Creating an effective English-Medium Instruction (EMI) classroom: Chinese undergraduate students’ perceptions of native and non-native English-speaking content teachers and their experiences

ABSTRACT

The globalisation of higher institutions has led to the emergence of EMI courses offered by faculty with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Existing literature has revealed that the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of English language teachers affect their teaching behaviour. However, this issue is relatively under-explored among EMI content teachers. This study explored 101 Chinese undergraduate students’ perceptions of two categories of content teachers – native English-speaking EMI teachers and local (non-native English-speaking) EMI teachers – regarding their teaching behaviour and practices. Their perceptions were collected via a questionnaire survey and interviews, which were then triangulated by class observation of teachers’ actual practices. Specifically, the students perceived that native English-speaking teachers adopted more interactive teaching approaches with diverse activities and various modalities of communication, but lacked intercultural competence. In comparison, local teachers obtained intra-cultural competence and thus could communicate with students about their learning difficulties. Their instruction was more intelligible but rather teacher-dominated. Students favoured interactive and efficient EMI courses with a primary focus on content. The findings provide insights for the implementation of the EMI curriculum and the development of EMI teachers’ expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• English-medium instruction
• native/non-native
• student’s perspective
• teaching behaviour
• EMI effectiveness

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the Editor, Professor Li Wei, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions on our research article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xuyan Qiu

Xuyan Qiu is a research assistant professor at the School of Education and Languages of the Open University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include second language acquisition, English for academic purposes, and English as medium of instruction.

Chang Fang

Chang Fang is a postgraduate student at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of South China University of Technology.