Original Paper English as a Medium of Instruction in Brazil: Evidence from UFES

The study reflects on the role of additional languages (L2) in the process of internationalization of higher education by analyzing the role of L2 in general and English in particular in the process of internationalization of a federal university in Brazil (UFES). More specifically, the study seeks evidence of the role of L2 and English in the process of internationalization at UFES by analyzing its offer of courses reported in the Guide EMI 2018-2019 in contrast with data from the self-declared L2 proficiency of professors linked to postgraduate programs (PPGs) in that institution. The literature review includes studies on the role of L2 in the process of internationalization in Brazil and at UFES. The methodology is mixed, triangulating quantitative and qualitative data of the offer of L2 courses at UFES with the reported proficiency levels of professors. The analysis of the data suggests that English has a hegemonic role in the internationalization process in general and at UFES in particular. Since other L2 possibilities have been found in that institution, the study suggests alternative language policies to stimulate the use of other L2 apart from English to foster a more multilingual internationalization process in that context.

Swiss university claiming that it is not possible to analyze multilingualism without addressing the role of English in it once this language affects and is affected by the use of other L2. In this sense, any study on multilingualism must consider the role that English plays in that particular equation/context. Still in regards to the role of L2 in the internationalization of higher education, certain languages affect this process more than others, as shown, for example, by Finardi and Franç a (2016) in the analysis of Brazilian academic production in the area of Linguistics. According to these authors, although the Brazilian academic production is robust (the 13th largest in the world in 2016), the impact of that production in qualitative terms (measured by the number of citations received) is far from significant and does not match the quantitative data. The authors explain this discrepancy between the number of publications and their impact, in terms of the language in which most of this production is published, that is, in Portuguese.
Due to the spread of English in the world, Jordã o (2014) reviews several terms associated to this language such as: English as an additional language (EAL), in reference to the use of English in any situation except as a mother tongue, English as a lingua franca (ELF), in reference to the use of English to communicate with other English speakers who do not share the same first language; English as a foreign language (EFL), in reference to the use of English in a context where it is not an official language; English as an international language (EIL), in reference to the use of English in the world today; and English as a global language (EGL), in reference to the expansion of English and its variations around the globe. As previously discussed, in this study we chose to use the term additional language (L2) to refer to all uses of English, covering all the terms above and in opposition to the term L1, used to refer to the first language or mother tongue.
The choice of English as an academic lingua franca (ILF) (Jenkins, 2013) is naturalized and hardly ever questioned in the global North (Santos, 2007), although according to authors from the global South (for example Finardi, 2019a;Andreotti, 2015;Leal & Moraes, 2018), this vision / choice must be justified / questioned since globalization, internationalization and the use of English benefit more countries in the global North than those in the South (Hamel, 2013;Vavrus & Pekol, 2015).
In the Brazilian academic context, the choice of English as an academic lingua franca over Spanish is questionable regarding the role of that language in the world in general and in Latin America in particular. The number of Spanish speakers, the proximity between Portuguese, the 6 th language with the most native speakers in the world (221 million native speakers) and Spanish, the 2 nd language with the most native speakers (460 million native speakers), and the fact that both languages share many characteristics as they are derived from Latin and represent the 5 th and the 2 nd most spoken languages in the world, as well as the geographical situation of Brazil, surrounded by Spanish speaking countries, warrant a more careful consideration of which languages should have an academic status in Brazil.
Moreover, the choice of Portuguese and Spanish as academic linguas francas in Latin America's internationalization process may represent an alternative to strengthen the region's languages and www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/selt Studies in English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1, 2021 37 Published by SCHOLINK INC. academic productions.
In line with Finardi, Santos and Guimarã es (2016) regarding the relevant role that L2 have in the internationalization process of higher education, and with Finardi (2019a) regarding the need to question the role of English in the global South, this study problematizes the use of English within a specific internationalization context, namely, that of the Federal University of Espirito Santo (UFES) in Brazil. More particularly, it seeks to analyze the role of English in the internationalization process of this university contrasting evidence of proficiency levels reported in the academic curriculum of professors linked to postgraduate programs (PPGs) of this institution with the offer of courses in L2 in general and in English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in particular, in that context.

Internationalization in the World
The internationalization of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the world serves different interests according to the plans of each institution / government. According to Leal and Oregioni (2019), it is guided by a colonial and capitalist logic. Buckner and Stein (2020) analyzed this logic in higher education associations focusing on three pillars, namely: international students, student and professor mobility and curriculum change concluding that little importance is given to the analysis of power relations in the process of internationalization thus perpetuating unequal power relations in this context.
Drawing on decolonial perspectives, Piccin and Finardi (2019a) warns us that colonialism aims to maintain a global imaginary created by neoliberal policies to perpetuate the status quo, while education is used to reinforce this practice. Also according to these authors, educators must reflect on what the "global citizen" is, for, despite its inclusive name, the term global citizen refers to a construction of the North. The notion of a global citizen is linked to the idea that the world has become a global village but it is important to bear in mind that in this village, not everyone has a citizenship status.
In that sense, Guimarã es and Finardi (2021) offer a review and critical reflection on alternative ways of looking at Global Citizenship Education (GCE) addressing some of the criticism raised at this concept to discuss possibilities of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) approach as an alternative Thirdspace for promoting intercultural encounters in the internationalization of higher education. In doing so the authors aim to aid higher education institutions to cope with local, national and global tensions in the process of internationalization of higher education from a "glonacal" perspective that accounts for the role of individuals, local/national governments and higher education institutions in it.
In a 2014 publication, the British Council addresses the symbolic value of education (to build this global citizen) for different social classes, concluding that, for the elite, education and professional achievement legitimize the individual and maintain their class status; while for the middle class, education leads to professional fulfillment and social ascension of the family.
So as to offer a local view of how higher education may foster the development of global citizens and how internationalization is viewed and practiced in a local context in the global South, Piccin and Finardi (2019b) interviewed public servants working in technical institutes in Brazil. Results of this study suggest that educational models and practices in that context need to be decolonized for they still reproduce the standards imposed by the North, often in an unquestioned way.
Thinking of a more inclusive internationalization, Hildeblando and Finardi (2018)  The COIL approach and the virtual exchanges that replaced physical mobility during the pandemic that affected the world, interrupting most international travel and internationalization programs, may represent, according to Finardi and Guimarã es (2020), an opportunity for the global South. Before the pandemic, only a small portion of privileged students, mostly from the global North, had access to international exchange activities. The migration of teaching and internationalization activities to the virtual environment due to the disruptions caused by the COVID19 pandemic thus included more voices from the South as physical mobility was replaced by virtual mobility.

Internationalization in Brazil
Unlike internationalization in universities in the global North, motivated, to a certain extent, by an economic drive once students generally pay tuition fees, internationalization in Brazil seems to be more motivated by academic concerns, since public higher education institutions are completely free of charge. In a study on the impact of globalization on education in general and on the Business Administration course in particular, Ortiz and Finardi (2015) analyzed the internationalization process of a public university and a private one concluding that while the public university has some (academic) motivation to internationalize, the private university has no motivation given that the domestic market in Brazil is very comfortable for private HEIs in Brazil, that represent about 88% in 2020.
In the year that the aforementioned authors carried out that study, the proportion between public and private universities was of 25%-75% respectively, a proportion exactly the opposite of that found, for example, in Turkey, which had a proportion of 75% of public institutions against 25% private ones in the following year, that is, in 2016 (Taquini, Finardi, & Amorim, 2017). Thus, Finardi and Ortiz (2015) explain the lack of economic motivation for the internationalization of private HEIs in Brazil in relation to the size of the internal market and the lack of need to seek financial resources in the form of tuition from international students.
In an analysis of the declared mission of Brazilian federal universities in relation to their projection for internationalization, Guimarã es et al. (2020) found that only 7 of the 63 institutions investigated mentioned the term "internationalization" or "international" in the texts available on their websites.
According to the authors, these data suggest that internationalization in Brazil is still an incipient and passive process, sending more academics than receiving from abroad (Lima & Maranhã o, 2009). In Bido (2015) reinforces the importance of developing linguistic and intercultural skills for internationalization despite the difficulty of measuring this development in students who returned from the CsF. According to Silva (2016), although managers and coordinators positively evaluate the exchange of knowledge and contact with other cultures, they do not see success in the CsF initiative once it did not create links between the HEIs involved in the exchanges. As such, the internationalization aimed at by the CsF program did not reach even the lowest level of internationalization, that is, the institutional level, as it is limited only to the student who had the possibility to perform academic mobility.
Despite the great cultural experience involved in the academic mobility afforded by the CsF, academic credits were not validated upon the return of the students in Brazil. It was also observed that the knowledge obtained by the students was kept to themselves, since there were no strategies for knowledge sharing upon the return of these students to Brazil. According to Finardi and Archanjo (2018), the biggest challenge of the CsF program, namely the implementation of the scholarships in face of the low level of English proficiency of candidates, gave rise to the creation of another national program. The lack of English proficiency detected in the CsF candidates had washback effects for languages (Finardi & Archanjo, 2018, Sarmento & Kirsch, 2014  Greece, Hungary, Iran and Colombia, among others, as international partners. Not all institutions exercised the same discretion though as will be seen in the analysis of the internationalization process of UFES. The Brazilian Association of International Education (Faubai) (Note 3), aims to promote the improvement of international exchange and cooperation as instruments for the improvement of teaching, research, extension/outreach and administration activities of affiliated institutions, seeking to encourage the constant improvement of the management of international exchange and cooperation. Baumvol and Sarmento (2019) analyzed the presentations in Faubai events concluding that 28% of them were in English thus reaffirming the status of this language as a global lingua franca in the Brazilian academic community (Montgomery, 2013;Dearden, 2014). Aware of the important role of foreign languages in the internationalization process, Faubai created a research group in 2017 to think and suggest guidelines for the formulation of institutional language policies for internationalization.
One of the achievements of this group was the development of a language policy guide (Note 4) and two years later the survey of additional languages used in higher education institutions in Brazil reported in the English as a medium of instruction -EMI Guide (Note 5).
In the EMI Guide, universities are categorized by region and by states, in alphabetical order, with information related to the number of students (subdivided into undergraduate, specialization, master's, doctorate and foreign students in the same categories), online site, contact and the type of assistance offered by each institution, such as accommodation, infrastructure, reception on arrival and a responsible colleague to help foreigners with regard to their experience in the country. The other languages mentioned in the EMI Guide are Spanish, French, German and Italian. English alone accounts for 88.55% of undergraduate degrees, 94.71% of graduate degrees and 83.33% of extracurricular courses offered in foreign languages, thus justifying the name of the guide (EMI).

Internationalization at UFES
The topic of internationalization has prominence at UFES where, according to Amorim (2020), the largest number of publications on the subject are produced in the country. Also, UFES has an institutional internationalization plan, a Permanent Commission for Internationalization and a Secretariat for International Relations (SRI), to plan, implement and oversee the internationalization process in that institution.
Wassem and Ferreira (2020) point out that the SRI was one of the agents responsible for the elaboration of UFES 'strategic plan with the purpose of improving its post-graduation programs (PPG) seeking the excellence assigned by Capes (Note 6) with its grades 6 and 7, since UFES does not have PPGs graded 6 and 7. With the mission of promoting and managing the internationalization of UFES, SRI is responsible for formulating the institution's internationalization policy and for promoting and expanding its international operations. Some of the criticisms of the authors regarding the documents formulated by SRI regarding internationalization in the HEI is the lack of previous documents to map the stage of the internationalization in that institution and the fact that it is always responding to external demands in a reactive way rather than inducing its internationalization in an active way.
Due to the disruptions promoted by Covid-19, Wassem and Ferreira (2020) suggest that UFES revisit its internationalization plan in order to rethink this process, especially in relation to academic mobility in order to promote a less hierarchical and exclusive process thus reaching more people. In this sense and as previously mentioned, Finardi and Guimarã es (2020) suggest that virtual mobility may be an alternative to expand the possibilities of participation in the internationalization process of the global South since the replacing of academic mobility by virtual mobility represents challenges in terms of linguistic and technological access but also opportunities for more interactions with and in the global South.
According to Guimarães et al. (2020), UFES institutional mission seeks internationalization " [...] aiming at sustainable development at the regional, national and international levels". In practice, a series of studies on the internationalization process at UFES shows a different reality, suggesting, as concluded by the authors, a mismatch between intentions and actions. Finardi et al. (2014) show that one of the actions to improve L2 proficiency at UFES in the form of IsF courses covered less than 3% of its academic population. This gap between principles and reality was also shown in a meta-analysis conducted by Finardi, Guimarã es and Mendes (2019) to analyze the internationalization process and its relation to language policies in that institution concluding that UFES should seek a more active, inclusive and critical approach internationalization.
According to Guimarã es and Finardi (2019), the IsF was responsible for the approval of the UFES institutional language policy (PLI) in 2017, once the IsF call demanded that candidate universities submitted a PLI as part of the proposal. Moreover, the Capes PrInt Call also required details of the institutional plan for languages and for internationalization in such a way that national programs such as the CsF, IsF and the Capes Print end up inducing local/institutional practices of internationalization in such a way that we can conclude that in the case of UFES, its internationalization process is reactive and induced by national programs, which in turn reproduce internationalization models of the global North.
In that sense, it is important to note the alert made by Finardi and Guimarã es (2017)  Amorim (2020) designed and implemented (at UFES) a self-evaluation matrix of assessment for the process of internationalization of higher education whose piloting at UFES corroborates findings of previous studies about the incipient, reactive nature of the internationalization process of that institution.

English in the World
As previously suggested and according to Finardi and Csillagh (2016), it is not possible to analyze the role of additional languages (L2) in the internationalization of HEIs without addressing the role of English in it. However, with regard to the use of English as a medium of instruction -EMI, we observe the use of English in a colonized and colonizing way that may render the uncritical use of this language in the internationalization process, one that does not benefit the global South (Finardi, 2019a).
Several authors question the use of English and EMI in the internationalization process, among which we can mention Taquini, Finardi and Amorim (2107)  In a study conducted in Oman (Al-Bakri, 2013), students prefer to study using English (L2) rather than Arabic (L1), the latter associated with the need to meet local needs while English would be used to meet global needs. These results are similar to those found by  in a study in a Pomeranian community in the state of Espirito Santo in Brazil where high school students said they preferred to study English over Pomeranian (language of inheritance and immigration in the region) because the first met the global needs of the future while Pomeranian was associated with the past and local needs.
The question of which language is used for local and global needs cannot be reduced to an exclusive choice (one instead of the other). Therefore, we reinforce the need to think about an ecology of knowledges (Santos, 2007) and languages with the de-hierarchization of the English language in contexts where the student's culture is in any type of threat due to Anglocentrism. Moreover, we stress the need to adopt multilingual approaches for the preservation of languages, cultures and identities as suggested by Pinheiro and Finardi (2019) in a study on minority and majority languages in Brazil.
In a study of cultural exchanges as educational practices in the middle class, Prado (2004) analyzed representations of parents and students about language teaching in Brazil, showing how it is devalued.
The study also showed that the countries chosen as the destination of Brazilians are mostly from the global North. Moreover, the exchange agencies advertise the acquisition of L2 (usually referring to English only) to attract parents that want a better (professional) future for their children. Prado (2014)  draws on Calvet (1999) to discuss the importance and hierarchy of languages as being more related to ideology and power relations than to science.
In the context of the global North, some European countries such as Finland offer EMI courses (Saarinen, 2012) to make it possible for students whose L1 or L2 are not Finnish, a minority language on the European and world linguistic map. Whereas the Bologna Process encourages Europeans to have some kind of experience abroad and this policy seems attractive, Altbach and Knight (2007) warn us of the risk that higher education in EMI will become a commodity due to its greater prestige, power and income in relation to those who study in their L1. In fact, this was the conclusion of Taquini, Finardi and Amorim (2017) since most HEIs in Turkey that offered courses in EMI were private institutions.

English in Brazil
Jordã o (2019) claims that while English is usually characterized as a single language, when referring to the Brazilian national language Portuguese, we usually differentiate between Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese from Portugal, and so on. This view of English as a single language erases the English spoken by people whose native language is not English, thus reinforcing the the myth of the native speaker (Pennycook, 2007). In relation to this myth and the role of English in Brazil, Finardi (2014) proposes the view of English as an international language owned by Brazilian speakers of English and so as to distance from native versus non-native speaker views of that language.
Finardi and Porcino (2015)  (2020) emphasizes that the role of internationalization should not be to "anglicize" or "Americanize" science, but to involve multilateral cooperation between all parts involved.
Guimarã es and  suggest that interculturality and the use of the intercomprehension approach can be used to minimize the negative effects of internationalization, such as the choice of English as the only one in academia. Regarding the intercomprehension approach, Finardi (2017, p. 222) states that it "aims to develop mutual understanding between different languages when people communicate in their own language" in such a way that the use of this approach can give more voice and autonomy to those involved in the internationalization process, as confirmed by Finardi (2019). authors therefore conclude that those with English proficiency have more opportunities for online education in the form of MOOCs. Finardi (2014) suggests that the offer of English in the private sphere increases the social gap between those who can and those who cannot afford to pay for an English course. Amorim and Finardi (2017) point out that the commodification of English is one of the negative sides of globalization. According to Baumvol and Sarmento (2019), in a globalized and interconnected world, languages are essential not only for academic mobility, but also for internationalization at home / internationalization of the curriculum. Finardi (2017) points out, however, that Brazilian HEIs must strive to be more multilingual (and comprehensive) while offering actions to improve the use of English as a lingua franca.

English at UFES
We agree with Finardi (2017) when suggesting that other languages derived from Latin, such as Spanish, French and Italian could be further explored and offered in Brazil (and at UFES) through the intercomprehension approach due to its proximity to Portuguese. In this way, there would be possibilities for multilingualism within the campus, even though English has a prominent role in internationalization.
Finardi and Santos and Guimarã es (2016) report that UFES follows the national trend where the lack of proficiency in English shows up as a major obstacle to academic mobility. Finardi, Amorim and Kawachi-Furlan (2018) report that the level of English language proficiency at UFES is lower than expected. According to Kawachi-Furlan, Amorim and Finardi (2017), it is necessary to teach English in line with internationalization policies since the initial series of basic education and not only in higher education, as also suggested by Finardi (2017) and Amorim and Finardi (2017).

Method
The main objective of the study was to analyze the role of additional languages (L2) in the internationalization process of UFES. To this end, the offer of EMI courses at UFES reported in the latest edition of the EMI 2018-2019 Guide was contrasted with data from the self-declared L2 proficiency levels reported in the academic curricula of professors linked to post-graduate programs in that institution.
The choice of self-reported proficiency levels was based on the premise that professors in that

Data Triangulation
The 5  We observed that of the 61 courses, 60 offer masters, 10 of which are professional masters, 2 in distance education, 33 offer only masters, 28 offer both masters and doctorates and only 1 offers only doctorates, in this case, the program in Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation, whose presentation on the institutional website claims to be an international doctoral program that offers students a chance for growth in an international career, as in addition to having IES international partners from the USA, United Kingdom, Germany and France, all students have co-orientation of professors from these universities.
Considering the fact that the majority of international students at UFES are native from Latin American and African countries, with Spanish and Portuguese as their first language (L1), the use of the intercomprehension approach, as proposed by , seems to be a relevant possibility, considering the proximity of these two languages: Spanish and Portuguese. Yet, despite the extensive publication on the topic at UFES, this seems to be an under explored possibility at UFES.
The highest language proficiency in English, when comparing the results with other languages that indicated Few or Reasonably proficiency, in particular Spanish, whose only proficiency in Comprehend surpassed the Reasonably and Few skills. This fact reinforces the hegemonic and colonized role of internationalization at UFES (micro level), which follows the parameters at the meso (Brazil) and macro (world) level.
Thus, EMI courses have prominence in the EMI Guide, reflecting a view towards the global academic community (to the detriment of the regional one) and so as attract students from different regions of the  (Crystal, 2012) and the number of non-native speakers has already exceeded the number of native speakers by 3/4 (Finardi, 2014).
Thus, English appears as the main L2 for internationalization despite the possibility of South-South cooperation with the use of other languages to build a ThirdSpace where the Global South has more voice in (Finardi & Guimarã es, 2020;Guimarã es & Finardi, 2021). Also, it is important to bear in mind decolonial warnings such as the one posed by Castro-Gomé z (2017) to question the production of knowledge globally so that it does not perpetuate colonial hierarchical relations.
Mirroring data from the EMI Guide, the results of the present study on UFES suggest that this institution can be seen as a microcosm of a national (and regional, in the case of the global South) reality that seems to understand English as the language of internationalization, which in general is looking in the direction to the global North, imitating hegemonic models, practices and languages dictated from top to the bottom.

Final Remarks
This study aimed to reflect on the role of L2 in general and English in particular in the internationalization process of higher education. With this objective, the study analyzed the role of L2 in a specific context, that is, UFES. More particularly, it examined the diffusion of L2s among PPG professors, activities in L2s offered by PPGs, offers of EMI courses according to a study by the EMI Guide and the prestige of L2s, especially English. The analysis contrasted the use of L2 declared by UFES in the EMI Guide 2018-2019 with the self-declared L2 proficiency in the lattes curricula of postgraduate professors at that institution.
The results of the analysis of the EMI Guide showed that UFES has an internationalization process in an incipient stage despite its efforts to internationalize (Wassen & Ferreira, 2020), with a still low offer of courses in L2 in comparison with other HEI in Brazil. Another result of the study is that, like other HEIs in Brazil, English also has a primacy over other L2 at UFES. The results of the L2 proficiency analysis of the curricula of graduate professors at UFES showed that English is the most proficient language among them, followed by Spanish, thus confirming the global, regional (global South) and local (UFES) hegemony of these two languages, respectively.
Overall, the triangulation of data confirms Jenkins' (2013) suggestion that English is the academic lingua franca and the chosen language for the internationalization of higher education in the analyzed context. When we bring the critical and decolonial theory to discuss these data, we can see that a phenomenon that resembles an academic post-colonization ( higher education with a colonized view that does not consider local specificities and histories. In order to stimulate multilingualism in the context of HEIs we agree with Guimarã es and Finardi (2021) about the need to rethink GCE in terms of a Thirdspace and with Finardi (2019b) who suggests the use of multilingual approaches such as COIL, CLIL and intercomprehension in addition to expanding the range of L2 in this context to promote an ecology of knowledges (Santos, 2007)