaching community as a whole needs to position itself regarding the internationalisation of higher education at large not only because internationalising training can sometimes prove negative for language practices, as Claude Truchot has for example shown (2013), but also because internationalising training programmes in higher education is part of a larger political agenda in which language teachers can (should?) be fully involved, notably thanks to research.
As it aims at characterizing the on-going process of the internationalisation of training courses in higher education throughout Europe and the world, this issue of Researching and Teaching Languages for Specific Purposes, to be published in June 2019, will welcome all contributions on the theme of “internationalising training programmes in higher education”.
Contributions will question what is at stake in terms of language policy, culture, economics and politics and will identify “good practices” but also “risks” in internationalized training courses already set up or to come.
Contributions must follow the journal’s editorial policy (https://journals.openedition.org/apliut/4996) and fall within one of the four following categories:
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research articles (25 000 to 40 000 characters without spaces, all texts included except summaries and key-word lists) ;
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review articles and reports (10 000 to 20 000 characters without spaces, all texts included except summaries and key-word lists) ;
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notes on teaching experiences (8000 to 15 000 characters without spaces, all texts included except summaries and key-word lists) ;
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article or book reviews (8000 to 15 000 characters).
Deadline for proposals: 15 Novembre 2018
Please send your submission to: apliut@revues.org ; claire.chaplier@univ-tlse3.fr, danielle.joulia@iut-tlse3.fr.
Please respect the guidelines for authors (http://journals.openedition.org/apliut/1524) and make sure that your proposal falls within the categories of texts published in our journal (http://journals.openedition.org/apliut/5153). Texts following our journal’s guidelines and requirements will be sent for double-blind peer-review.