Abstract
The influence from the developed countries has extended to most parts of Asia, especially Southeast Asia. This has given rise to the issues of multilingual and multicultural conflicts, especially in the post-COVID-19 outbreak. A multicultural society usually has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely, involving in social policies which support or encourage cultural practices, and together with this is the coexistence of multilingualism. Bilingualism or multilingualism is a challenging field that stems from diverse interdisciplinary interests and results from numerous variables that are closely related. From a more realistic view of multilingualism, language specialists can make learning languages in the classroom and in social environments a positive experience in which both or more languages are valued. All the issues related to the English-medium instruction for the tertiary level in a multilingual and multicultural context will be presented in the chapter.
TopIntroduction
This chapter discusses the issues related to multilingual and multicultural perspectives on higher education, with some implications for teaching English as mean of instruction. First of all, the chapter mentions the issues of Vietnamese students of undergraduate and graduate level, who are learning or have finished their education in foreign countries. Secondly, the chapter presents the issues of international students who come to Vietnam to study or conduct their research, and students whose fathers are foreigners and whose mothers are Vietnamese at the International University – Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (IU-VNU HCMC), which is an English-medium higher education institution. Thirdly, the chapter discusses the use of English as a foreign language (EFL), English as a second language (ESL), and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the Vietnamese context of integration. Vietnamese students of English often find it difficult to communicate successfully with English speakers. Fourthly, the chapter raises the issue of English language used in high context culture societies, which means that there are countries where the meaning of language performance depends much on the situational contexts. This is in contrast with low context culture societies, where verbal communication manipulates. This also results in the mixed use of source language and target language, which often leads to the creation of a mixed use of languages, that is, the L1 interference in using L2. Fifthly, the chapter reviews the second language acquisition (SLA) theories on teaching English-medium disciplinaries, including the use of Traditional Grammar (TG) and that of Functional Grammar (FG) in the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Next, the chapter raises the issue of intercultural and crosslinguistic relationships and their influences on each other. Then, the chapter investigates the issue of cognitive learning at a university in a multilingual and multicultural context. The chapter also discusses the process of students’ language acquisition from monolingual to multilingual, which means how students learn languages in the intercultural contexts. Finally, the chapter suggests some implications for teaching disciplinary subjects, using English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and points out its effectiveness in application.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Low Context Culture: A low-context culture is the one that communicates information in direct, explicit, and precise ways. The United States of America is a country that has a low-context culture.
Intercultural: Occurring between people of different cultures including different religious groups or people of different national origins, involving two or more cultures.
Crosslinguistic: Relating to languages of different families and types especially concerning the comparison of different languages.
Monolingual: The ability (or person) to speak or understand only one language, such as to write or speak in only one language.
English-Medium Instruction: The use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries where the first language of the majority of the population is not English.
Lingua Franca: A language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
High Context Culture: A high-context culture is the one that uses communication focusing on not the words, but heavily on nonverbal communication, and on implicit and underlying context, meaning, and tone in the message. Japan, China, and Vietnam, etc. are countries that have a high-context culture.
Bilingualism: The ability to use two languages simultaneously, or the ability to become bilingual by learning a second language sometime after their first language.
Multicultural: Relating to or constituting several cultural or ethnic groups within a society.
Multilingual: The ability (or person) to use more than two languages for communication, such as to write or speak in more than two different languages.