Classroom interaction in EMI high schools: Do teachers who are native speakers of English make a difference?

Students' Challenges on Learning EMI Courses at a Technical University in Vietnam: An Investigation from Students' Voices

“…In summary, teacher-student and student-peer interactions in the current research are considered to be in line with previous studies to the extent of determining students' learning EMI positive experiences (Pianta et al, 2008;Patrick, Ryan & Kaplan, 2007). Even though the finding of benefits from classroom interactions in EMI classes is similar to that found in research by An, Macaro & Childs (2021), Sahan, Rose and Macaro (2021), Murray and Pianta (2007), and Pianta et al, (2008) to the extent of its pivotal and contributed aspects to content and language learning. However, the remarkable finding of an interaction between teachers and students is their virtual ebullient communication via online class groups before and after their lessons.…”

“…Similar findings were also pursued by Kaur (2020) 's qualitative research as the researcher revealed three key issues of students' passiveness, their ignorance of other people's contributions to interactions, and code-switching into the majority language. Meanwhile, similar findings of the interactions contributed to content and language learning were also disclosed in An, Macaro & Childs (2021).…”

Questioning the Sustainability of English-Medium Instruction Policy in Science Classrooms: Teachers’ and Students’ Experiences at a Hong Kong Secondary School

“…Another biology teacher suggested that her students use a notebook to make a list of vocabulary terms to use in their essays, while another suggested utilising technology such as flipped classrooms, e-learning platforms, online bilingual materials, and text-messengers to improve the quality of teaching and to address students' language challenges. However, given the findings of recent studies, whereby EMI teachers are increasingly focusing on teaching vocabulary, and thus assuming a limited English language teaching role (see [53,55]), we find it somewhat surprising that most of the teachers in our study did not do the same. Essentially, although frequent reference was made to problems concerning vocabulary, our teachers dealt with it by guiding students toward other regulatory agents besides themselves: Namely, material artefacts (i.e., technology and textbooks) and self-regulatory processes voluntarily taken up by the students (rote memorisation, form-to-function mapping, etc.).…”

“…As already noted, one of the key issues surrounding EMI is the role of the L1 in the classroom [55]. While the label, EMI, suggests that English is the primary means through which content should be taught, recent research highlights the affordances of multilingual meaning-making (verbal and non-verbal) in the classroom (e.g., [56]).…”

English Medium Instruction: What do we know so far and what do we still need to find out?

“…Incidentally, there are some suggestions that lack of interaction in EMI settings is due to a teacher's fear that their level of English is not high enough for them to deviate from their script. There may be some truth in this, and future research may identify more precisely where the problem lies, but a study by An et al (2021) of EMI (secondary school) teachers in China, all native speakers of English (i.e. imported foreign teachers), did not show any major increase in interaction with students.…”