English Medium Instruction in Japan: Macro-level policies and micro-level practices at the nexus of language and content learning Seminar

Internationalization and English in the twenty-first century are inextricably intertwined, as universities turn to Englishization in order to internationalize (Kirkpatrick, 2011). A side effect of internationalization is the rapid emergence of English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education around the world, defined as ‘the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language (L1) of the majority of the population is not English’ (Macaro, 2018, p. 19). Wilkinson (2013, p. 3) notes that EMI programs have become ‘commonplace in many institutes of higher education’, and Japan is noted to be an area of recent significant growth (see Galloway et al., 2017). This talk explores the language-related implications associated with policy and practice in EMI in Japan. It first takes a macro-level policy-perspective to explore the English-language implications of recent trends in Japanese HE (see Rose & McKinley, 2018). This is then followed by a micro-level practice-perspective exploring the relationships between proficiency, language-related challenges, motivation, and content learning outcomes, which are drawn from questionnaire, interviews, proficiency test, and content score datasets of more than 500 students in EMI contexts in Japan. Controlling for motivation, results revealed a strong interaction between proficiency and language-related challenges, as well as proficiency and success measures in EMI (in terms of course grades). An exploration of lexical range in EMI lectures also suggests a vocabulary threshold needed for students to understand some content subjects, and also points to the importance of subject-specific ESP courses. The study, therefore, equips English teachers with targeted areas of focus in order to best support students in EMI contexts, so they can be successful in their studies.