The future of English in global higher education: Shifting trends from teaching English to teaching through English

Over the past 100 years we have seen a boom in the number of people who can speak English. We have also seen English creep into a number of political,economic, commercial, and educational domains. The British Council (2014) lists at least 88 countries where English has an official status. It is also often the working language for international diplomacy and international organizations (Crystal, 2003).The English language is ubiquitous with academic scholarship and is the dominant language of science, medicine, and technology, and for academic scholarship (Galloway & Rose, 2015). Due to this changing role of English, the 21st century has already witnessed a huge shift in the way that English is used in education—a trend that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. English is the “most widely taught foreign language, with over 1 billion English learners worldwide” (McKay, 2012, p.28), cementing it as the world’s foremost lingua franca. Despite this upward trend in English language learning, English departments—with a traditional focus on foreign language learning through literature studies—have been experiencing a decline in student enrolment. In order to reconcile these two realities, this paper will explore the historical changes in English language education around the world, then discuss the current trends in terms of the way English is positioned in higher education. From this historic standpoint, it will predict future directions in English language teaching in global contexts, and discuss current and future opportunities for English language learning in higher education, particularly in non-Anglophone university contexts