Assessing English‐Medium Instruction Lecturer Language Proficiency Across Disciplines

Abstract

The rapid increase of English‐medium instruction (EMI) programs across Europe has raised concerns regarding the oral competencies of nonnative English speaking lecturers and the implications for the quality of teaching. Consequently, lecturers’ English proficiency is under scrutiny and universities are implementing internal assessment procedures. Given the complexity of the local teaching and learning contexts in which these assessments are administered and used, answering the questions about whether and how to address the interface between language, disciplinary content, and pedagogy in the assessment procedure has been a struggle. This study is based on an oral English certification test for university EMI lecturers. Holistic scores and formative feedback reports (N = 400) from six raters, and interviews with lecturers (N = 10) were used to analyze questions related to (1) rater bias, (2) references to pedagogy, (3) reported lexical content, and (4) EMI lecturers’ perceptions about their disciplinary knowledge and vocabulary use. Rating data were examined using multifacet Rasch measurement (MFRM), while formative feedback reports and interview data were analyzed in NVivo10. MFRM results suggested no significant bias, or interaction, between raters and departments. In the written formative feedback, raters referred to linguistic aspects of pedagogy (e.g., “utilization of stress and intonation to convey pragmatic meaning”) rather than to lecturers’ classroom behavior. As for vocabulary references, results suggest that the identified problems align with general rather than domain‐specific vocabulary. Interview findings suggest that, despite awareness of their lack of nuanced vocabulary, lecturers’ content knowledge and teaching experience facilitate their language performance.

The Impact of Online Technologies and English Medium Instruction on University Lectures in International Learning Contexts: A Systematic Review

“…Klaassen's (2001) findings suggested that student-centred lecturing in EMI was a much more influential factor in successful learning results than the lecturer's language competence. In contrast, Dimova and Kling's (2018) recent study, based on an oral English certification test for university EMI lecturers, was not conclusive regarding whether a good pedagogy compensates for the lack of language skills. However, lecturers participating in Ball and Lindsay's (2013) research on language demands in EMI stated that their main concerns were related to pronunciation; however, interestingly, instructors also stated that in order to be an effective practitioner in EMI programmes, what really matters is methodological awareness.…”

“…On this point, collaboration between content and ESP lecturers has been claimed by scholars to successfully develop EMI programmes (Lasagabaster, 2018), addressing the language needs of both students and lecturers. However, Dimova and Kling's (2018) findings, also based on perceptions, suggested that instructors' problems lie in the general vocabulary needed to explain new and/or complex disciplinary content rather than in the domain-specific vocabulary associated with different varieties of ESP. As these authors stated, these findings "challenge the traditional assumptions that EMI lecturer language support must be grounded in ESP" (Dimova & Kling, 2018: 634).…”

Establishing Teacher-Student Rapport in an English-Medium Instruction Class

“…Though EMI is growing in Latin America, the only Latin American study found at the time of this writing is from Colombia (Corrales, Paba-Rey, & Escamilla-Santiago, 2016). Both Dearden's (2014) (Airey, 2015;Ball & Lindsay, 2013), the effects of EMI on academic performance (Airey, 2011;Dafouz & Camacho-Miñano, 2016), proficiency by disciplinary area (Dimova & Kling 2018), the use of L1 (Ibrahim, 2001;Macaro, 2019;Pun & Macaro, 2019), motivation (Doiz & Lasagabaster, 2018), compensatory strategies (Kling, 2016), required competencies of instructors (Macaro, Akincioglu, & Han, 2019) and of learners (Sancho-Guinda & Thompson, Aizawa, Curle, & Rose, 2019), and instructor identity (Dafouz, 2018;Kling, 2015), among others.…”

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) challenges in Turkey: Voices of high school students

“…Conversely, learners with a low level of English proficiency will experience difficulties. The language proficiency of lecturers was studied in the study of Dimova and Kling (2018) despite awareness of their lack of nuanced vocabulary, lecturers' content knowledge and teaching experience facilitate their language performance. Soruc and Griffiths (2017) researched EMI tertiary setting at a Turkish university and found out that students have difficulties related to speaking and listening, teacher and class, and how they deal with these issues were explained in their study.…”