Writing in and across Disciplines
ENGLISH AS THE CORNERSTONE OF SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH (ECOSTAR)
Clive Lawrence
Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Higher education in Israel is endeavouring to move towards EMI. As part of an EU TEMPUS project, Maastricht University, along with the Universities of Nicosia, L’Aquila, Leicester, ClujNapoca and Wroclaw is in collaboration with 7 universities in Israel to develop and implement a course, including writing in a range of academic genres, employing EMI for the first time in HE in Israel. The focus of the project is to develop introduce a course to be delivered in English that is appropriate for any discipline at bachelor level. Students will learn both content and language by writing. Further, we have to establish the language level at which the course is to be taught, the genres and standard of writing that is to be demanded of the students and the level and criteria for assessment. We also have to establish the English language level required by the course teachers and to facilitate the development of their own English writing skills to enable them to teach and assess student writing. This presentation will outline the challenges faced by the project team and the solutions we have identified so far. I shall explain the rationale behind the choice of sustainability as the ideal subject for a single course across disciplines. I would welcome input from anyone who has started from scratch an EMI course curriculum including academic writing.