Dr Àngels Pinyana from the GRAC research group at UVic-UCC spent a week in Bern this November as a scientific collaborator for the research project Developing Quality Parameters for International Profiles in Universities of Applied Sciences which is coordinated by the Research Unit Language Competence and Knowledge Development at ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences).
Dr Pinyana’s visit involved data collection through intensive classroom observations and interviews with lecturers and students in an EMI (English-medium instruction) context on the Degree in Business Administration at Bern Fachhochschule. Dr Pinyana is part of a team who are testing the use of a series of pedagogical and language parameters in university lectures taught in English. The aim of this project is to compile a practical checklist which may be used to assess the quality of future international programmes taught in English, as well as furthering our knowledge of lecturers and students’ experiences, classroom dynamics and language learning in these settings.

Members of the GRELL and GRAC research groups attended a talk by the SLA researcher, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig from Indiana University. The talk was entitled “Unconventional expressions: Productive syntax in the L2 acquisition of formulaic language” and was held on 11th May 2016 at 5pm at UB in Barcelona. The talk was organised by UVic-UCC’s Dr Llorenç Comajoan (GRELL), who had worked with Dr Bardovi-Harlig in Indiana during his early career and Dr Carmen Muñoz (UB).

Dr Bardovi-Harlig’s research on second language grammar and pragmatics includes an investigation on conventional expressions, such as “Nice to meet you,” “(I’m) sorry I’m late,” “I’m just looking,” and “I gotta go.” Her results show that learners display interlanguage syntax which contradicts claims that formulaic expressions are memorised in L2, eventually leading to targetlike grammar use (Ellis, 2003, 2012; Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2007; Myles, 2004; Wray, 2008). Bardovi-Harlig’s conclusions are supported by her data containing several interlanguage forms and she suggests that learners’ expressions are based primarily on lexis and are driven by pragmatics.

Of particular interest in this talk was the data collection method used in the study. A total of 314 learners participated resulting in an oral dataset of 5500 tokens. Confounding variables such as proficiency and exposure to English were accounted for and preliminary piloting of the elicitation tasks was very carefully conducted in order to uncover the interlanguage forms learners employed.

The GRAC research group at UVic-UCC was invited to participate in a network meeting called ‘Quality Parameters in International Profiles in Higher Education’. Àngels Pinyana and Sarah Khan represented GRAC at the meetings in Winterthur, Switzerland on 31st March and 1st April.

The meeting in Winterthur was the first of several planned meetings between 2015-2017 to coordinate a joint inter-university project headed by ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences) and BFH (Bern University of Applied Sciences), “Developing Quality Management Parameters for International Profiles in Universities of Applied Sciences”, which is funded by SERI (Swiss Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation).

This cross-disciplinary project will be headed by a core team of expert advisors in higher education in the fields of International Relations, Quality Management and Applied Linguistics from UVic-UCC, University of Padua and universities of applied sciences from Zurich, Bern, Graz, Munich and Freiburg.

The core team will develop Quality Management Parameters which may be applied across universities and cultural contexts and build up an international network to actively implement sustainable Quality Management Parameters in the future. The final aim of the project is to develop strategic partnerships in order to submit a proposal for an Erasmus Key Action 2+ Mobility Programme in 2017.