Self-perceived proficiency in English of International Students in Université Catholique de Louvain: Attitudes towards English, problems and strategies.

The central objective of this master’s thesis is to explore the self-perceived proficiency in English of 20 graduate students in Université Catholique de Louvain and their opinions about the varieties of English used in higher education today. In the midst of the development of English as a Lingua Franca, academia tends to resist its adoption by still favoring the Standard use of English in its circles. This model, as the only one authorized as conventional in theory, does not represent the actual practices noted by the students; as they refer to a distance between what is accepted and expected from them in the use of English and the varieties they actually use. This idea is also depicted through the second part of our investigation, regarding the problems the students face in their use of English -in relation to the norm of the standard variety- and the strategies they employ to deal with them. This study aims at investigating the aforementioned topic by using qualitative multimethods, i.e. interviews and student notes, in order to explore the views of the participants in depth.