FoE research forum - 2

As part of the wider British Council Future of English programme, we are proud to announce the second Future of English research forum which will be held at Conference Aston, Birmingham and streamed online on Friday 8 March 2024. 

This one-day event brings together researchers from four international UK-led projects, awarded a Future of English research grant, to exchange ideas, share progress and interim findings. In this event, we celebrate the benefits and share the challenges of working on large international, multi-site research projects.

The British Council is also very excited to welcome David Shariatmadari, the Guardian's non-fiction books editor and author of Don't Believe A Word: The Surprising Truth About Language. 

This is a hybrid event, and registration is free of charge. In-person attendance is limited and allocated on a first come, first served basis. We look forward to welcoming you in Conference Aston or online.

Research contexts of projects

[First presentation] Investigating diversities across primary English educational contexts

This project has two strands. First, it tracks keys trends in English as a School Subject (ESS) in Basic Education (BE) through a longitudinal set of surveys to span five years, completed by partners in forty countries. The project will examine how trends identified in other published research behave over the period and will highlight new and emerging trends. 

The second strand will identify the characteristics of ESS in BS in ODA countries. Based on analyses and critical evaluation of curriculum/syllabus documents, course books and interviews/observations with teachers in twenty ODA countries, it will establish realistic core curricula at micro (country) meso (regional) and macro (global) levels for language systems and skills (content) and classroom activities (pedagogy). 

Based on the findings, a sample of descriptors for ESS in BE will be drafted, modelled on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and will therefore take the form of ‘can do’ statements. 

An analysis of gender and other protected characteristics in the coursebooks will also be undertaken in order to identify if and how ELT materials may be perpetrating stereotypes, potentially acting as negative input for young girls and other disadvantaged groups.  

[Our presentation] How diverse are communication patterns in digitally-mediated EMI classes and HEI stakeholder voices?

This project investigates the emerging construct of digitally-mediated academic communication in English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms and aims to gather a range of higher education stakeholder voices in Malaysia and Japan by:

(a) investigating the nature of spoken communication in digitally-mediated EMI classes,

(b) identifying the English language support needed for students and teachers, and

(c) exploring the implications of moving to digital for various higher education stakeholders currently and in the future.

Given the global significance of digital learning and EMI in higher education, this research provides critical insights into challenges and opportunities for English users in diverse contexts. It contributes to setting effective agendas for policymakers, educators, and a long-term research plan for global researchers. The study's results will yield practical resources applicable to stakeholders involved in teaching, learning, and testing in digitally-mediated EMI contexts. It will offer baseline data and a systematic methodology for further understanding current and future trends in the role of English in:

(i) online English language learning,

(ii) English medium education in higher education, and

(iii) English testing and assessment.

[Third presentation] The future of English in Asian higher education: What can we learn from students' and teachers' current perceptions and experiences?

Several decades into the era of being the main language of international communication, English retains its status as ‘the’ global language. Global circumstances and our contemporary communicative contexts have shifted dramatically, however: major geopolitical changes, technological advances and socio-cultural factors are reshaping our linguistic landscape, raising questions about the future of language use in general, and the role English will play in future communication and learning. Will English continue to be the pre-eminent global language? How will the myriad forms of English continue to evolve? How and for what purposes will English be used? Who will the users of English be and how will they influence the language in the future?

Sitting within the wider Future of English research programme, which aims to explore the answers to the big questions about the English language through broad engagement with the users, learners and teachers of the language across the world, the Community of Practice brings together four of the major research project streams, for the second time, to exchange ideas and share findings along their research journey as the programme progresses.

The second Future of English Research Forum is a one-day event that showcases these research projects to a wider audience and seeks to address two key questions within the broader context of the Future of English research programme:

• Why attempt to plot the future of the English language? What insights might we achieve by exploring how English is likely to be used, taught and learnt in the coming decades? How might these insights help to promote a more equitable, inclusive world?

• How can the future of English be investigated? What methodological traditions and interdisciplinary approaches might help to plot future trajectories of the language and how it is used? What fresh perspectives might the theoretical lenses of Global Englishes, plurilingualism, decolonisation, and the digital/AI revolution in communication reveal about the potential future of English?

[Final presentation] Building a corpus of student academic writing in EMI contexts: Data collection across diverse international higher education settings.

English-medium instruction (EMI) is a major pedagogical trend, reflecting and shaping the status of English as a global language. To offer new insights into the linguistic experience of students in EMI in higher education, our study will create and analyse a large database of reading and writing samples from over 1,000 students at seven universities in China, Thailand, Italy and the UK. The complete corpus will contain approximately 10 million words. A large-scale quantitative analysis will be conducted to describe lexical, grammatical and genre-related patterns in EMI reading and writing across different academic disciplinary areas (from STEM subjects to humanities).

The findings will offer new insights into the linguistic experience of students in EMI, providing a robust, empirical basis for research-informed educational policies, addressing students’ linguistic needs in this context. The corpus will represent a major contribution to EMI research, allowing for future analyses that will benefit local contexts and English for academic/specific purposes (EAP/ESP) scholarship more generally. Currently, the corpus contains over 2.7 million words from approximately 800 texts representing four disciplinary areas within the key fields in EMI world-wide.