English medium higher education in China: challenges and ELT support

Abstract

This mixed-methods study explores the language-related difficulties and ELT support offered in English-medium programmes at eight universities in China. Data included a student questionnaire (n = 394) measuring the difficulties of 45 academic tasks, organized around the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Results revealed students faced the largest difficulties with productive skills, especially writing. To explore structural language support for overcoming such challenges, fieldwork interviews with twenty-six senior faculty at eight universities in four cities in China were conducted. These revealed three main types of institutional support: concurrent language support from English language teachers offered alongside English medium programmes; preparatory programmes taken before students enrolled in English medium courses, which were prevalent in language-specialist universities; and self-access learning and writing centres, which were found at two transnational universities. When structural support was lacking, content teachers reported making grassroots efforts to help students understand content via use of the students’ multilingual repertoires in explanations, interactions, and materials.

Implementing EMI in Chinese music classes: Students’ perceived benefits and challenges

“…As noted by Nguyen et al (2017) , implementing EMI in educational environments may entail some important challenges and opportunities for both teachers and students, which need to be discovered. In this respect, several researchers have explored the problems and benefits of implementing EMI in different academic contexts, notably higher education contexts (e.g., Goodman, 2014 ; Hu, 2019 ; Phuong and Nguyen, 2019 ; Yang et al, 2019 ; Aizawa and McKinley, 2020 ; Drljaca and Vodopija-Krstanovic, 2020 ; Pun and Thomas, 2020 ; Toh, 2020 ; Derakhshan et al, 2021 ; Kamaşak et al, 2021 ; Pun and Jin, 2021 ; Soruç et al, 2021 ; Ter-Vardanyan, 2021 ; Zare and Derakhshan, 2021 ; Jones et al, 2022 ; Zhou et al, 2022 , among others). As to the challenges of EMI classes, Yang et al (2019) , for instance, examined the challenges of implementing EMI in medical courses in China.…”

“…Given that understanding the challenges and opportunities of EMI courses improves their quality ( Walkinshaw et al, 2017 ; Wei et al, 2017 ), many academics and researchers worldwide have investigated the advantages and disadvantages of implementing EMI in higher educational contexts (e.g., Bradford, 2016 ; Martínez, 2016 ; Cankaya, 2017 ; Kim, 2017 ; Kim et al, 2018 ; Phuong and Nguyen, 2019 ; Aizawa and McKinley, 2020 ; Toh, 2020 ; Diezmas and Barrera, 2021 ; Kamaşak et al, 2021 ; Soruç et al, 2021 ; Ter-Vardanyan, 2021 ; Wang and Derakhshan, 2023 , to cite a few). Moreover, some scholars have particularly scrutinized the advantages and disadvantages of implementing EMI in Chinese academic settings (e.g., Yang et al, 2019 ; Pun and Thomas, 2020 ; Pun and Jin, 2021 ; Zhou et al, 2022 , among others). However, to the best of the scholars’ knowledge, no empirical study has been undertaken to identify the opportunities and challenges of executing EMI in Chinese art and music classes.…”

“…English proficiency (Yang, 2017;Hu and Wu, 2020). However, the implementation of EMI in these institutes may provide students with some precious opportunities as well (Zhao and Dixon, 2017;Curle and Derakhshan, 2021). Among them, one can refer to increased English proficiency and enhanced learning motivation as the most prominent advantages of EMI classrooms (Lei and Hu, 2014;Rose et al, 2020).…”

Lost in the EMI Trend: Language-Related Issues Emerging From EMI Practice

“…To make full use of linguistic and cultural diversity, alternative multilingual models of EMI have been proposed in which English functions in tandem with other languages instead of replacing them (Barnard & McLellan, 2014). Zhou et al (2022) claimed that when multilingual students have not yet acquired complex disciplinary discourses, they should be allowed to deploy their full linguistic repertoire, which includes their L1. More importantly, including L1 is less about language creativity, but more about systematically leveraging L1 to help students comprehend disciplinary complexity.…”

Student support and teacher education in English for Academic Purposes and English Medium Instruction: Two sides of the same coin?

“…Students felt that, in addition to the EAP courses, their content lecturers should help them with language-related problems. Zhou et al (2022) surveyed students and staff in eight Chinese universities and found that concurrent language courses, run by an independent language centre, was the prevalent offer, followed by self-access study and preparatory language courses. However, the researchers did find 'grassroots efforts of language scaffolding initiated by content teachers' (p. 8).…”