Key Concepts in ELT

English-medium instruction (EMI)

Asst. Lect. Huda Abd ALkareem Zhgair

At face value, English-medium instruction (EMI) may seem a self-explanatory term, describing any form of formal education in which teaching is carried out in English. Generally speaking, ‘EMI refers to the use of the English language to teach academic subjects, other than English itself ’ (Dafouz and Gray 2022: 1) in settings where English is a foreign or second language to at least some of the learners and/or teachers. Reflecting the complex history and global spread of English, however, the realities of EMI are more complex in terms of the geographical location, educational level and orientation, affected participants, and languages involved. It is therefore not a surprise that the label EMI is used in diverse ways, ranging from, for instance, postcolonial compulsory education in Ghana catering to local children (Erling et al.2016) to graduate programmes in, for example, life sciences attended by international student groups in Denmark (Kling 2015).

In addition to this wide range of applications, EMI has recently seen an unparalleled quantitative expansion in higher education institutions (HEIs), as English medium programmes or classes are often implemented in support of the HEIs’ endeavours to join the global trend of internationalizing their education for local and international students (Dimova, Hultgren, and Jensen 2015; Studer and Smit 2021). This increased popularity of EMI is mirrored in an impressively rich and exponentially growing research literature.

English-medium education of academic subjects other than the English language to L2 users of English—are essential insofar as they have to be present for EMI to take place. At the same time, each of them allows for some variation and thus different realisations of EMI: 

(1) English which can come in a range of varieties or linguistic practices, can be one of various mediums of instruction; (2) different academic subjects have their own educational and thus also linguistic affordances; furthermore, language learning is interrelated with learning content in complex ways; (3) The linguistic repertoires of groups of students and teachers differ in terms of which languages are included and at what levels of proficiency. In addition to these core elements, EMI can be characterised according to six flexible criteria that allow for a more detailed description of individual EMI instances:

1. Educational level: Although recent studies mainly focus on the tertiary level, EMI takes place at all educational levels. For instance, EMI has also been used at the (pre-)primary and secondary levels (Milligan and Tikly 2016).

2. Degree of coverage: EMI can include complete programmes or only parts thereof. For instance, master level programmes in the sciences are often offered as fully-fledged English-medium programmes in European universities, while many Chinese universities require their students to take individual EMI classes in their otherwise Chinese-medium study programmes. 

3. Location: When it comes to geographical areas of EMI, there are two positions in the literature. The first and more widely established view locates EMI in ‘countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English’ (Macaro 2018: 1). An alternative and more recent position, however, challenges this geographical restriction and argues for also including ‘internationalised, multilingual HE sites in Anglophone countries’. So, even when set in the UK, a programme can fall into EMI when mainly attended by international students for whom English is a second or foreign language (Hüttner and Baker 2023).

4. Language policies: EMI settings include two or various languages, i.e., English and the participants’ first languages. Such multilingual constellations of learners and teachers usually entail some explicit language-in-education policy, specifying the medium(s) of instruction, language requirements and/or provisions for language support. As typical of language policies, they differ markedly in terms of legal status, specificity, or detail of information.

5. Optionality: While EMI can be offered as an alternative to education in the national or first language and thus a choice for learners or their parents, it is often also the only option. It is to be expected that the degree of ‘compulsion/optionality’ (Coleman et al. 2018: 703) has an immense impact on individual learners, but also on the student groups participating in EMI.

6. Relation to English language education: Although EMI comes with a neutral or non-defined, the rich literature reveals great variation amongst the EMI realities investigated. Besides EMI programmes without language learning aims, there are those that have implicit aims of learning English by using it. Aims can also be made explicit and, depending on learners’ proficiency levels, combined with various forms of support for learning English.

In sum, the six flexible criteria capture the impressive range of educational realities subsumed under EMI as defined in the core elements and, when taken in combination, allow for a specific demarcation of the respective EMI scenarios. In conclusion, a word is due on the role of English language teaching within an EMI context. Although not given by default, the realities of English L2 speakers engaging in academic education entail that, if the process is meant to be successful, some English language learning will need to take place. Put differently, EMI and ELT ‘exist in a very natural symbiosis and can potentially inform each other’.