Mobility in Higher Education: Cross-Cultural Communication Issues

Abstract

From early 1989 to late 1991 I was working on a project 'Foreign Languages in Higher Education' with financial support from the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart and the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam [1]. In developing the concept of the foreign language as the medium for learning we found ourselves drawn into investigations into the status of foreign languages in international university programmes as well as into the need to define the qualitative dimensions of mobility of university students in the context of increasing professional mobility in Europe. Professional teaching and learning are processes of transcultural or intercultural communication. Even neighbouring countries in Europe, such as Germany and France-and, indeed, the various types of universities within these countries-differ widely in their respective disciplinary and subject cultures. In addition, the teaching and learning situation as well as the students' and lecturers' views regarding their own professional and social position are determined by aspects of institutional and organisational cultures. All these factors were taken into account. We found it to be of crucial significance that the teaching and learning of foreign languages should take into consideration the specifics of organisational and subject cultures, whether in the context of subject-based reading in the foreign language or, more particularly, of guest lecturers' classes and students' studies abroad. This requires an awareness on the part of lecturers and students of the need to relate their own university culture to that of the foreign institution.