Connecting target content with students through translanguaging in a postgraduate EMI pharmacology module

Abstract

ABSTRACT The use of English as medium of instruction (EMI) in non-Anglophone contexts can be seen as part of a process of ‘Englishisation’ which favours a monolingual policy of using only one language in the classroom. However, EMI can be seen as a multilingual phenomenon, where the declared policy of using one language (English) as the medium of instruction may not reflect actual classroom practices in which other languages are used. Such practices can be described as ‘translanguaging’, in which participants engage their full linguistic repertoires in making meaning, and which does not see languages as distinct, compartmentalized entities. In this sense, this study aims to investigate how a lecturer deploys bilingual practices in an EMI postgraduate pharmacology module at a Spanish university for content knowledge building and meaning making purposes. The study uses multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine the multilingual and multimodal resources enacted by the lecturer both at the ‘local’ level of interactional sequences, and at the level of ‘overall’ medium of practice. The findings suggest that translanguaging (not just English or Spanish) was used as a way of connecting target content knowledge with the students by referring to the students’ experience and the shared classroom community.