Tips and tricks to raise your game when you teach in English  

Jennifer Valcke, an educational developer at Karolinska Institutet, tells us some of the basic factors to bear in mind when teaching in English. 
“The first thing you need to think about is that the students are a multilingual, multicultural group. Even if the students are Swedish citizens, Swedish may be a second language for many, so English may be their third or even fourth language,” she says.  

Part of Jennifer Valcke’s job is to support teachers when they are required to teach in English. She also researches the relationship between learning and language, not only with regard to English.  
“I always emphasise to teachers that it is not about English, but about how we work with the language as a tool and about best teaching practice, whatever language we teach in.” 

The second thing to consider when teaching in English is that even if students are good at the language, teachers should support them in their transition to academic English, as it is a different type of English. Students need to develop the knowledge and skills required for the discipline they are studying. 

The third issue that Valcke emphasises is that teaching in English is not about pretending to be a native speaker.  
“In the workplace, people will use English as a lingua franca, to talk to patients and perhaps colleagues from other countries. I try to help university teachers to change their thinking about the language and to understand that it is about communication, not about speaking with a British or American accent.”  

She also outlines a number of factors for successful teaching in English. “Students need to feel that they are in an inclusive learning environment where they feel secure and where it is OK to make mistakes. The language should be seen as a tool for communication and not as a measure of competence or intelligence.”  

Creating a safe and inclusive environment means the teacher providing space for discussions about language and using the class as a resource to solve language problems, for example if the teacher cannot find the right word. 

The teacher also needs to build interaction into the teaching.  
“Of course the teacher needs to lecture, but maybe not for 40 minutes. There need to be discussions with the students, and they need to produce language. This can be in writing, it can be in the form of presentations, it can be in interactions with each other.” 

Valcke also explains that it is a good practice to always write up key words and concepts when they are introduced, so that students can both hear and see them. Additionally, students should be given opportunities to prepare, for example by having access to texts and videos with subtitles before the lessons. In other words, a form of flipped classroom approach. 

“Another tip is to use the university’s language support resources to help students write texts in English,” she adds. 

She says that it is natural for students to question whether they should study in English.  
“So spend time at the beginning of the course explaining to students that they need to prepare for working in a globalised world. English will be used in their future workplace, whether it is a clinic or a laboratory. And if they want to excel in their field, they will need scientific English to understand the latest research.”  

John Airey is a professor of university science education at Stockholm University and a docent in physics education research at Uppsala University. He has studied the behaviour of university teachers when they change their language of instruction to English. First they would give a lecture in Swedish and then come back and give the same lecture in English. 

“First and foremost, we need to understand what happens when teachers who are not native English speakers switch languages. Their speech slows down. It’s not just that people speak more slowly, but they also have to search for the right words. My research showed that people spoke 23 per cent more slowly on average.” 

Airey found that teachers dealt with the situation in three different ways.  

“One category was initially very structured in Swedish and actually just used the same PowerPoint slides. But as they spoke more slowly, one of two things happened. Either they ran over time or they ended on time and stopped before they could complete the whole presentation.” 

Another category changed their approach, changing their PowerPoints but in three different ways.  
“One group decided to skip certain parts. They worked on the principle that ‘this is not so important, so I won’t cover it because I know I won’t have time’.” 

The second group somehow managed to cover everything.  
“They finished on time, but they spoke more slowly. And the only change you could see was that they included fewer examples and less redundancy. What that meant for the teaching and learning is unclear.”  

A third category of lecturers behaved differently.  
“They were so familiar with their subject that they didn’t use slides or other aids. When they taught in Swedish, they talked, drew and wrote on the board and wanted to elicit questions from the students.” 

When this third category came back and held a lesson in English, it was a completely different presentation. 
“But the thing is, they only talked for half of the scheduled lesson time. Then their lecture ended, and they couldn’t think of anything more to say.”  

John Airey’s conclusion is that having an open lesson structure requires a great deal of linguistic knowledge.  
“My advice is to structure the lesson with PowerPoints when you switch to teaching in English so you don’t end up standing in front of the class not really able to say anything.”