Learning through EMI (English-medium instruction) in a Macau university: students’ perspectives and content and language outcomes

ABSTRACT

While English as the medium of instruction (EMI) is becoming a popular institutional practice across the globe, the bulk of research has yielded inconsistent findings regarding its effectiveness for students’ content and language learning. Through a qualitative inquiry into students’ EMI experiences in a Macau university, the study discovered that content learning and language proficiency are vague terms to describe students’ learning outcomes, which consist of multiple dimensions, including knowledge mastery, access to information, disciplinary professionalism, academic/disciplinary English and Chinese proficiency, etc. While EMI promoted student learning in some dimensions, it failed in others, and it is unrealistic to judge the overall effectiveness of EMI as a curriculum provision. The study confirms previous research findings on EMI as an ineffective means for knowledge mastery and further exposes this as a problem that can hardly be remedied by raising admission requirements on students’ English proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Additional issues and challenges of EMI were identified in the study, including a quandary in promoting students’ bilingual academic and disciplinary proficiency in English and their mother tongue. Suggestions for future research are given, and ideas for possible measures to help students cope with EMI in EFL contexts are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• English-medium instruction
• Chinese-medium instruction
• higher education
• EMI program
• language education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Geolocation information

The study was conducted in Macau SAR, China.

Research ethics

The study was reviewed and approved by the Sub-Panel on Social Science & Humanities Research Ethics, Panel on Research Ethics of the University of Macau. (the reference number is the same as the grant number above)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Macau under Grant [number MYRG2014-00170-FED]

Notes on contributors

Yan Wang

Yan Wang is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China. She conducts research in areas including English as the medium of instruction, internationalization of higher education, and cross-cultural issues in education.

Shulin Yu

Shulin Yu is Associate Professor at Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China. His research interests include second language writing and classroom feedback and assessment in higher education. His publications have appeared in Educational Research Review, Assessing Writing, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Teaching Research, Language Teaching, and TESOL Quarterly.