This presentation discusses how different policies on EMI result in differing educational practices and environments, which impact on students’ perceptions of the nature of the shared medium, English, and their beliefs in monolingual NES norms and constraints of them as well as their understanding and appreciation of multilingualism and diversity.
This presentation discusses the ways in which different policies on EMI (English-medium instruction) result in differing educational practices and environments, including the ratio of international students and staff members, which in turn have impact on students’ perceptions of the nature of the shared medium, English, and their beliefs in monolingual NES (native English speaker) norms and constraints of them as well as their understanding and appreciation of multilingualism and diversity in different EMI contexts. The research site is located in a multilingual university in Tokyo with the largest international student population among the Japanese universities. Within this multilingual university setting, there are intra-university differences in the practices of EMI among different schools and departments depending on different policies deployed by them. The presentation illustrates how these differences in policies could lead to different practices and become a driving force for differing perceptions of students towards monolingualism, multilingualism and diversity. This is discussed on the basis of the analyses of the data collected from questionnaires and interviews conducted in two different EMI contexts in the same university in Japan, supported also by classroom observation and the recording of interaction and its discourse analysis.
