Multilingual Higher Education—Beyond English Medium Orientations

This book argues that a multilingual approach to higher education is imperative in an increasingly globalised education environment. Higher education cannot afford a narrow focus on English language proficiency; this book addresses the need to acknowledge other languages explicitly in classroom instruction and student learning to improve student success, to widen access and to internationalise institutions.

Christa van der Walt has been teaching in South African multilingual environments for the past 25 years. Her experience includes secondary schools and higher education institutions in privileged as well as township contexts. The acknowledgement of other languages in the classroom, and in English language classrooms in particular, has been an important theme in her work since the late nineties. In the South African context this stance is particularly important as a means to widen access to higher education and to increase the status of minoritised languages.