In the current landscape of higher education in the UK, international students play a key role. It is an environment in which they not only cross borders physically but also transition through various identities as they develop their professional and linguistic confidence and skills to fully access and contribute to their programme of study and beyond. The aim of this paper is to outline the results of an empirical investigation into Chinese students’ perceptions of their study experiences in the context of student mobility and English-medium instruction in higher education. It reports on a study of two groups of Chinese students – one group studying in an English-speaking environment, the other in their home country where instruction is delivered through the medium of English. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted at each site which focused on the transition of “crossing borders” for educational purposes. The data was analysed using thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2016). The main finding was that both groups experienced remarkably similar learning issues, despite being located in very different learning environments and crossing different types of borders.

This paper is an activity report that draws on the experience of embedding sustainability into the mainstream curriculum in the Language Centre, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds, UK. It describes and reflects on programmes that delivered the concept of sustainability and how learners developed their academic and sustainability literacies. The programmes in question are Language for Engineering and Language in Context Sustainability module. These programmes are developed and delivered in the context of English for Academic Purposes to pre-sessional postgraduate and undergraduate international students. The former programme prepares students for their postgraduate studies in the receiving schools, such as Engineering, Computer Science and Transport. The latter is an elective programme for a cross-discipline student cohort primarily to develop language specific to the concept of sustainability. Both programmes focus on expanding subject specific lexis and developing criticality skills. Positive student engagement and response – student feedback – is an effective indicator that there is a demand for programmes in the mainstream curriculum that promote sustainability literacies. It is time for sustainability to move from the margins and occupy its place at the forefront in language learning.