Attending the New Directions LATAM 2023 conference was a pleasant experience. This event is the British Council’s flagship language testing and assessment congress. Watching discussions on how technology, artificial intelligence, and diversity are all being taken into account when it comes to assessment was super interesting. One talk that caught my attention, though, was the session “The Changing Landscape of English-taught Programmes” with Fiona Mason and Ashleigh Bodell. It was a brief discussion on the changes happening around the world when it comes to the internationalisation of higher education.
The first main change in this new global scenario is that the “Big Four” (Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US) were once the main study destinations, but nowadays many countries that do not have English as their L1 have started offering undergraduate and graduate-level English-taught programmes (ETPs) with a growing number of students. However, this is not true of Latin America. In LatAm, only 494 ETPs were found compared to 3,389 in China alone and 17,562 in all of Europe. Research found that Brazil had only 5 ETPs as of May 2021.
There are lots of opportunities in the areas of education, natural sciences, maths, medicine and health, applied sciences and so many others! It is really interesting to look at that scenario, especially when we learn that the interests for undergraduate and graduate programmes are changing from the Big Four to non-Anglophone countries. Bodell and Mason even mentioned how internationalising these programmes helps with the local economy and ends up being one of the aspects that attract investors.
My communist mind, however, started thinking about Brazil and how that would work around here. At some point, I even questioned the two speakers about whether offering ETPs would somehow be able to accommodate students who have had little to no access to formal English instruction. But I think if it does happen in Brazil, it will be mostly limited to the private sector as it has always happened with English around here.
All in all, this session made me think about how students might soon start looking for more preparatory courses for certain exams with this ongoing change. It also makes it all the more necessary to use authentic materials that allow students to experience English in a more international context, with people speaking about and in countries such as Malaysia, South Africa, or even the United Arab Emirates. I would love to see English become a universal thing in Brazil so that all pupils, from North to South, had a chance to access courses in this new education trend.
Anico is an English teacher, materials writer and academic consultant at Troika. She holds the Cambridge ICELT and has been in ELT for 10 years, mainly working with teaching and materials writing. In addition to that, she has taught over 15 groups of PREP courses for both IELTS and Cambridge Exams, including B2 First and C1 Advanced. She often talks about issues related to representation, gender and diversity to promote social equity focused on the lives of transgender individuals.
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