Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne

Descrizione del progetto

Title: EM(A)I: AI-Supported Multilingual and Intercultural Mediation in International English-Medium Instruction Programmes

Project type: UNITO Starting Grant 2025

Partner universities: University of Turin, University of Brescia, University of Rijeka

Project description

European universities increasingly need to strengthen their internationalised profiles and offer high-quality programmes that attract both local and international students. These programmes are commonly delivered through English-Medium Instruction (EMI), which, despite facilitating mobility and competitiveness, creates notable linguistic and cultural challenges for teachers and students. Research and experience from EMI teacher-training show that difficulties arise not only from language proficiency but also from differing communicative norms, academic expectations, and cultural frames of reference. Students often struggle to understand local academic practices, feel insecure about participating, avoid office hour meetings and risk reduced learning outcomes. Teachers, on the other hand, may find it difficult to understand students’ oral questions due to unfamiliar accents or varieties of English and may fail to identify and cater for students’ cultural attitudes and behaviours. A further issue that often marks international courses is the restricted use of the full linguistic repertoires present in the classroom. While EMI aims to create a shared communicative space, the dominance of English often limits multilingual practices. Occasional use of the local language by teachers or students may clarify content for some but tends to exclude international students, who frequently report feelings of marginalisation. To address these barriers, the project proposes the use of Generative AI to support plurilingual and intercultural communication in EMI settings. The initiative will raise teachers’ awareness of intercultural issues and guide them in creating a personalised plurilingual AI Assistant tailored to their specific courses. Unlike generic AI tools, this customised Assistant can align its explanations with the teacher’s syllabus, expectations, terminology, and assessment formats. It will provide students with a safe and multilingual space to ask questions about course content, exams, or administrative matters, and will help reduce anxiety and improve understanding. For teachers, it will secure a practical way to offer consistent multilingual and intercultural support without increasing workload. As plurilingualism and interculturality constitute intangible cultural heritage, the project aims to advance its preservation and transmission in international academic communities while promoting a more inclusive and effective model of internationalised teaching aligned with European priorities on plurilingualism, digital innovation, and equitable learning environments.

The overarching objective of this project is to support EMI lecturers in managing linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms while enabling students to make use of their full multilingual and cultural backgrounds. Specific objectives include:

• Fostering multilingualism and intercultural communication which represent some of the corner stones of intangible cultural heritage
• Improving intercultural academic interactions among teachers and students
• Creating more accessible EMI environments for international students
• Integrating innovative AI-assisted teaching practices into internationalised courses