Title: Internationalization at Home: The EMI (English-medium Instruction) Pedagogical Accommodation Strategies and Supporting Programmes at Sino-foreign Cooperative Universities in China
Stream: Teaching Experiences, Pedagogy, Practice & Praxis
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Helin Zhao, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Ning (Alan) Huang, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
David Kirk, University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Abstract:
With English as a lingua franca in education worldwide, there is increasing prominence of EMI, which is an essential part of the Internationalization at home initiative, in China responding to the challenges of internationalization in higher education. However, EMI stakeholders, including students, teachers, and university management, have identified some issues with EMI practice in China and that EMI is not working as well as expected. This research presents the EMI pedagogical practice and support programmes at two of China's SFCU campuses. Semi-structured Interviews with EMI teachers, focus group interviews with students, and classroom observations of EMI lessons were conducted to understand the accommodation strategies adopted by EMI teachers in response to problems arising from EMI teaching at the classroom level, and the relevant support programmes at the university level. This research shares preliminary findings that, in terms of accommodation strategies, the EMI teachers in this research have some unique approaches to code-switching and translanguaging when compared with the traditional approaches. Meanwhile, EMI teachers also adjusted the English they used in class by simplifying or slowing down the English, visualizing content in English, and providing culturally appropriate examples. In addition, this study finds that EMI management can provide pedagogical, language and mental health support programmes to improve the EMI effectiveness. Despite the limited scope of this research, the researcher’s experience is combined with the advice from the interviewees to suggest issues that EMI teachers and management need to be aware of and some practical solutions
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