Project summary

FoE: digital EMI project

Project’s brief

This project investigated the emerging construct of online academic communication in English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms, gathering perspectives from a range of higher education (HE) stakeholders in Malaysia and Japan by (a) examining the nature of spoken communication in online EMI classes, (b) identifying the English language support needed for students and teachers, and (c) exploring the implications of the shift to digital for various HE stakeholders, both currently and in the future.

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 "the teaching of academic content through English in settings where other languages have traditionally been used as mediums of instruction with an intention, stated or unstated, of developing learners’ skills for using English for specific academic purposes” (McKinley, 2024, p. 1). 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.
Open-access corpus of digitally-mediated EMI spoken communication for other and future research.

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