English Medium Instruction Teacher Research Articles

English for specific purposes in surging English-medium instruction contexts

Abstract English-medium instruction (EMI) research increasingly reports on students’ language-related challenges and a lack of academic and language support classes, collaboration between content and language teachers and overall teacher training. Our study explores EMI in Japan and China, two contexts where EMI has been referred to as emerging but is now “surging.” In these contexts, EMI is closely linked to English language proficiency goals, yet research on supporting students remains scarce. Data were collected via interviews and focus groups with students, English teachers and content teachers, who provided insights into approaches to EMI policy implementation, stakeholders’ attitudes, and the need for English for specific purposes (ESP) and English for specific academic purposes (ESAP). The results provide much needed insights for evidence-informed EMI policy implementation, curriculum development and teacher training. The study also provides insights into institutional infrastructure conducive to EMI policy, with findings revealing ESP needs of EMI students and the training needs of teaching staff. The study presented in this paper furthers the work that has been conducted in Anglophone settings on the complexity of ELT practitioner roles. The results also provide directions for future research.

EMI teachers’ emotion labour: capturing classroom, institutional and sociocultural ecologies

ABSTRACT Although English medium instruction (EMI) has received exponential growth of attention in recent years, the scope of research on EMI teachers is still limited, and even much less on their emotions. Drawing on an ecological perspective as the theoretical framework, we explored Iranian EMI teachers’ emotion labour across the classroom, institutional and sociocultural ecologies. Data were collected from narrative frames and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis revealed three themes in relation to Iranian EMI teachers’ emotion labour: (1) classroom ecology: student expectations as impeding effective content enactment, (2) institutional ecology: workload as a hurdle for investment in personal growth and (3) sociocultural ecology: low international collaborations complicating knowledge dissemination. The study shows that beyond their personal proclivities, Iranian EMI teachers face socio-educational challenges that not only complicate their pedagogical effectiveness, but also stop them from imagining the identity of global citizens within the community of EMI practitioners. We also provide implications for EMI teacher educators to draw on the study findings to run teacher education courses that tap EMI teachers’ emotions.

Bridging Content and Language in English-medium Engineering Programs

English-medium Instruction (EMI) is increasingly being implemented in diverse educational settings where English is not the primary language. However, a persistent challenge of EMI implementation lies in the scarcity of high-quality EMI teaching materials that effectively enhance both content knowledge and language acquisition. This study aimed to investigate how language is integrated with content in EMI lessons and to assess their efficacy. The study involved three Civil Engineering teachers, three language teachers, and 102 students. Data collection instruments comprised journals kept by content and language teachers during the EMI materials development process, pre-tests and post-tests, satisfaction surveys, and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-tests, while content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data. Results revealed that students expressed high satisfaction with the materials, noting increased participation in EMI classes, enhanced content comprehension, and heightened awareness of language use in lessons. Nonetheless, the design process of EMI materials is intricate, non-linear, time-consuming, and demanding of pedagogical expertise. While collaborative efforts between content and language teachers have appeared promising in theory, practical implementation in real contexts has proven to be challenging. It is recommended that the EMI materials developers possess pedagogical knowledge on content and language teaching, recognize the iterative and complex nature of the material design process, and the need for ongoing communication with the respective to enhance the success of the collaboration.

Examining Chinese teachers’ emotional vulnerability of teaching international students in an English medium instruction programme

Despite the fact that a growing number of studies have begun to focus on stakeholders' emotions in English medium instruction (EMI) settings, little is known, particularly about teachers' emotional vulnerability in EMI teaching. Situating teachers' emotional vulnerability as a sociocultural and ideological construct, this study seeks to investigate Chinese EMI teachers' emotional vulnerability of teaching international students in Southwest China. Based on a larger critical sociolinguistic ethnography, the findings reveal a slew of social, ideological, institutional, and personal factors that mediate Chinese EMI teachers' emotional vulnerability, indicating that their emotional vulnerability is largely influenced by the discourses of neoliberalism and performativity, which are dominated by the ideology of English hegemony, top-down evaluation mechanisms, and power relations. Simultaneously, Chinese EMI teachers' emotional vulnerability also can be transformed into agencies for possible alternatives. The paper concludes with some practical implications for mitigating the negative effects of emotional vulnerability on EMI teachers. The article contributes to raise a greater recognition of teachers' emotional vulnerability in EMI higher education contexts by sparking a critical discussion about how to promote the awareness of stakeholders’ emotional vulnerability and well being in policy making and curriculum design.

Shaping ideologies at the micro level: Stylization in EMI

Purpose: Research on bi/multilingual oral interactions in English-medium instruction (EMI) is often concerned with how languages the teacher and/or students speak can be used for pedagogical scaffolding processes. In contrast, this paper aims to investigate how stylization of languages, including those that teacher and students only speak minimally, can likewise be harnessed for important pedagogical and interpersonal purposes. Methodology: I conduct an interactional sociolinguistic analysis of transcripts from an EMI teaching simulation in a Master’s in Education course at a university in Hong Kong. Data and analysis: As a cross-border teacher from Cantonese-speaking Guangdong and a local teacher of Indian heritage engaged in these language stylization processes, they show that teachers can effectively use bi/multilingual stylization in EMI with attention to student uptake and response. Findings/Conclusions: While pedagogical scaffolding is important in EMI, these processes can put more and less societally dominant languages in a diglossic, unequal relationship. In contrast, stylization can reconfigure classroom language norms and hierarchies, attach positive meanings to unratified codes, and allow teachers to share linguistic authority with students. Originality: Little research to date has studied stylization as a pedagogical resource in EMI, focusing instead on the use of languages teachers/students already know for scaffolding. Significance/Implications: Teacher professional development should address the topic of how to use language stylization in EMI, especially since these interactional strategies do not require teachers to dramatically reconfigure curriculum or instruction, yet have pedagogical and interpersonal benefits. Limitations: Future research should aim to study stylization in EMI in an authentic classroom setting.

Navigating EMI learning through note-taking in higher education

ABSTRACT Note-taking, as a valuable learning strategy, can enhance students’ comprehension and application of knowledge while contributing to their cognitive processing and development. This qualitative case study explores the forms and functions of note-taking as well as its influencing factors in English-medium-instruction (EMI) learning environments in China. The findings from the perspectives and experiences of two university students demonstrate that they deliberately and strategically utilised various resources (e.g. symbols and diagrams) and strategies (e.g. codeswitching and using cognitive reminders) in their note-taking. These practices encompassed cognitive, motivational, and affective aspects in accordance with either product or process orientation. The study sheds light on the potential of note-taking as a mediating means for students to navigate the intricacies of EMI, thus offering practical implications for effective EMI teaching in higher education.

A structural model of job satisfaction among EMI teachers: the role of self-efficacy, burnout, and classroom language proficiency

ABSTRACT As English gains prominence globally, the rise of English-medium instruction (EMI) education is particularly notable in Asian regions, especially mainland China. While policy decisions drive the adoption of EMI, its practical effectiveness hinges on various on-the-ground factors, with teacher satisfaction being of utmost importance. A teacher’s level of satisfaction can profoundly impact instructional quality, thereby affecting the successful implementation and reception of EMI in classrooms. Recognising this crucial link, this study investigates the job satisfaction of Chinese EMI teachers, focusing on its interplay with self-efficacy, burnout, and self-perceived classroom language proficiency. The latter, often overlooked, is essential as it has a direct impact on teachers’ ability to deliver content effectively and confidently, which in turn influences their job satisfaction. Drawing from 107 EMI teachers from multiple universities in mainland China, a conceptual model, detailing the dynamics of job satisfaction, was formulated and tested using a Structural Equation Modelling approach. The findings reveal a positive correlation between self-efficacy and job satisfaction, and a negative correlation with burnout. Intriguingly, classroom language proficiency shows a partial correlation with job satisfaction, significantly mediating the relationship between self-efficacy and job satisfaction but not between burnout and job satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The professionalization of English medium instruction lecturer: content and certification

As there is no unified standard for EMI teacher professional certification, this paper surveys the professional competence requirements and professional certification of English medium instruction (EMI) lecturers worldwide in order to inform decisions by researchers and administrators tasked with the design and delivery of the certification activity. The study uses a semi-systematic review method to tease 46 articles which include information about EMI lecturer ability, professional development, and certification. The paper analyzed the content of them about competence components and delivery methods. The analysis reveals five main dimensions: language competence, communicate competence, pedagogical competence, multicultural competence and EMI awareness. The certification in current can be divided into two categories depending on whether they include a training program. Certification that consists only of tests usually focuses more on the teacher’s English proficiency in teaching. Another certification usually has the essential English requirement for the participants and pays more attention to the pedagogical methodology. The paper concludes with recommendations for the development of the EMI lecturer competence framework and certification program.

EMI, EAP, and pedagogy: An autoethnographic account of a case study at a university in Japan

ABSTRACT Kanazawa University, a national university in Japan, offers an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program to its first-year students as a required subject of general education. It is an English-medium instruction (EMI) program with an English-only policy. In this article, I utilize autoethnography as a method to examine this EMI EAP program based on my experiences as a teacher while contextualizing my personal accounts in the extant studies of EAP, EMI, and English language teaching. The article reveals that West-centric coloniality and the native-speakerist myth are operating behind the program as the guiding language ideologies in ways to curtail non-native English-speaking teachers’ and students’ multilingual capacity. The article ends by suggesting potential changes the program may be able to incorporate to decolonize its current problematic pedagogical practices and to transform the program into a space where equitable linguistic sensibility is pursued and nurtured.

Towards an understanding of EMI teacher expertise in higher education: An intrinsic case study

As a growing phenomenon in higher education, English medium instruction (EMI) places high demands on content area teachers regarding linguistic proficiency, content knowledge, and pedagogical strategies. To improve EMI practice and facilitate EMI teachers' continuing development, a focus on teacher expertise thus becomes imperative. Focusing on an intrinsic case, this study investigates the attributes of an EMI teacher's expertise and its influencing factors in the field of law at a Chinese university. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts, the study reveals three critical dimensions of the teacher's expertise: 1) maximizing the power of language, 2) facilitating disciplinary socialization, and 3) empathizing with students in the EMI learning process. Meanwhile, the three attributes functioned in a continuous, reflective, and collaborative manner entangling with the teacher's continuous learning, agentive reflection, and social interactions within the disciplinary community. The paper concludes with practical suggestions in relation to both EMI teaching and teacher development.

Emotions as entanglements: unpacking teachers’ emotion management and policy negotiation in English-medium instruction programmes

ABSTRACT There is a dearth of knowledge on the emotional challenges content-area teachers in English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes face, and how they manage their emotions in their efforts to negotiate a top-down language policy. This paper examines the entangled emotional experiences of EMI content-area teachers in Nepal’s school education. In contrast to a psychological approach to teachers’ emotions, this article draws on sociocultural and ideological perspectives on emotions to unpack a connection between emotions, institutional language policies, language ideologies, identity, and teacher agency. The analysis of EMI teachers’ emotional dynamics essentially identifies their emotions as ‘entanglements’, reflecting the interconnectedness of emotions with other variables such as language ideology, identity, and agency in content-and-language-integrated education. The findings of this study showed that teachers’ limited English proficiency led to negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, fear, frustration, and shame), stimulating them to use English-Nepali bilingualism as a creative strategy to manage their emotional challenges and also to exercise their agency in response to their students’ needs. However, their translanguaging strategy – which otherwise might have included the students’ home language, Bhojpuri – was restricted by hegemonic language ideologies. The findings show that multilingual teachers typically do not experience emotions in a vacuum but in response to other social phenomena. The paper supports the argument that teacher emotion management is not an apolitical process but is rather ideologically and discursively constructed and situated.

Teacher professional identities and their impacts on translanguaging pedagogies in a STEM EMI classroom context in China: a nexus analysis

While translanguaging has gained increasing recognition as a multiliteracy pedagogy in English-medium instruction (EMI) education, research exploring its implementation in STEM classroom contexts remains limited. Furthermore, the interplay of EMI teachers’ professional identities and their instructional strategies has received little attention. This qualitative study explores how STEM academics in an EMI programme in China implemented translanguaging pedagogy, developed their professional identities, and examined the impact of identity on their classroom instructional language use. Drawing upon nexus analysis, the study maps the intersecting discourses influencing two EMI lecturers’ divergent language ideologies and translanguaging strategies. The findings highlight the role of teacher identity and agency in navigating institutional and classroom discourses, facilitating planned and effective translanguaging pedagogy. The study reveals identity struggles within the examined institution, where academic staff faced a challenge in balancing their roles as effective EMI teachers and successful researchers due to a discourse of research meritocracy and were constrained in exploring translanguaging pedagogy due to a discourse of internationalism. These challenges undermined their motivation to invest in teaching identity and pedagogical skills. This study underscores the need for a balanced view of research and teaching, more robust teacher evaluation systems, and institutional support to foster effective translanguaging pedagogy in EMI by incorporating teacher identity construction into EMI teacher preparedness.

Shaping student responses into academic expressions: analysing an English medium instruction history classroom from a translanguaging perspective

ABSTRACT Prior research on classroom interaction has investigated how the teacher’s feedback turn following students’ responses can be used to transform students’ turns into academic expressions during whole class discussions. Nevertheless, more empirical studies are needed to explore how teachers’ translanguaging practices can play a role in shaping students’ contributions into pedagogical opportunities for introducing academic terminologies in English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classrooms. Adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, this study explores how an EMI history teacher deploys available linguistic and multimodal resources to connect students’ responses with academic concepts and terminologies. The study draws its data from a larger linguistic ethnographic project that took place in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. The classroom interaction data is examined using Multimodal Conversation Analysis, and this analysis is further triangulated with video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This paper argues that the EMI teacher’s translanguaging practices facilitate the process of transforming student contributions into academic terminology and concepts. The process of deploying translanguaging for transforming student contributions highlights translanguaging as an important component of the teacher’s classroom interactional competence for constructing new configurations of language practices and achieving specific pedagogical purposes.

Emerging From Content and Language Integrated Learning and English-Medium Instruction, is CLIL-ised EMI the Next Trend of Education?

Objectives: The text aims to present a comparison of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and English-Medium Instruction (EMI), followed by a discussion of CLIL-ised EMI, a new educational phenomenon, regarding its feasibility in content-based bilingual programmes. Method: The ideas presented in this paper are principally drawn from previous research and literature about CLIL and EMI, as well as from my personal experience with content-based bilingual education programmes. Results: Although CLIL and EMI differ in nature, CLIL-ised EMI supplements traditional EMI, which has a single objective of content learning, with special attention to students’ needs, particularly their linguistic needs. It may pose challenges to teachers, especially in relation to their language-teaching activities. Conclusions: CLIL-ised EMI shows considerable feasibility in bilingual education and can overcome the linguistic challenges faced by students in content-based programmes. Implication for Practice: CLIL-ised EMI teachers are advised to be attentive to students’ linguistic demands and engage in professional collaboration with language specialists to design and provide well-planned language learning activities. Standardisation and quality control of bilingual programmes are also necessary at an institutional level.

Pedagogy in Teaching through English Medium Instruction—Academics’ Cases in a Chinese University

As a result of two decades of development, the trajectory of English medium instruction (EMI) research has moved from the identification of problems towards a focus on pedagogy. In response to studies in the literature claiming that the dominant approach in EMI pedagogy is the direct transmission of knowledge, and calls for research investigating classroom discourse in EMI teaching, this study explores the pedagogical features enacted by bilingual EMI academics in a Chinese university’s EMI program. The participants were four academics who were teaching a subject in parallel across both EMI and CMI student cohorts. The research employs Paulo Freire’s framework of dialogic teaching as the theoretical lens and focused on investigating moments in which the EMI lecturers ‘dialogued’, engaged, and/or interacted with students in their EMI classes. This research found that, in spite of their varied disciplines, the lecturers mostly implemented expository teaching in their EMI and CMI classes in general. The efforts of individual academics in relation to intellectual equality, the wellbeing of students, and the encouragement of critical thinking through dialogue and interaction were identified. However, due to the academics positioning themselves as experts in subject knowledge, the tendency in their teaching was characterized as monologic rather than dialogic. This research contests a major theme in the literature, which is that the academics’ English (EMI teaching), in reference to their first language (L1), is not the major contributor to their pedagogical approach.

Content teachers’ and lecturers’ corrective feedback in EMI classes in high school and university settings

To date, very limited research interest has been given to the strategies English-medium instruction (EMI) teachers or lecturers deploy to provide corrective feedback (CF) on the language use to their students during class interaction. In other words, when EMI teachers incidentally focus on students’ problematic language use, how do they correct it – providing explicit correction or using recast or elicitation? This article reports on a study that examined CF types EMI teachers and lecturers used during classroom discourse, drawing on data collected from classroom observations and recordings of six different EMI classes in high school and university settings in Korea. The frequency and types of CF used in reactive language-related episodes (LREs) were identified in the EMI classes and compared between the two settings and across disciplines (social science, mathematics, and computer science). Findings showed that all the EMI teachers and lecturers offered CF to their students but with different frequency; the schoolteachers offered CF more frequently than the university lecturers. Also, the schoolteachers used more various types of CF than the lecturers. In both settings, CF occurred most frequently in mathematics compared to the other two disciplines. This article ends with suggestions for ways the findings of this study can be used to raise EMI teachers’ awareness of various options for providing CF on students’ linguistic errors during their incidental teaching practices.

English medium instruction (EMI) in Moroccan secondary schools: Science teachers’ perception

The present study explored a small-scale English medium instruction (EMI) initiative in Moroccan secondary schools, which is part of a top-down multilingual policy based on teaching science subjects through foreign languages, namely French, English, and Spanish. 18 secondary EMI teachers of math, physics and life and earth sciences were interviewed in order to understand the new policy. Following grounded theory (GT) methodology, the findings show positive attitudes towards the implementation of EMI in Moroccan education, but the teachers seemed unsatisfied with the way it has been implemented. They thought science teachers were not prepared for such a new tendency. The study also revealed that teachers’ low English proficiency was considered the major challenge to the successful implementation of EMI in Moroccan secondary schools and the essential reason behind using the first language in the EMI classroom. To prepare future generations for extending EMI in the Moroccan education, the teachers called for a switch to English as the first foreign language, instead of French, in all levels of schooling, and suggested gradual introduction of EMI in primary and middle schools. The study ends with some implications for overcoming the challenges of the new policy.

“Part of me is teaching English”: probing the language-related teaching practices of an English-medium instruction (EMI) teacher

Abstract English-medium Instruction (EMI), that is, the use of the English language to teach academic subjects apart from English, is a growing phenomenon around the world. In view of the facilitative role of language in content learning, scholars have stressed the need to incorporate a language focus into EMI classrooms. One practical question that arises from this discussion is “How?” This study, through a telling case, intends to reveal the classroom practices of an EMI teacher who explicitly addresses different language issues during her content teaching in a psychology course in a Macau university. Drawing on multiple sources of data including field observations and interviews, the authors unearth three forms of the teacher’s language-related teaching practices – (1) teaching language for content comprehension, (2) teaching language for classroom engagement, and (3) teaching language through feedback. Specific teaching techniques are further identified and discussed in relation to various personal and contextual factors surrounding the EMI classroom. Practical insights are offered to individual EMI teachers in embracing a language focus to facilitate content learning in EMI programs across geographical contexts.

EMI teachers’ agency in the context of international education in China: language choice, identity construction, and cultural negotiation

ABSTRACT English medium instruction (EMI) has now become a ubiquitous education phenomenon due to the driving force of globalization and the prospective socioeconomic benefits associated with English proficiency. Although expanding rapidly in higher education, EMI in secondary education is a much less researched area. Specifically, EMI teachers’ agency in the implementation of EMI has remained relatively less known. This study, informed by an extended framework on teacher agency, seeks to investigate how such agency has been manifested while the EMI teachers address various tensions and contradictions in the course of implementing EMI. Drawing on qualitative interviews and classroom observations in an international high school in Shenzhen, China, it reveals that the participants have exhibited moderately high levels of agency by constructing themselves as translanguagers who orchestrate different languages and meaning-making resources, jugglers of the roles of content teachers and L2 teachers, as well as duty-bond multicultural educators who negotiate the international curriculum to accommodate local educational and cultural mandates. The study calls for reconceptualizing EMI as a translanguaging space for the teachers to act as culturally responsive agents qua multilingual educators featuring multiple identities.

From monologue to dialogue

Interaction undoubtedly is key to learning in higher education. It is particularly relevant in an English medium instruction (EMI) setting when students use a foreign language for learning as it provides important opportunities for the negotiation of meaning. In this article, we present and critically discuss EMI teacher training interventions in Switzerland designed to encourage dialogic interaction in the EMI classroom. EMI teacher training interventions, in the case of this study, rely on the EMI teaching competence reference framework outlined in Studer (2018). Through observations, (self-)assessments and surveys, teachers are assessed against four levels of attention to language in their classes, ranging from a focus on mutual comprehension to dialogue and the formal integration of language into the content of their classes. The paper shows that many EMI teachers tend to be more concerned with basic language and monologic competence, while sidelining dialogic competence. The paper will also show that the mental switch required to move the focus from ‘stage performance’ and self-awareness to authentic dialogue represents a significant challenge for our training programmes.