Exploring English as a ‘glocal language’ in online EMEMUS

COVID-19 led to a transition to ‘remote emergency teaching’ in higher-education contexts across the globe. The impact of this on English-medium education in multilingual university settings (EMEMUS) contexts is yet to be fully understood, but it is clear that it will be long lasting. This article outlines three online pedagogic activities that were adopted in an English-taught course that transitioned from the classroom to online. Based on a conceptualization of English as a ‘glocal language’ and motivated by an orientation towards a ‘pedagogy of care’, the activities were designed to draw on students’ rich linguistic repertoires and support community building. The first activity was a language portrait, the second entailed online and offline exploration of the linguistic landscape of the local contexts, and the third activity was the critical analysis, editing, translation, and/or adaptation of Wikipedia pages. All activities can be adapted for the ELT classroom.