English-Medium Instruction at Universities

As universities throughout the world strive to internationalize, many are introducing English as a medium of instruction. Does this mean the end of other languages as languages of education and scholarship? Or can English co-exist with other languages in higher education? The chapters in this valuable and highly informative collection examine these and related questions against a range of specific contexts. This should be required reading for all involved in the internationalization of higher education.

-- Andy Kirkpatrick, Griffith University, Australia

From a range of thought-provoking perspectives, this book provides a timely and critical account of the challenges specific to various tertiary contexts where English-medium instruction (EMI) has been implemented. It raises important issues worthy of further reflection and research concerning the effectiveness of EMI, including the perennial challenge of integrating both language and content objectives and the pressing issue of how EMI can be implemented to foster rather than hinder a multilingual mindset.

-- Roy Lyster, McGill University, Canada

Universities worldwide are increasingly squeezed for resources, and many academics have become wary of buzzwords such as 'internationalization' and 'innovation', linked to 'mobility' and 'quality assurance'. There are concerns that English-medium instruction may sometimes be expediently used as a panacea for coping with market-driven needs without being well enough understood as the very complex phenomenon it is. Addressing many difficult questions head-on, this timely book will be a rich resource for all those who wish to think through for themselves the intricate issues involved in this global trend in an informed and critical way.

-- Barbara Seidlhofer, University of Vienna, Austria

This book should be a highly recommended reading for language policy makers at HEIs in their commitment to improve multilingualism amongst their students and foster internalization policies, EMI and CLIL practitioners, as well as researchers and teacher trainers.

-- Francisco Rubio Cuenca, Universidad de Cádiz, Spain * Ibérica 28 (2014): 225-256 *

Overall, this book provides an important contribution to work on EMI by bringing critical insights to bear on processes and practices - such as internationalisation, globalisation, and EMI - that are frequently regarded as inevitable, and treated as either progressive or oppressive. As such, it forms a useful resource for content and language instructors and university officials seeking to understand higher education language policies and their role(s) in them, as well as those seeking a deeper understanding of how EMI is perceived and practised around the world.

-- Matalena Tofa Charles Darwin University/Queensland University of Technology, Australia * TESOL in Context, Volume 24, No.1, 2014 *

This volume was a pleasure to read with each chapter making a significant contribution to the overall success of the volume. The volume will undoubtedly hold appeal to teacher-researchers across numerous contexts, especially those on the frontlines of university internationalization where issues of language policy and language planning are unavoidable.

-- Damian J. Rivers, Osaka University, Japan * LINGUIST List 24.832 (2013) *

I highly recommend the volume to those seeking guidance in how best to implement EMI in their instructional settings. The editors have done a very credible job of compiling the views of international experts in the field of EMI. The book is a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the integration of language and content and is a highly worthwhile read.

-- Donna M. Brinton * Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education Vol. 2:1 (2014) *

This volume is a truly interesting read, which I can fully recommend to all (novice) researchers and (advanced) students interested in EMI and language policy at university-level. As a last word, I would still like to acknowledge the impressive work done by the editors and publishers, who did not only do an excellent job in selecting the contributions, but also engaged in careful and detailed editing that provides readers with regular cross-references between chapters as well as a factually typo-free final product.

-- Ute Smit, University of Vienna, Austria * World Englishes, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 551–563, 2013. *

I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anyone who is interested in EMI at university level. Generally speaking, the papers gathered together here provide insights and questions which will be of most interest to researchers, policy-makers and senior managers in universities. The quality of several chapters is very high and overall the book’s contents repay close reading.

-- Brian Poole, National University of Singapore, Singapore * System 41 (2013) 880-893 *

The settings of these chapters are different in population scale and in socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural settings, as well as in the numbers of students investigated in empirical studies, and the value of the book should perhaps also be seen in this light. The book is able to illuminate these distinct cases with flesh-and-blood descriptions of individual interactions, survey responses, policy histories, or other significant moments that inevitably are part of a process that is at one and the same time at the political macro, meso, and microlevel; for that achievement it comes recommended by this reviewer.

-- Anne Fabricius, Roskilde University, Denmark * TESOL Quarter