A Survey of English-Medium Instruction in Italian Higher Education

ETPs (English-taught Programmes) have increased exponentially over the last ten years. This type of teaching can be placed within a framework that includes many different approaches that give rise to an equal number of definitions (L2-Medium Instruction, Internationalisation, Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education, Adjunct Model, etc.). This paper seeks to give an overview of the Italian situation in this regard, starting from the assumption that there have been no recent surveys on English-taught programmes. Based in part on European studies, several organizational (number of ETPs, reasons for and difficulties involving their implementation, etc.) and didactic elements (recruitment, competencies of teachers, etc.) has been outlined by means of a questionnaire (with a response rate of 50%) sent to all the Italian universities. The situation with regard to ETPs is still varied, sparse and heterogeneous. However, the analysis brings out situations of unease for several types of universities in Italy. In general, no matter what type of institution is considered, all show a clear-cut focus on content over language.