Project summary
FoE: digital EMI project
Why English as a medium of instruction?
The nature of EMI in higher education
English as a medium of instruction - otherwise known as EMI - is "an educational system where content is taught through English in contexts where English is not used as the primary, first or official language" (Rose & McKinley, 2018, p. 114). It is the teaching design that, whilst students are being taught content for a particular subject, they are developing their English language skills.
Why are universities using EMI?
The choice of incorporating EMI varies according to context (i.e., population, country, university); however, Macaro et al. (2018, p. 37) notes, there are two primary reasons why higher education institutions use EMI:
A need to internationalise universities.
The need to attract foreign students because of cuts in HE investments.
English is used to appeal to a global audience and attract international students who can speak/develop their use of the lingua franca, and resultantly, this internationalises universities and increases their profit.
The importance of research development in EMI
More research into digital EMI is crucial because the threshold for English proficiency changes between institutions. Sahan et al. (2021), in a report for the British Council (attached here), reported that the English language requirements (i.e., linguistic proficiency and competence) for EMI classes varies between stakeholders i.e., teachers/ students, institutions, and countries.
Additionally, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have pushed many institutions to use move their face-to-face classes online. With the affordances of online classes, like easy accessibility and feasibility, digital delivery of classes is likely to increase in the future. Therefore, the FoE project fundamentally aims to understand the nature of EMI in digital classrooms, and the requirements, scaffolding and support needed for stakeholders in HE institutions (HEI).
What does the FoE digital EMI project aim to find out?
1. The nature of EMI communication in higher education digitally-mediated classes.
2. The nature of EMI support available and the amount needed for students and teachers.
3. The gender considerations that should be made in relation to the findings of EMI communication (RQ1) and support needs (RQ2).
4. The implications of a move of EMI provision to digital for a range of HEI stakeholders (students with low English proficiency, low levels of digital literacy, and of different genders).
5. What empirically-driven test specifications and tasks look like for assessing the English proficiency of students and teachers in digital EMI contexts.
Benefits of the research
The research will make a valuable contribution to the current and future understanding of digital EMI in HE contexts. It will also provide practical materials to support and guide HE stakeholders (inc. teachers and students).
Valuable resources generated from the project:
Teacher symposiums in Japan, Malaysia and the UK.
Online faculty development workshops to deliver training on digital EMI contexts.
Information booklets for prospective students on how to effectively navigate HE digital EMI classes.
Open-access corpus of digitally-mediated EMI spoken communication for other and future research.