English medium instruction methodology with regard to international education

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English medium instruction methodology with regard to international education

Myhovych Iryna Viktorivna,

Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor,

State Institution "Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University", Рoltava, Ukraine

Myhovych I.V. English Medium Instruction Methodology with regard to International Education

Keywords: English Medium Instruction, International Education, Internationalization, Constructive Alignment, Cognitive Load.

Мигович І.В. Методологія використання англійської мови як мови викладання в контексті міжнародної освіти

Стаття репрезентує спробу окреслити взаємозв'язок між поняттями "англійська мова як мова викладання", "міжнародна освіта", "конструктивістське узгодження", "конструктивістськи узгоджене викладання", що становлять методологічні складники інструментарію процесу інтернаціоналізації змісту освіти у вищій школі. Емпірична розвідка зосереджена навколо таких питань: підхід до викладання англійською мовою у вищій освіті (упровадження на противагу дослідженню); методологічні проблеми, пов'язані з дослідженням використання англійської мови як мови викладання; методологія конструктивістського узгодження як така, що базується на принципі узгодженості оцінювання, викладання та очікуваних результатів навчання. language teaching education

Отримані результати дають підстави стверджувати, що міжнародна освіта базується на використанні англійської мови як мови викладання; може бути розглянута в розрізі концепції когнітивного навантаження, широко використовуваній у багатьох країнах Європи та Азії як стратегічно важливій ініціативі інституційної інтернаціоналізації. Найбільш наочним вираженням концепції є техніка конструктивістського узгодження, базована на ідеї, що в конструктивно узгодженій системі всі компоненти (заплановані результати навчання, види діяльності під час викладання / навчання, завдання для оцінювання тощо) узгоджені між собою, поєднуються й базуються на використанні англійської мови як провідного засобу викладання.

Здійснений аналіз дозволяє дійти висновків, що методологія викладання за допомогою англійської мови щодо проблематики міжнародної освіти передбачає постійний професійний розвиток викладачів з урахуванням принципів проблемно зорієнтованого викладання / навчання.

Ключові слова: англійська як мова викладання, міжнародна освіта, інтернаціоналізація, конструктивістське узгодження, когнітивне навантаження.

Introduction

The ever more expanding role of the English language as the lingua franca within the sector of higher education worldwide has created the basis for international education and the process of higher educational institutions internationa-lizing. Historically, the term international education has been developed to describe international dimensions of higher education (Green & Olson, 2003). Responding to the process of globalization and seeking to prepare students for success in the globally integrated economic environment, higher educational institutions around the world during the last couple of decades have been struggling to internationalize their curricula, to promote cross-cultural understanding, to provide opportunities for the development of foreign-language skills, etc. At the same time the development of the Universities' physical presence overseas has been identified by many as the main intended outcome of internationalization.

"International education is an all-inclusive term encompassing three major strands: (a) international content of the curricula, (b) international movement of scholars and students concerned with training and research, and (c) arrangements engaging U.S. education abroad in technical assistance and educational programs" (Harari, 1972). "International education addresses both approach and content. In terms of content, it assumes that a subject or discipline can no longer be understood if it focuses only on national experience. In terms of approach, international education calls for presenting a subject in an international framework so that students are aware of the interrelatedness of all nations and the commonality of such problems as poverty and discrimination" (Burn, 1980).

As such international education currently functions as an all-embracing term for institutional programs and activities that have international dimension, such as student and faculty exchange, study and work abroad, international professional capacities development activities, foreign language studies, international studies, area studies, joint degree programs, etc. In order to be successful and to justify all the investments made in them, any of such international collaborations need to be sustainable, mutually beneficial for international partners, based mostly on English as the world-wide accepted educational lingua franca. The last puts ahead a requirement for many universities to provide educational services in English rather than in their national language. As the result university teachers who were confident in their ability to provide quality teaching in their native language find themselves having to rethink their teaching approaches in order to teach their modules in English (Kling, 2013). At the same time, learners who may have excelled in their academic subjects when taught through their first language now need to adapt to learning their academic subjects through the medium of English, a language that they may have previously only studied as a school subject.

Thus, the aim of the paper to explore the nature of teaching and learning process in English in the context of English Medium Instruction and the methodology teachers make use of when implementing English Medium Instruction within the context of international education. The conducted critical analysis of English Medium Instruc-tion methodology with regard to international education allows for outlining the perspectives for the development of institutional English Medium Instruction strategies consistent with the principles of global education and internationalization process.

Research Methodology. The methodological basis of the work is represented by critical data analysis obtained by means of examination of scientific works on international higher education, global education, national and institutional strategies for incorporation of international education into existing University curricula. The method or scientific literature reviewing has been used to investigate scientific and pedagogical sources, information resources related to the concept of international education. The empirical work was aimed to investigate some of the relevant variables that might determine the pros and cons of English Medium Instruction methodology for effective international teaching-learning process in higher educational context. The validity of the obtained results is confirmed using various generally accepted and specific methods: theoretical generalization, abstraction, dialectical analysis, comparison and systematization, system approach.

Results and Discussion

English Medium Instruction (EMI) approach to international education differs from approaches such as content-based instruction, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), etc. in that EMI is an approach to the teaching disciplinary content and is taught by content specialists through the medium of English, whereas content-based instruction, ESP, EAP, etc. are approaches to the teaching of English and are normally taught by English specialists. EAP does not concern itself with the teaching of an academic subject in terms of its content, and EAP teachers are very rarely specialists in a subject such as Biology or Geography, rather, their background is likely to be in English language teaching (Macaro, 2018). While students' English language proficiency is assumed to develop during EMI instruction it is generally an incidental aspect of EMI. EMI teachers do not normally see their role as auxiliary English teachers, since the students' English is assumed to be the responsibility of the English subject teachers. The challenge for EMI teachers and learners reflects the complexity involved in teaching and learning academic knowledge when the language of instruction is not the dominant language for either teachers or students (Richards & Pun, 2021).

The starting point for this process is generally considered to be the world-wide acknowledgement of English as the lingua franca for the academia, the convergence of national systems of higher education, international education, etc. (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Knight, 2010; 2012; Myhovych, 2020). Current research in the field states that future-oriented liberal education must prepare students to function effectively in a multicultural society and in a world where national borders may sometimes blur. The capacity to communicate with people of other cultures begins with an understanding of one's own culture and its relationship to others where international education based on English within EMI methodology plays one of crucial roles. Thus, internationalizing of education can be viewed as the process determined by the ever more increasing need to strengthen partnerships and coordinate actions at international, national, regional levels in order to ensure the quality of higher education systems around the world (Knight, 2010; 2012).

As an example of EMI methodology for international education the notion of constructive alignment can be introduced, which can be used as a framework of effective international teaching- learning process. Good teaching is as much a function of institution wide infrastructure, as it is a gift with which some lucky academics are born. Thus, policies and procedures that encourage effective international teaching-learning process across the whole institution need to be put in place. And the first idea with regard to this agenda is acknowledging the importance that universities policy and procedure; the effect that it has on the quality of teaching cannot be overestimated since it touches all the levels of international teachinglearning process (Fig. 1. Constructive Alignments in International Education).

Figure 1. Constructive Alignment in International Education

The second of the most important ways of improving international teachinglearning process is shifting the focus from the teacher to the learner. And specifically to define what learning outcomes students are meant to achieve when teachers address the topics they are meant to teach. This is the fundamental idea that we want to get to, which is, it is not what we teach - it is what the students learn. One can define that through what are called learning outcomes. In order to look at this, we have to start with the problem of understanding. Often as teachers, if people ask, what is it that teachers are trying to do during the lesson, we would say, Oh, we want the students to understand, for example, expectancy value theory. And one throws around this word, "understand", as if one knows what it means. But if one stops and thinks about it, what is it that one wants students to do? One of possible answers might be around the niveu of expectancy value theory. For the students to do this, we would hope that they would have memorised the definition that we taught or we asked them to read in a book. We would ask them to study it, memorise it and then repeat it. Perhaps we want them to explain how it works in their own words. So we would ask them to paraphrase, for example, this is what we do in essays where we are students rather than using direct quotations. We ask them to write in their own words. So the evidence here of students being able to explain something in their own ideas is by using their own words, or perhaps we would like them to use the taught content, whatever we explained and taught in the lesson, we would like them to use that to illustrate that a problem could be accounted for. It could be rectified, could be solved in terms of expectancy. So here we would be looking at application of the ideas. And we got these are three examples showing the difference of what we mean when we say "understanding".

Thus, students reproduce content from lecture notes without any clear structure. It is what can be called regurgitating, which is to reproduce what we have given to students. They reproduce it back. Or they reproduce the content within the structure used by the lecturer. We want them to keep the structure that we have kept, and this is becoming the next step up. Develop their own structure, generate answers to anticipated examination questions. We adjust the structures from strategic reading of different sources to represent personal understandings. Thus, we want them to process it in some way, but also to control the examination requirements. Or perhaps we want them to develop an individual conception of the discipline from wide reading and reflection. Thus, we can see there are lots of different types of understanding that we would produce here.

This brings us towards the central idea of intended learning outcomes. The intended learning outcomes are statements, and they are written from the student's perspective, indicating the level of understanding and performance they are expected to achieve as a result of engaging in the teaching and learning experience. Although here we use the word understanding, we can not just stop at this and say, OK, we now want to say that students have to understand. And whatever it is that you are teaching them, we need to really interrogate that and think about what does the understanding mean. What do we want them to be able to do or demonstrate? And we also want them to be able to show that through their performance. We want some way of discriminating between students who have full mastery or partial or have some mastery of completing a task and so on. Our learning outcome is going to rely on verbs that go beyond saying students will demonstrate understanding they have to or students understand.

We started off with the idea of intended learning outcomes, and these then will inform what it is that we teach. And this is the teaching and learning activities. And then during the course or at the end of the course, the students will be assessed. And these are the assessment tasks 80s, but it's the intended learning outcomes that run all the way through. When we start off with the

ILOs, this is at the planning stage, then in the delivery stage we have the TLAs, which is the teaching and learning activities. We expect to see in the teaching and learning activities this is putting into practise what we said, we want our students to be able to do in the ILOs. And then at the end, we need to test to see whether the students can do this.

Figure 2. The Constructive Alignment Flow

As well at the institutional level, although they are beyond control of academia, but these are statements of what the graduates of a university are supposed to be able to do. Below that, there is the programme level, as a statement of what graduates from a particular degree programme should be able to do. Down below that, there is course level - a statement what students should be able to do at the completion of a given course. A lesson level can also be introduced where all of ILOs are set up for a lesson - that is what a student is going to be able to do by the end.

Now, why is this important for EMI? Firstly, it should be said that this is good practise for both EMI anonymize, thus it is a positive framework to put in place whatever language is being taught. It is important for EMI, though, because EMI gets messy due to the introduction of the second language. So we need to work out. We need a framework to help us to give us clarity to the teacher. The teacher when planning. Planning course and level content. And it gives clarity to the students as well over what it is they should be doing, and the way it gives us clarity is that it separates out language from content at the three different stages. It separates out at the planning stage. It helps us to give clarity over. Is this a course which is teaching content? Or does it teach language? And in what areas are we supporting language learning? And then in teaching, we can look at our teaching learning activities and really focusing on the content that should get taught and think about the language needs that are needed to support students to achieve those ILOs through the teaching and learning activities. And then at the end, the assessment tasks, it helps us to focus in here. On what is it that we are assessing? If you end up giving marks for language, it helps you to focus like, no, this isn't what the students intended learning outcomes for this course, language isn't one of those ILOs. Therefore, there should not be assessment for language at the end. Or one of the ILOs is to develop vocabulary English vocabulary within the specific discipline domain. And therefore we would expect to see teaching and learning activities to support students to learn that vocabulary. And then at the end, an assessment that evaluates to what extent they've learnt that vocabulary. As examples of constructive alignment techniques the following outline of international teaching-learning process can be proposed.

Conclusion

As it emerges from the performed analysis at a high level institution, institutions are supporting the idea of introducing English Medium Instruction approach to teaching. The implementation of constructive alignment principles as a part of English Medium Instruction methodology requires considerable teamwork. It requires colleagues to work together to identify the standards which by which you are going to implement the intended learning outcomes. And it all starts with the intended learning outcomes. And then finally, it needs review and evaluation. So you need to keep coming back to it. Returning to your ILOs, returning to your teaching and learning activities, returning to your assessment tasks and keep scrutinising and evaluating how well they are aligned. The growth in English Medium Instruction programmes will continue for both international and home students who will look for and expect engaging and effective courses. This approach gives us flexibility to respond to: changing student expectations; demands for more sustainable programmes; reaching new students. At the same time international teaching and learning process through English Medium Instruction is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon due to the nature of disciplinary knowledge and the specialized cognitive and communicative skills it makes use of. Provision of professional application opportunities for English

Medium Instruction methodology at hogher educational institutions should based on the assumption that English Medium Instruction teaching requires additional specialized knowledge and professional skills that are not normally addressed as part of the professional development of content teachers / lecturers. The opportunity for English Medium Instruction teachers to deepen their understanding of English Medium Instruction methodology application for international teaching-learning process might better equip them for the demands of teaching their subjects by means of the English language, as well as maintain their sense of professional expertise.

As a possible follow-up of the performed analysis the following perspective directions of further research can be outlined: the current and predicted uptake of English Medium Instruction methodology globally; different forms of English Medium Instruction that are currently being developed; implications for teacher education, teacher educators and materials developers; the most sustainable mechanisms of teacher education and development beyond the immediate period of engagement on a course; levels of English competence that enable English Medium Instruction teachers to provide quality instruction; the measurement of success of English Medium Instruction educational programme; possible change of language assessment systems and the issue of validity of bilingual examinations; psycholinguistic representations in the mental lexicon of abstract concepts encountered in academic subjects through English Medium Instruction; psycholinguistic and sociolinguis- tic effects on students' home language resulting from English Medium Instruction.

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