“…We now move to contextualize the study. Similar to the cases reported in the literature such as Japan (Curle, 2018;Aizawa and Rose, 2020), Oman (Ali, 2020), UAE (Solloway, 2016), Iranian expatriates in Japan (Rakhshandehroo, 2017), Taiwan (Chang, 2010), France (Reynolds, 2022), Afghanistan (Orfan and Seraj, 2002), and many others, Tunisia is not an exception to this trend of the internationalization of HEIs and the promotion of EMI. Tunisian HEIs are attracting international students mainly from neighboring Libya and sub-Saharan Africa.…”
This article gives a Tunisian perspective to the ongoing debate on the adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) across the globe and notably in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It explores the attitudes of students toward EMI, especially in relation to French, the default medium of instruction at Tunisian universities. It also investigates the challenges that students encounter in courses mediated through English. Finally, it reports on the current EMI practices as they are conducted in the classroom setting. The article uses a mixed approach involving quantitative data collected via an online survey and qualitative data via classroom observation and note-taking. It was found that students typically held a positive attitude toward English and an awareness of its importance. They displayed a pragmatic stance as they associated English with research, technology, mobility, employability, and career prospects. While English is used as the language of the curriculum and documentation, students engage in translanguaging practices to ensure an effective dialog with content teachers and better acquisition of academic content. Given their multilingual repertoire and the status of French, students used French and English in parallel and, to a lesser extent, Tunisian Arabic. They tended to switch to French to ensure a more effective classroom exchange, especially when English fails them. Teachers used translanguaging in order to promote students’ engagement in the academic content.
“…We now move to contextualize the study. Similar to the cases reported in the literature such as Japan (Curle, 2018;Aizawa and Rose, 2020), Oman (Ali, 2020), UAE (Solloway, 2016), Iranian expatriates in Japan (Rakhshandehroo, 2017), Taiwan (Chang, 2010), France (Reynolds, 2022), Afghanistan (Orfan and Seraj, 2002), and many others, Tunisia is not an exception to this trend of the internationalization of HEIs and the promotion of EMI. Tunisian HEIs are attracting international students mainly from neighboring Libya and sub-Saharan Africa.…”
This article gives a Tunisian perspective to the ongoing debate on the adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) across the globe and notably in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It explores the attitudes of students toward EMI, especially in relation to French, the default medium of instruction at Tunisian universities. It also investigates the challenges that students encounter in courses mediated through English. Finally, it reports on the current EMI practices as they are conducted in the classroom setting. The article uses a mixed approach involving quantitative data collected via an online survey and qualitative data via classroom observation and note-taking. It was found that students typically held a positive attitude toward English and an awareness of its importance. They displayed a pragmatic stance as they associated English with research, technology, mobility, employability, and career prospects. While English is used as the language of the curriculum and documentation, students engage in translanguaging practices to ensure an effective dialog with content teachers and better acquisition of academic content. Given their multilingual repertoire and the status of French, students used French and English in parallel and, to a lesser extent, Tunisian Arabic. They tended to switch to French to ensure a more effective classroom exchange, especially when English fails them. Teachers used translanguaging in order to promote students’ engagement in the academic content.
“…In general, the students receiving EMI lessons believed they benefited from learning key vocabulary/concepts in EMI content‐area subjects (see Aizawa & Rose, 2020; Chan, 2014; Lo & Murphy, 2010;). B2SI09S4: The teacher spoke, fifty‐fifty, English and Chinese… but because of the way s/he taught us, I've really learnt a lot of English words.B2SI06S3: What matters the most in Mathematics are those keywords…So basically the teacher wouldn't need to talk much…S1: The teacher taught us spelling…S4: If there're keywords, s/he would teach us how to spell the words……”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In general, the students receiving EMI lessons believed they benefited from learning key vocabulary/concepts in EMI content-area subjects (see Aizawa & Rose, 2020;Chan, 2014;Lo & Murphy, 2010;). Regarding students' classroom language use, the findings revealed that they spoke Cantonese more frequently than English in both the ELT (Q6) and EMI content-area lessons (Q7).…”
Section: B1si04mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…With the growing demand for English, the use of EMI in content‐area subjects is believed to be a more efficient way than the traditional foreign language approach to provide functional proficiency in an L2 (Lopriore, 2020). Research has shown that EMI students tend to have a better knowledge of English vocabulary (e.g., Aizawa & Rose, 2020; Chan, 2014; Lo & Murphy, 2010) and enhanced receptive linguistic competence (e.g., Dalton‐Puffer, 2008; Yang, 2015). Dalton‐Puffer (2008) argues that EMI education has a positive impact on students’ creativity, risk‐taking, fluency, and emotive/affective outcomes, but its effects on other areas such as syntax, writing, informal/non‐technical language, pronunciation, and pragmatics are either unaffected or unclear.…”
Section: Language Learning In Emi Educationmentioning
The use of English in international communication has focused scholarly attention on L2 learners’ development of interactional competence (IC), that is, the ability to co‐construct interactions purposefully and meaningfully in specific contexts. Under Hong Kong's bilingual education policy, students mainly learn and speak English in two classroom contexts: (1) English language and (2) English‐medium‐instruction (EMI) content‐area subject lessons, which may contribute to their IC development. This study compared the English‐speaking/learning experiences of students in these two classroom settings in three Hong Kong secondary schools. Task‐based language teaching (TBLT) was the recommended teaching approach in the English language subject in all these schools, but they adopted different medium‐of‐instruction arrangements in content‐area subjects. Their students also had different academic attainments. The investigation adopted a case study approach consisting of a questionnaire and semi‐structured focus group interviews (N = 160). Our findings suggest that students generally lacked opportunities to speak English, regardless of the specific school‐based policies. The higher‐proficiency students were given more opportunities to speak English in group/pair activities both in English language and EMI content‐area subjects. In contrast, the lower‐proficiency students received more explicit teaching of the linguistic forms/structures required in English examinations. The paper concludes by highlighting several critical issues concerning students’ IC development in bilingual education, namely, the effects of English‐medium education on students’ speaking ability, implementation of TBLT, the influence of examinations on teaching practices, and teachers’ role in promoting students’ interactional competence through classroom interactions.
“…To improve Chinese students’ English proficiency, several music institutes in China have started using English as the medium of instruction (EMI). The penetration of the EMI phenomenon in all educational settings, including music classes, signals a rapid change from learning English as a foreign or second language to learning different academic subjects through English ( Aizawa and Rose, 2020 ). EMI, as Macaro (2018) mentioned, has to do with “the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English) in countries where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” (p. 19).…”
Recognizing the opportunities and problems of using English as a medium of instruction (EMI) enables teachers, students, and educational administrators to capitalize on the opportunities and mitigate the problems. Considering this, many researchers worldwide have explored the opportunities and problems of EMI courses. Yet, the advantages and disadvantages of implementing EMI in Chinese academic contexts have rarely been investigated. To fill this gap, the present research evaluated the benefits and challenges of implementing EMI in Chinese music classes. To accomplish this, a researcher-made scale was distributed among 74 Chinese music students. The thematic analysis of participants’ responses revealed that using English as a means of teaching and learning benefited Chinese music students in some ways. However, as the results of the thematic analysis indicated, Chinese music students experienced some serious challenges in EMI courses because of their limited English proficiency. Finally, the limitations, pedagogical implications, and future research directions are thoroughly explained.
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