The role of graduate students’ learning strategies in reducing their English medium instruction avoidance: the mediation effect of language anxiety

Abstract

In Asia, in order to keep up with internationalisation, the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) course has become a phenomenon in higher education. In turn, EMI literature has increasingly focused on the role of instructor's pedagogy in reducing students' negative response to EMI courses. Additionally, we further explore, from the students' perspective, whether students can reduce their anxiety about learning in English by adopting varied learning strategies while reducing their avoidance of EMI courses. A questionnaire survey was conducted in spring 2018; 208 postgraduate students from 15 different EMI courses in the School of Business Administration of Sun Yat-sen University participated in this study. We used partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to explore the relationship between learning strategies, English anxiety, and EMI avoidance, while regarding English proficiency as a controlled variable. The results indicate that English anxiety has a positive relationship to EMI avoidance; critical thinking has a negative relation to English anxiety; effort regulation has a negative relation to EMI avoidance, and English anxiety mediates the relationship between critical thinking and EMI avoidance. General principles are drawn from these findings and are discussed as they apply to the teaching of EMI classes.

EMI Classroom Practices of International Program in Thailand University: A Perspective of EFL Thai’s Students

“…Through quantitative data analysis, it was revealed that the participants exhibited positive attitudes towards EMI. These findings are consistent with previous research that also reported positive attitudes among students toward EMI (Kym & Kym, 2014;Muthanna & Miao, 2015;Tai & Tang, 2020;). The positive attitudes expressed by the participants in this study highlight the perceived benefits of EMI in their language learning journey.…”

Reflection on publishing experiences of taught master's course students with their faculty member: actor-network theoretic discussion

“…First, there is the potential for many international students to teach master's courses – similar to Authors 1 and 2 – and surpass the mere institutional requirements to publish their works. International students, particularly non-native speakers, often face lower evaluations, which can hinder them from effectively demonstrating their ideas (Rear, 2017; Tai and Tang, 2021), and they become subjects of discrimination, even by faculty members, as Author 3 observed racist doodles by one of his colleagues. However, as Authors 1 and 2 showed, linguistic barriers can be overcome with the support of faculty members, enabling the development of publishable works.…”

Perceptions and Coping Strategies in English Writing Among Chinese Study-Abroad Graduate Students

“…In addition, many attempts have been made to investigate the problems in EMI students' learning and how to improve students' learning outcomes (del Mar Sa´nchez-Pe´rez, 2021;Soruc x et al, 2022;Tai & Tang, 2021;Yu et al, 2021;Zhang & Pladevall-Ballester, 2021). For instance, based on semi-structured interviews and reflective journals from 14 mainland Chinese EMI students at a Macau university, Yu et al (2021) investigated the strategies that these students adopted in their learning and reported that students' strategies for EMI learning ''were mediated by the sociocultural tools of their L1, L2, and the tools at their disposal, along with the community of instructors and peers around them'' (p. 8).…”