English Medium Instruction Innovation in Higher Education: Evidence from Asian Contexts

English language assessment in Bangladesh today: principles, practices, and problems

“…Another serious problem is that the students will exclusively attempt to score high in the test ignoring the fundamental goal of the curriculum, i.e., acquiring communicative competence in the target language. And, to do so, the learners in Bangladesh get motivated to rote learning and memorization (Rahman et al, 2018a;Rahman, Singh, & Karim, 2018b;Rahman, Singh, & Pandian, 2018c) which eventually results in the surface learning by the students (Hamid et al, 2009). This attitude of the students to earn good grades at any cost drives them toward alternative avenues, such as getting involved in private tuition for an intensive focus on test preparation, acquiring guidebooks which are written with suggested examination questions and answers, and going to coaching centers that train the students on how to perform well in the public examinations.…”

“…Besides, various donor-aided training programs, such as English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP), English for Teaching, Teaching for English (ETTE), Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project (TQI-SEP), Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project (SEQAEP), and English in Action (EiA) have also contributed to the capacity building of the teachers (Hamid, 2010). Although high-cost donor-funded projects claim success with regard to the improvement in teacher education, studies by Al Greenwood (2018a, 2018b), Anwaruddin (2016), , and Rahman et al (2018aRahman et al ( , 2018bRahman et al ( , 2018c) oppose the claim. These studies have identified various challenges such as scanty training sessions, inadequate training opportunities for the rural teachers, lack of trainers, substandard training materials, and insufficient resources Rahman et al, 2018aRahman et al, , 2018bRahman et al, , 2018c.…”

“…Although high-cost donor-funded projects claim success with regard to the improvement in teacher education, studies by Al Greenwood (2018a, 2018b), Anwaruddin (2016), , and Rahman et al (2018aRahman et al ( , 2018bRahman et al ( , 2018c) oppose the claim. These studies have identified various challenges such as scanty training sessions, inadequate training opportunities for the rural teachers, lack of trainers, substandard training materials, and insufficient resources Rahman et al, 2018aRahman et al, , 2018bRahman et al, , 2018c. The aggregated momentum of all these factors has precluded the effective implementation of CLT (Rahman et al, 2019) which ultimately affected the communicative English language assessment in Bangladesh.…”

English language teaching in Bangladesh today: Issues, outcomes and implications

“…Frequently, policymakers speak about the role of English learning to benefit from globalisation and to mobilise economic advancement (Hamid, 2010;Hamid, Nguyen, & Baldauf, 2013) and suggest that students will be able to learn better if they start early . However, the relationship between competence in English language and economic development is not always linear (Rahman, Singh, & Karim, 2018b). Instead, it often times becomes a burden for a developing country such as Bangladesh to supply enough resources to facilitate English language education from grade 1 (Hamid & Erling, 2016).…”

Language ideology of English-medium instruction in higher education

“…Email: manjeet@usm.my doi:10.1017/S0266078419000294 outcome can happen with the adoption of EMI. It has indeed been adopted widely in non-native English-speaking countries and has also been introduced in the higher education systems of many Asian countries (Rahman, Singh & Karim, 2018), such as Bangladesh (Hamid, Jahan & Islam, 2013), China (Fang, 2018;Song, 2018), Hong Kong (Evans & Morrison, 2017), Malaysia (Ali, 2013), Japan (Rose & McKinley, 2018) and South Korea (Piller & Cho, 2013). Although Asian universities have been adopting EMI, which has been described by researchers such as Macaro (2017) as an unstoppable train in higher education institutes (HEIs) in this region, empirical studies on this topic have been very rare in the Asian context (Hamid, Nguyen & Baldauf, 2013;He & Chiang, 2016;Kim & Tatar, 2018).…”