Development of a Teacher Training Course for English Medium Instruction for Higher Education Professors in Brazil

Abstract

While much is known about English medium instruction (EMI) from an institutional policy standpoint—particularly in Europe—much less has been written about EMI pedagogy and teacher training, and still less regarding either phenomenon in the South American context. The chapter reports on the rationale for and the development of an EMI teacher training course specially constructed to fit the needs of Brazilian lecturers. Moreover, two versions of the course were designed and taught, with the feedback for each collected and compared. Results show that the goals for the course were largely met, but the two versions rendered different outcomes. One of the more interesting results involves the reported ability to transfer EMI teaching techniques to one's regular (i.e. L1) classroom instruction – but this result was most only found in one of the versions of the course. The implications of the findings are clear for the local context but are also likely to be of relevance in any global context in which EMI training occurs or will be implemented.