Supporting the academic staff of the internationalised university: a project at the Department of Management

One of the consequences of the growing number of English-taught programmes offered by European universities is the top-down request that lecturers switch from their L1 to English, for teaching, while the administrative staff is required to communicate with international students. To help the academic staff cope with the change, some universities have provided them with training and support. In Italy, a project ran from 2015 to 2018 at the Department of Management of a university in the northern part of the country, and consisted of a support service in which the staff could arrange appointments with a language tutor, to discuss issues related to their use of English in academia. During one-on-one sessions, fieldnotes were kept about the participants’ difficulties and needs. Through the lens of Grounded Theory, data were coded and grouped into categories, according to their types and frequency. The findings revealed that problems mainly concerned vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. The project is briefly presented, followed by a description of the linguistic and communicative problems most found. This study provides insights into the everyday language practices of the academic staff, since it identified the problems solved through the support service and those to be tackled in the future.