It is often assumed that the simple presence of international students and ubiquitous use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) are the main agents of internationalisation of higher education (HE), whereby English equals international education and inbound student mobility equals increased internationalisation. While there are perceived…

This article explores how organizational mobility and foreign nationality affect a researcher's chances of an internal career promotion in university systems that do not have rules preventing inbreeding and where teaching occurs mostly not in English but a local language. As a case study, we have examined the Flemish university system, the Dutch…

Many people involved in international education, including students and parents, engage in a stepping-stone discourse that identifies English-medium learning in non-Western countries as a preparatory stage for postsecondary education in Western destinations, with the ultimate goal to secure competitive employment. The present study examines how…

This study utilises comparative case studies of three Japanese third-culture kids (TCKs) living in Singapore aged 16, each from a different school type (international school, Japanese school, and local Singapore school). It explores if the home language, language used in school, language used in social circles, and language of media consumed of…

In Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, higher education internationalisation agendas have increasingly shifted from studying abroad to offering 'international' English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at home. This qualitative study explores the perceptions of seventeen domestic undergraduate students in the disciplines of Law and…

Internationalization in higher education in Japan is progressing, and it is desirable for international students to have a high degree of satisfaction with their experience in Japanese universities. With that in mind, this research focuses on the study of Japanese language and experiences of taking Japanese language classes before and during study…

Massive investments in higher education have witnessed a proliferation of public and private universities in Malaysia. A parallel development of concern is the view that public university graduates are finding it more difficult than their private university counterparts in transiting from university to work. To test the empirical veracity of this…

The present study investigates the effects of two subsequent learning contexts, formal instruction (FI) at home and a 3-month stay abroad (SA), on vocabulary acquisition in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing and speaking. Data were collected from 30 Catalan/Spanish learners of English before and after each learning period using a written…

This article focuses on the inequalities of an educational policy that favours English over the national language and the resulting impacts on young people. While the constitution identifies Dhivehi to be the official language of the Maldives, and the National Curriculum recognises both Dhivehi and English as languages of instruction, English has…

The discussion takes up the common theme across the seven contributions of this special issue, namely the CEFR's suitability as a basis for setting university entrance standards. The special issue allows insights into this theme from a multitude of contexts, languages and perspectives, including data from stakeholders, students, tests and their…

The article proves that the need for the development of intercultural communication skills in the learning process is due to external causes of globalization and internal requirements of the modern ethnocultural situation in Ukraine, as well as the needs of pedagogical science, which takes into account global development trends: anthropocentrism,…

While there is ample evidence that study abroad (SA) enhances oral fluency in a foreign language, the effects of different types of learning context on other aspects of oral skills, such as vocabulary use, have not received much attention in academic research and are less clear. The present study tries to fill this void by investigating lexical…

The received wisdom is that mobility programmes considerably contribute to students in terms of the development of generic skills, language and multicultural competence and competitive advantage in the global labour market. Surprisingly, the impacts of mobility programmes on academic learning have received very limited research interest in the…

Host and international students evolve side-by side within the expanding internationalization of higher education. This study takes the complementary perspective of analysing 1,900 host and international students' experiences at a high-ranking research university in France. We analyse and compare the mobility, language practices and practices…

Recent studies have shown that the number of international students, who are academically mobile, is growing. As a result, higher education institutions aim at competitiveness in the world market. Therefore, the core issue of the following work is a process of adaptation of international students to a new educational environment, especially to the…