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Best practices in teaching and learning

Linguistic Inclusion for Student Academic

Success in Higher Education

“… two-thirds of the world’s children grow up in a context
where more than one language is spoken. Multilingualism is

not a problem, but a reality that can be a resource.” (Wisbey,
2014, p. 3).

▪ Background
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), as many other Middle Eastern and Asian countries,
presents a very peculiar linguistic landscape when compared to some other countries in the
world, that is, along with their sole official language (Arabic), English appears as almost a
second language in the day-to-day lives of the country’s population. In fact, for historical,

economic and societal reasons which we will not explore in this article, English took the
place of a first language in many academic settings across the UAE, becoming an academic
lingua franca (Corrigan, 2018) in the great majority of higher education institutions, as is
the case of Abu Dhabi University (ADU). This neoliberal emergence of English as the only

language of instruction surely presents advantages, such as enhanced career opportunities
for students (Dearden, 2014, as cited in Chell et al., 2021) and bettered internationalization
of universities (Chell et al., 2021; Yıldız et al., 2017); however, it also comes with a series of
challenges. Below, I present a list of a few of these challenges that our UAE-based students
may encounter in this Englishization of higher education, followed by recommendations of
best practices that, I believe, may contribute to academic success in English medium in-

struction higher education institutions.
▪ Challenges
• Despite welcoming a wide variety of nationalities, ADU also receives a high percentage
of Emirati and other students who may have attended high school in Arabic or other

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