Mobility experience with a research focus
PhD sandwich ; Post Doc
Department of Interpreting and Translation
In international academic and work contexts, the use of English as a vehicular language is encouraged. This tendency, widespread in the scientific field (engineering, economics, medicine, computer science, etc.), brings with it certain unwelcome effects, i.e. an excessive simplification and unnaturalness of communication, a failure to make the greatest possible use of the participants' multilingual repertoires, and a polarisation of international academic mobility exchanges towards English-speaking countries. On the other hand, training initiatives in intercomprehension (IC) between related languages at university are more and more widespread, and play an essential role in students’ linguistic-cultural growth, for international mobility and within the professional world. IC refers to a linguistic-cognitive property of people, a set of strategies, and a teaching methodology. In IC communication contexts, each speaker interacts using his/her mother tongue (or the language he/she perceives as such) and is able to understand that of the other speakers. The use of IC is encouraged by EU policies and its usefulness is evident on several levels: i) deconditioning from negative experiences of teaching/learning a foreign language; ii) valorisation of one's own plurilingual repertoire; iii) enhancing more natural and spontaneous communication also in specialist fields; iv) growing openness and curiosity towards mobility experiences in non-English speaking countries; v) development of soft skills and plurilingual communication strategies. PHD or post-doc candidates will be involved in research concerning plurilingual communication through intercomprehension in academic, specialised and/or professional settings. He/She will i) identify types and features of IC communication strategies adopted by peers in multilingual oral exchanges, both verbal and non-verbal; ii) investigate the use of English in technical-scientific educational and professional domains; iii) test and practise the descriptors of the main reference frameworks (EVAL-IC and REFIC) on a specialist audience, also with a view to recognition, valorisation and dissemination of these skills in a professional context; iv) disseminate awareness and understanding of IC in technical-scientific contexts, where it is still not widespread; v) improve and diversify international mobility opportunities.
Italian and/or French, Spanish, Portuguese
PhD sandwich: 2-9
Post Doc: 2-9
Dr. Maria Jesus Gonzalez Rodriguez