English Language Proficiency for All University Graduates Stipulated by Law: A Realistic or Idealistic Goal? An Appraisal of a Tertiary ELT Policy from Montenegro

Abstract

The global emergence of English as the language of science and university instruction, along with the increasing academic mobility, has attached ever more importance to the tertiary-level students’ proficiency in this language across the world. Subsequently, governments are legislating ELT policies with growing attention, including those intended for the university level. As part of its internationalisation and Euro-integration efforts, Montenegro has passed a number of policy documents instituting the upper-advanced knowledge of English for all its university graduates as one of its strategic goals. Additionally, as of 2014, all its universities were legally required to “provide conditions,” within the curricula, for their students to acquire this level of mastery in English (Higher Education Act, Art. 80). In this chapter, we present how this, somewhat radical, policy was received among the academia, English teachers and students using surveys conducted among these stakeholders. Moreover, we deal with an array of problems which have arisen in the implementation of the said law, including the substantial and hasty changes made to the curricula to accommodate a considerable increase in the number of English lessons, limited prior English proficiency of most students and resistance to the changes among the academia, who saw the English courses as invading their curricula, and the English teachers, who were pressured into achieving perhaps unattainable results. Although the evidence comes from one country, its results and implications may be of interest to professionals in other countries, given that the ELT policy in question is rather untypical and ambitious.