Joseph Lo Bianco Faculty of Education The University of Melbourne Australia email: j.lobianco@unimelb.edu.au Agendas, Issues and Directions: Language Policies in Asian EMI Universities

In their volume Medium of Instruction Policies-Which Agenda? Whose Agenda? (Lawrence Erlbaum 2004) James Tollefson and Amy Tsui make socio-political processes central to analysis of medium of instruction based language planning.

Adopting their spirit, this plenary serves four broadly socio-political purposes.

First, I will attempt a critical summary and commentary on issues arising from the symposium. Second, based on a tentative division between the differential impact of globalisation-internationalisation on "old native speaker" English societies compared with "new native speaker" and non-English native speaker societies, I will classify some debates and controversies arising from English medium program delivery in universities in Asia and Europe. These debates and controversies will be viewed under prisms of socio-political, cultural-ideological (national state linguistic culture), and the spreading neo-liberal basis of university governance dependent on market competition and commodification and exchange utility of education certificates. Third, I will introduce the concept of domain-sensitive fields of knowledge including this in the analysis of national responses to English MOI.

Finally I identify research questions that we might encourage to throw light on the complex processes through which English is increasingly becoming represented as a post-identity "basic skill" rather than a language.

Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at The University of Melbourne. Recent books include: Australian Literacies; Australian Policy Activism; Voices from Phnom Penh; Teaching Invisible Culture; Language Policy in Australia.