Linguistic Outcomes of English Medium Instruction Programmes in Higher Education: A study on Economics Undergraduates at a Catalan University

Abstract

<p>Globalisation and international mobility in the 21st century has led to the internationalisation of the English language (Crystal, 2003). Research regarding linguistic gains at university levels is however extremely scarce. This study aims to address this gap of knowledge and provide some answers as to how much linguistic gain can be expected after one year of English medium instruction. Two groups of undergraduate students enrolled in different levels of English medium instruction (EMI) were given a pre and post-test over a 1 year period. Results were analysed statistically; significant gains were found only in the semi- immersion group in the grammatical domain; although, there was a trend for improvement as well as higher scores for full immersion students. It might be interpreted that in order for linguistic gains to be seen in adults there needs to be some focus on form and language guidance (Muñoz, 2007; Pérez-Vidal, 2007). Thus, an integrated content and language (ICLHE) approach is more effective than a solely content based EMI model for university level content courses, if linguistic gains are the desired outcomes of the programme.</p>

English as a Medium of Instruction at Turkish State Universities

“…Many studies about English as a medium of instruction are done analyzing the level of English acquired by the students (Ament;Peres-Vidal, 2015;Rocha;Correa;Salgado, 2010;Lundin;Persson, 2015;Sylvén, 2015). Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that studies analyzing a possible linguicide or cultural threat as a consequence of adopting EMI at large are still lacking.…”

Challenges in English Medium of Instruction from the Teachers and Students' Eyes

“…Likewise, as stated by Wilkinson (2013), economic, social, political and educational factors have some sort of impact on the EMI expansion (Poyung & Hang-Yue, 2014). The effects of globalization and internationalization in addition to 'the development of a competitive market in higher education' have led the growth of EMI expansion (Doiz et al, 2013;Suviniity, 2012;Ament & Vidal, 2015). As Richard and Rodgers (2014) pinpointed, there is a shift from formal instruction towards 'more communicative, innovative, immersion and content based methods which lay the suitable ground for EMI expansion.…”

Functional adequacy: The effect of Englsih Medium Instruction, English Proficiency and previous language learning experiences

“…The facilitative effect of contexts on the development of pragmatic competence has often been attributed to input-based explanations, which argue that pragmatic development will occur if there is a sufficient amount of input containing exemplars of the target feature (Bialystok, 1993). In this respect, based on the limited opportunities for input and interaction in the classroom, the impact of EMI on students' linguistic abilities has been addressed (e.g., Ament & Pérez-Vidal, 2015;Loranc-Paszylk, 2007), although pragmatics has not received much attention. In this section, a discussion of the main findings and research gaps in the studies dealing with pragmatic learning and development is provided.…”

“…The study conducted by Ament & Pérez-Vidal (2015) constitutes an attempt to assess the pragmatic dimension of language through a written composition.…”

“…In doing so, this study represents a notable contribution to the ILP field, since, to the best of our knowledge, ILP studies considering intensities of EMI, different levels of proficiency and the effect of previous language experiences are rather scarce. In fact, Ament & Vidal (2015) provide the only empirical evidence of how intensity of exposure in EMI students in the Higher Education Area (HEA) may affect overall language development.…”