English Medium Instruction (EMI)
Research in the area of English-medium instruction (EMI) covers a wide range of topics, issues, and practices related to the implementation and uses. It includes research on stakeholder attitudes, policies, lecturer identities, classroom communication, lecturer and student language assessment, and pedagogies in EMI.
Research areas
While early research focused on attitudinal studies analyzing stakeholders’ (lecturers, students, administration) opinions about EMI, subsequent research examines policies at macro (national, institutional) and micro (classroom) levels, lecturer identities, classroom communication, lecturer and student language assessment, and pedagogies in EMI.
Much research deals with the particularities of teaching and learning in the distinctive contexts of EMI. The characteristics and the effectiveness of different pedagogies that support learning English and learning in English, such as content and language integrated learning (CLIL), English for specific purposes (ESP), and English for academic purposes (EAP) have been investigated from content lecturer, language teacher, student, and teacher-trainer perspective.
Translanguaging, i.e. the integrated use of multiple languages for the purpose of teaching and learning, has been one of CIP’s unique foci in EMI classroom communication research. The goal of this research is to understand how multiple linguistic resources enhance content learning and how multilingual users are empowered through multilingual communication practices.
Transnational Alignment of English Competences for University Lecturers (TAEC) Corpus and TAEC Literature Database
Funded by ERASMUS+ (2017-2020)
The TAEC Corpus was developed to provide an opportunity for researchers and teacher trainers to compare EMI content lecturers’ classroom communication across different universities and countries (Croatia, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain). The corpus delivers transcripts of content lecturer English use in real EMI classrooms in different contexts. These lecturers use English on a daily basis in their academic lives, so it is worth investigating different aspects of their language uses for teaching purposes. Therefore, the corpus is used for analysis different analyses of classroom communication (e.g., lecturers’ fluency, discourse competence, intercultural communication, interaction).
The TAEC Literature Database was developed for conducting systematic literature reviews on EMI. The searchable database includes over 200 entries that are annotated based on different categories: type of publication (e.g., article, chapter), area of interest (e.g., policy, language use, assessment), foci (e.g., attitudes, learning outcomes), type of research (e.g., empirical, conceptual), type of analysis (e.g., qualitative, quantitative), methodology (e.g., case study, mixed methods), data (e.g., questionnaire, interview), domain (e.g., social sciences, life sciences), as well as information about methodology and findings. The annotations were double-coded in order to ensure consistent application of the categories (inter-coder agreement = 85%).
Find more information about the Erasmus+ TAEC project at the CIP website on "Projects and Collaborations".
Qualitative research methods allow for collection of multiple forms of data (interviews, observations, documents) in order to explore complex issues, phenomena, and problems within the context in which they occur. Ethnographic studies, nexus analyses, and case studies have been at the core of the qualitative research at CIP.
In order to understand the values and the conventions in EMI classroom communication, discourse and conversation analyses have been applied. While discourse analysis has been used to study written or spoken language uses in real-life situations, conversation analysis has been essential in the study of classroom interactions.
Classroom communication and EMI teacher talk have also been investigated quantitatively, through corpus-based research.
We invite collaboration in all areas of EMI. CIP’s researchers have participated in transnational research projects in which comparative analyses of different EMI issues, policies, and practices have been performed.
CIP has taken the lead in the international EMI research, so CIP scholars have been invited to participate in various international research networks, serve on journal editorial boards, and give keynote presentations at international conferences and seminars.
Dimova, S., Hultgren, A. K., & Jensen, C. (Eds.) (2015). English-medium instruction in European higher education: English in Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Dimova, S., & Kling, J. (Eds.) (2020). Integrating Content and Language in Multilingual Universities. Basel: Springer.
Dimova, S., Kling, J., Larsen, S., Molino, A., Drljaca Margic, B., McAllister, D., Rubio, X., Bendazzoli, C., Irun, M., Pulcini, V., Vodopija Krstanovic, I., Stajduhar Mestrovic, I., Solly, M. & Crielsi, S. (2019). EMI Handbook. TAEC Project: http://www.dal.udl.cat/export/sites/Dal/documents_pdf/TAEC-Handbook_JAN_2020_NoEdit.pdf
Henriksen, B., Holmen, A., & Kling, J. (2018). English Medium Instruction in Multilingual and Multicultural Universities: Academics’ Voices from the Northern European Context. Cham: Routledge.
Kling, J., Larsen, S., & Thomsen, S. F. (2017). The Need for Focused Literacy Training in the Medical School Curriculum: A Cross-Sectional Study of Undergraduate Students. Education Research International, 1-6.
