Introduction
As an object of research interest, EMI can be considered a relative latecomer to the discipline of applied linguistics. Ernesto Macaro in his 2018 volume on EMI, for example, reports only 16 published studies before the year 2000, noting a lack of even a mention of EMI in pre-twenty-first-century reviews of Content Based Instruction (CBI) (Macaro, 2018: 3). Indeed, there is still much to be understood about EMI and how it relates to other more widely studied and well-established concerns in applied linguistics related to CBI, such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and even English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (Airey, 2016).
One aspect of EMI that most typically characterizes it as being different from those other related fields of inquiry is its relative absence of explicit linguistic aims. In other words, whereas in CBI, CLIL, ESP and so on there is usually some explicit attention to language, the âEâ in EMI is supposedly not a central concern: ââ(l)earning in Englishâ is not the same as âlearning Englishâ, and teaching in English is not at all the same as teaching Englishâ (Carroll, 2015: 35, emphasis added). By the same token, although EMI lecturers often report that they do not see their role as subject teachers as one conflated with language teaching â indeed nor do they so desire (Airey, 2012; Aguilar, 2017) â clearly they also hope that their students benefit from their classes in a kind of âtwo-for-oneâ deal: students can study their discipline, and also gain domain-specific literacy in English (BaĆıbek et al., 2014; Dafouz, 2018; Kim & Tatar, 2017; Turhan & Kırkgöz, 2018; Yeh, 2012). At the same time, even though they do not see themselves as language instructors, EMI lecturers also report worries as to studentsâ ability to cope in English (Belhiah & Elhami, 2014; Byun et al., 2011; Doiz, Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2011; Gyong & Kim, 2014; Hu & Lei, 2014). Put another way, EMI lecturers often report an unwillingness to concern themselves with matters of language, yet language itself is frequently also expressed as a concern.
There is thus a kind of paradoxical relationship that EMI lecturers appear to have with respect to their view of themselves and their role: on the one hand, they clearly do not see themselves as language teachers, but it is also clear that language is not âoff the tableâ completely. As mentioned, it is widely reported that lecturers do expect that their classes make a positive language-related contribution to their studentsâ learning. Indeed, that expectation is also often reported by the students themselves (Huang, 2015; Jane Lee, 2014; Yeh, 2014) â yet students also do not ascribe a role of âlanguage teacherâ to their EMI lecturers (Airey, 2016; Dearden, 2018; Grift, Meijer & van der Salm, 2019). Nonetheless, it may be important to understand the extent to which the English language does become a focus in EMI settings, since the goal of âimproving Englishâ is widely cited as one of the main reasons for institutions implementing (and students taking) courses in English in the first place (Baker & HĂŒttner, 2017; Chapple, 2015; Chen, Ellen & Kraklow, 2015; Hu, Li & Lei, 2014; Jiang, Zhang & May, 2019). In any case, as argued by HĂŒttner (2019: 10), âthere is a fundamental integration of language and content learningâ that âcannot be viewed as separate monoliths.â Airey (2016: 73) echoes this sentiment in the context of defining putative boundaries among EAP, CLIL and EMI: âIn real...
