How does English as a medium of instruction (re)shape university students’ in-class behavioural patterns?

• In Event: Publication mentoring workshop session
  In Special Session: Language Pedagogy

Proposal

While the effectiveness of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has often been discussed with the growing trend to teach university courses in English, the impact of EMI on students’ psychological and behavioural matters has not yet been widely investigated. A major aim of this study (part of a PhD thesis) was to investigate whether bilingual students’ school-related experiences change based on the language they speak. In particular, this study focused on how EMI changes how university students pay attention and react to experiencing a negative emotion in the educational setting. Taking the stance that bilinguals are those who function with two languages every day (Grosjean, 2008), this study understands university students who follow a degree programme taught in English to be bilinguals.

A total of 41 Korean-L1 participants were recruited from EMI universities in South Korea and the United Kingdom. The participants were categorised into one of the four bilingual groups: (a) Korea-based monocultural students who have limited or no exposure to English-speaking culture prior to current university study, (b) Korea-based bicultural students who were taught in English outside of Korea but returned to Korea for higher education, (c) UK-based monocultural students who were educated in Korea but are now enrolled in a UK university, and (d) UK-based bicultural students who have been educated in English outside of Korea and now go to a university in the UK.

While it has been indicated elsewhere that bilinguals’ cognition and emotion changes based on the language they speak (Dewaele, 2010; Grosjean, 2012), it cannot be assumed that the participants in this study also follow this trend, given that they learned English as an educational language later in life. In the educational setting where classes are taught in a second language, it is not expected that the students’ behaviour would change based on the language mode. This study investigated whether participants act differently (both mentally and behaviourally) based on the language mode and whether group differences were found among the four bilingual types.

As multiple case studies, participants completed a set of questionnaires online in English and Korean in random order. Participants were asked to imagine a potentially embarrassing lecture scenario and were then asked to rate how likely they would be to think, feel, and react in the given context (5-point scale). The study aimed to predict the participants’ behavioural tendency (productive and undesirable behaviours) by their psychological orientation (self-focus and behaviour-focus) considering the four bilingual types.

As a part of quantitative data analysis, a generalised linear mixed model was conducted. Stepwise regression was used to maximise the power of prediction with minimum number of predicting variables. The productive behavioural outcome in Korean was best predicted by self-focus and behaviour-focus. The productive behavioural outcome in English was best predicted by self-focus, behaviour-focus and the interaction between the two. The undesirable behavioural outcome in Korean was best predicted by self-focus, behaviour-focus and the interaction between the two. The undesirable behavioural outcome in English was best predicted by self-focus only. No effect of bilingual type was found, except for the productive behavioural outcome in English (F=3.19, p<.01). Tukey’s test showed that the Korea-based monocultural group was significantly different from both the Korea-based bicultural group (p-adjusted=.05) and the UK-based bicultural group (p-adjusted<.05), but not from the UK-based monocultural group (p-adjusted=.45).

When the results were further examined through the qualitative framework, two unexpected findings were observed regarding the effect of bilingual type. First, while the other three groups of bilinguals showed a marked increase between self-focus and undesirable behaviour, the Korea-based bicultural group exhibited a reversed pattern. Such a trend was observed in both language conditions, implying that the Korean students who spent some time in a foreign country and now attend university in Korea show a distinctive behaviour pattern. Second, the Korea-based monocultural group showed different behavioural pattern based on the language mode, compared to the other three groups who instead showed similarities between the two language conditions; these two matters will be discussed in detail.

This research is unique in that it examined the impact of EMI in higher education on non-native English-speaking students’ behaviour, which is an under-researched topic. This study reflects the current trend of teaching in English in Asian countries and provides a platform for discovering the interplay between language, culture and education, calling for educators to consider the effectiveness of EMI from a different angle.

Author

• Meekyoung Mia Kim, University of Cambridge