Coping with EMI (English as a medium of instruction): Mainland China students’ strategies at a university in Macau

Challenges to Internationalisation of University Programmes: A Systematic Thematic Synthesis of Qualitative Research on Learner-Centred English Medium Instruction (EMI) Pedagogy

“…"I used dictionaries to look up every word in the lesson when I did not understand what the professor was saying" [13].…”

“…10 (25) [12,13,65,67,68,81,90,91,93,94] Academic writing skills "I think people have got problems with writing. People can't write.…”

“…Defined as 'the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions in which the majority of the population's first language is not English' [7], English Medium Instruction (EMI) has been shown to be a 'growing global phenomenon' [2] as well as 'the most significant trend in educational internationalisation' [8] and it 'is developing at such a remarkable speed that it is often beyond the control of policymakers and educational researchers' [7]. In higher education, students' perspectives and experiences have been extensively researched, with findings informing professional development programmes, pedagogical interventions, and institutional planning [9][10][11][12][13].…”

“…To date, a few studies have explored the key outcomes of EMI for students, such as second language (L2) improvement and content learning [9][10][11][12]14]. These studies have contributed to the growing evidence that EMI may pose significant challenges to students whose first language is not English [13,15]. Despite such important efforts to assess and highlight the role of L2 in content learning (with some studies pointing to the contextspecific nature of implementation [16,17]), from the growing body of learner-focused literature the impression may be given that success in EMI is mainly about students' linguistic needs and metalinguistic affordances.…”

“…Despite such important efforts to assess and highlight the role of L2 in content learning (with some studies pointing to the contextspecific nature of implementation [16,17]), from the growing body of learner-focused literature the impression may be given that success in EMI is mainly about students' linguistic needs and metalinguistic affordances. Even though there are comparatively fewer studies that address non-linguistic challenges, these demonstrate that sustaining effective EMI pedagogy might require more systematic approaches to assessing learners' needs and concerns [13].…”