Internationalizing Education Through English Medium Instruction: Key Theoretic-Pedagogical Ideas

With growing internationalization of higher education around the world, teaching in English Medium Instruction (EMI), as an important component in content and language integrated learning (CLIL), is becoming a dominant pedagogy in those countries who want to be part of the global economy. In the last decade there has been increasing research into EMI and CLIL in European educational settings and there has been a relatively smaller body of research into this field in other English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts globally. In Taiwan, the internationalization of university disciplines using EMI is hindered. Chen and Tsai (2012: 187) found that although students felt that EMI was helpful in improving their English proficiency, they often complained that they had difficulty understanding English lectures and textbooks. Their research also found that by emphasizing teaching using EMI in tertiary education there may be a consequential impact on the quality of the content or subject knowledge delivery due to the lecturers’ or students’ specialist English in the discipline. By EMI teaching, Universities may have to sacrifice the other goals in the internationalization and competitiveness of Taiwan’s higher education system. The aims of EMI for Taiwanese students include: 1. to provide students with specialised English and access to references in English so as to improve local students’ proficiency in English; 2. to improve students’ work/career prospects; 3. to facilitate local students to pursue postgraduate studies in overseas English countries; and 4. to prepare domestic students for the global labour market. This project’s proposed research questions are as follows: 1. How is English Medium Instruction defined? 2. What useful strategies can be identified and suggested for English Medium Instruction to be embedded in discipline teaching? 3. What university structures might be useful or necessary for internationalizing education via English Medium Instruction? 4. How might English Medium Instruction contribute to the internationalization of university education? The outcomes of this project include a comprehensive understanding of English Medium Instruction, in terms of its features and possibilities as: 1. requiring a working definition; 2. a proposed bottom-up teacher-research pedagogy; 3. a process to effect University-wide institutionalization of English Medium Instruction; 4. having identifiable strategies for discipline-based EMI teaching, and a method whereby EMI can be imbedded to enhance internationalization of university education.