E-learning in English Medium Instruction (EMI): Academic language for university students

List of tables

Table 1. EMI students’ language knowledge perception vs. perceived needs

Table 2. A summary of the modules and their main features

Table 3. Implementation of the modules at the University of Extremadura (academic years 2020–21, 2021–22)

Table 4. Results from the piloting of the modules

Table 5. List of activities for introductory module ‘Creating outlines’

Table 6. Rubric to assess introductory module ‘Creating outlines’

Table 7. List of activities for module 1 ‘Concept maps’

Table 8. Peer-assessment rubric on ‘Concept maps’

Table 9. Rubric to assess module 1 ‘Concept maps’

Table 10. List of activities for module 2 ‘Writing definitions’

Table 11. Rubric to assess module 2 ‘Writing definitions’

Table 12. List of activities for module 3 ‘Writing summaries’

Table 13. Rubric to assess module 3 ‘Writing summaries’

Table 14. List of activities for module 4 ‘Reporting data’

Table 15. Rubric to assess module 4 ‘Reporting data’

Table 16. List of activities for module 5 ‘The language of presentations’

Table 17. Rubric to assess module 5 ‘The language of presentations’

Table 18. List of activities for module 6 ‘Writing Abstracts’

Table 19. Rubric to assess module 6 ‘Writing abstracts’

Acknowledgements

The materials and the rest of the contents described in this book have been developed under the research project ‘Diseño de entornos virtuales de aprendizaje colaborativo para la enseñanza integrada de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras (AICLE) en la Educación Superior adaptados a la Universidad de Extremadura (ICLUEx)’ – ‘Developing virtual collaborative learning environments for content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in Higher Education adapted to the University of Extremadura’ (project number: IB18055), Junta de Extremadura European Regional Development Fund – ERDF.

I would like to express my gratitude to the entire ICLUEx project team¹ including Rafael Alejo, Irene Castellano, Marta Martín, Laura Fielden, Juan de Dios Martínez, Lucía Blázquez, Cecilia Calderón and Ana Pérez) for their invaluable contribution to the successful development of the project and its outcomes. I would also like to extend my thanks to the lecturers and students from the university of Extremadura who have inspired the design and participated in the piloting of the seven learning modules that make up this book, which I hope will be useful to other lecturers and students involved in the process of teaching and learning disciplinary content through English at university settings.

Lastly, I am also very grateful to James McCue for assistance in language editing.

Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the publication lies entirely with the author.

1 https://l2earnuex.wixsite.com/icluex/research-team

Introduction

This book focuses on helping university students with some of the linguistic issues that they face when confronted with learning in English in their graduate or post-graduate degree programmes.

The use of English to teach content subjects in Higher Education has risen significantly over the last 20 years (Wächter & Maiworm 2014) and has been accompanied by a steadily growing research production (see Macaro 2018, 2022, for a review). Both strong points and difficulties in this practice have been identified. In relation to the latter, the shortage of adequate materials for teaching through a second language has been a recurrent issue in the research literature, in general, (Mehisto et al. 2008) and has been specifically emphasized by Higher Education lecturers (Aguilar & Rodríguez 2012; Pérez-Cañado 2020, 2021; Piquer-Píriz & Castellano-Risco 2021). At the same time, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been depicted as a powerful ally when teaching contents through a second language (see Fernández-Fontecha 2008; Pérez Torres 2015; Piquer-Píriz et al. 2021 or Montaner-Villalba & Gimeno-Sanz 2021, for some examples). Nowadays, learning, particularly in university contexts, takes place in multiple environments: face-to-face in lecture halls, more reduced seminars or in more practical environments such as labs and also through learner mobility and immersion in work situations. But, apart from all these on-site contexts, learning can also take place online. Thus, learners receive different kinds of input, not only from their lecturers but also from their peers, and there is also a constant flow of information on the internet through social media and multiple technologies that can be put at the service of effective methodologies.

Furthermore, in contexts in which English is used as Medium of Instruction (EMI), students would particularly need to develop their academic English in order to cope efficiently with the disciplinary contents that are presented to them in a language that is not their mother tongue.

This book intends to assist EMI students with their linguistic needs by offering online, self-study resources for university students enrolled in English-Taught Programmes (ETP) in which disciplinary subjects are taught through the medium of English. It offers a package of self-study resources consisting of seven modules for university students that were designed after conducting specific research into EMI students’ linguistic needs in terms of academic genres, and discursive functions. These outputs derived from a funded research project, ‘Developing virtual collaborative learning environments for content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in Higher Education adapted to the University of Extremadura’². The needs analysis served as the basis for the design and development of the materials included in the book. Seven modules were designed on the following topics: Creating outlines, concept maps, writing definitions, writing summaries, reporting data, the language of presentations and writing abstracts. All these modules were piloted with students in different degree programmes at the University of Extremadura (see Table 3, on page 31). The piloting confirmed the suitability of the materials for EMI undergraduate as well as postgraduate learners and the benefits of following a genre-based approach in this specific context.