Towards a new model of communicative competence in multilingual higher education

Research Project, 2023 – 2027

Current research suggests that the existing models of communicative competence (CC) fail to reflect the communicative practices in multilingual contexts. A multilingual understanding of CC is especially needed for applied linguistic research and professional work in linguistically diverse higher educational (HE) settings such as English-medium instruction (EMI) programs in geographical regions where English is not a dominant language. The question arises: How to expand or refine the current communicative competence models in order to account for multilingual mediation in communication? Based on a cross-cultural comparative ethnography, this project seeks to expand the current conceptualizations of the communicative competence construct and theorize the enrichment of current theoretical frameworks.