"Brain Gain stattinstead ofBrain Drain": the role of English in German education

Abstract: Although there is extensive research on Anglicisms in the German language (e.g. Carstensen, 1965; Carstensen, Busse Fink, 1970, 1980, 1995; Görlach, 2002), few studies look beyond lexical borrowing and structural impact to consider other aspects and dimensions of English–German contact in the Federal Republic of Germany. This qualitative study addresses this need in part by examining the role of English in the domain of education. The analysis focuses first on the impact of English in German primary and secondary schooling, where in recent decades English has become the most widely taught foreign language by a considerable margin. The second half of the discussion examines the area of higher education, in which policy efforts on both the European and national level to internationalize the curriculum have led to the introduction of an important new function for English as a medium of instruction (MOI). This development is significant, for it marks government support for the institutionalization of the language within the German context and provides further evidence for the growing bilingualism in the country, with English increasingly functioning as an L2 (Hilgendorf, 2001).