The Significance of EMI for the Learning of EIL in Higher Education: Four Cases from Japan

Abstract

This chapter discusses how EMI (English-Medium Instruction) in higher education may help students to learn skills in EIL (English as an International Language), or global Englishes beyond the Anglophone frame of reference, by examining four actual university classes in Japan as a case study from East Asia. When EMI is now in vogue at many Japanese universities driven by the urge for globalization, it is clear that the “English” needed for those EMI courses is EIL, which may be also redefined as ELF (English as a Lingua Franca), rather than conventional Anglo-American English confined within native speaker norms. Drawing on action research, observations, questionnaires, and interviews for the four EMI classes, the present chapter argues that EMI in higher education can be significant for the concurrent learning of content and EIL (which the author terms CELFIL: Content and English as a Lingua Franca Integrated Learning), though in different ways depending on varied factors in each EMI course. While classes with a diversity of international and local students provide an optimal environment where interactive skills in EIL may be acquired in authentic situations, even those consisting only of domestic students can be useful for the learning of EIL if the instructors’ English serves as models of EIL.