The role of graduate students’ learning strategies in reducing their English medium instruction avoidance: the mediation effect of language anxiety

ABSTRACT

In Asia, in order to keep up with internationalization, the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) course has become a phenomenon in higher education. In turn, EMI literature has increasingly focused on the role of instructor’s pedagogy in reducing students’ negative response to EMI courses. Additionally, we further explore, from the students’ perspective, whether students can reduce their anxiety about learning in English by adopting varied learning strategies while reducing their avoidance of EMI courses. A questionnaire survey was conducted in spring 2018; 208 postgraduate students from 15 different EMI courses in the School of Business Administration of a Taiwanese University participated in this study. We used partial least-squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to explore the relationship between learning strategies, English anxiety, and EMI avoidance, while regarding English proficiency as a controlled variable. The results indicate that English anxiety has a positive relationship to EMI avoidance; critical thinking has a negative relation to English anxiety; effort regulation has a negative relation to EMI avoidance, and English anxiety mediates the relationship between critical thinking and EMI avoidance. General principles are drawn from these findings and are discussed as they apply to the teaching of EMI classes.

KEYWORDS:

• Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM)
• higher education
• English for specific purposes
• English-medium instruction
• English anxiety
• learning strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tien-En Tai

Tien-En Tai is a researcher in National Sun Yat-sen University.His work mainly focuses on second language acquisition and English medium instruction in the higher education context.

Chia Wei Tang

Chia Wei Tang is an associate professor in National Sun Yat-sen University. His work focuses on university rankings, higher education  policy and governance.