EMI or TMI? A Study on the Effect of English Medium Instruction on Students’ Success and Motivation

Abstract

English-medium instruction (EMI) has become a widely adopted approach especially in higher education institutions not only in Europe but also in Turkey. Students may go for departments with 100% English medium instruction as well as departments with 30% EMI, which are offered by many universities in Turkey. However, depending on the medium of instruction in their future departments, students may show different performance and attitude even when they are at prep schools. A quantitative case study was conducted to see if there is a relationship between the perceptions and motivation well as the success of EMI students at prep school. Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) developed by Gardner in 1985 was utilized as the main data collection tool. The data includes responses of prep school students in a public university who were randomly chosen from the full EMI departments as well as 30% EMI departments. Considering the success of the students, the results showed that that there is a decrease in the achievement of the 100% EMI students while there is an increase in the performance of 30% EMI students. Furthermore, no significant relationship was found between the test scores and motivation level of the students. The study adds to our understanding of how different the students might perceive learning English for further academic instruction while they are receiving English courses at prep school lighting up the pathway for curriculum design studies of prep school programs.

Keywords

• English medium instruction
• prep-school programme
• academic instruction

References

1. Behan, L., Turnbull, M., & Spek, J. (1997). The proficiency gap in late French immersion: Language use in collaborative tasks. Le Journal de l’immersion, 20, 41-44.
2. Benson, C. (2008). Summary overview. Mother tongue-based education in multilingual contexts. In C. Haddad (Ed.), Improving the quality of mother tongue-based literacy and learning: Case Studies from Asia, Africa and South America (pp. 2-11). Bangkok: UNESCO.
3. Çiğdem, A. (1994). Implications of Student Attitudes Towards the Program of English in Mersin School of Tourism and Hotel Management (Adana: Çukurova University, 1994) Unpublished MA thesis.
4. Coleman, J. A. (2006). English-medium Teaching in European Higher Education. Language Teaching (2016), 39: 1-4.
5. Collins, A. B. (2010). English-Medium Higher Education: Dilemma and Problems. Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 39, 97-110.
6. Dalton-Puffer, C. (2011). Content-and-Language Integrated Learning: From Practice to Principles? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 182-204. doi:10.1017/S0267190511000092
7. Demirel, O. (1990). Yabancı Dil Öğretimi. Ankara: Usem Yayınları.
8. Gardner, R.C. (1985), Attitude/Motivation Test Battery AMTB, retrieved from http://publish.uwo.ca/~gardner/docs/englishamtb.pdf

9. Gardner, R.C. (1985) Social Psychology and Second Language Learning. The Role of Attitudes and Motivation (London, Ontario: Edward Arnold).
10. Gardner, R.C. (2004), Attitude/Motivation Test Battery AMTB, Manual, retrieved from http://publish.uwo.ca/~gardner/docs/AMTBmanual.pdf
11. Hergüner, G.(1990). An Evaluation of the Graduate Level Preparatory Course as a Needs Assessment for a New Syllabus Design for Basic Science (Adana: Çukurova University) Unpublished MA thesis.
12. Hu, G., Lei, J. (2014). English-medium Instruction in Chinese Higher Education: a case study, Journal of Higher Education (2014) 67:551-567.
13. Kırkgoz Y. (2005). Motivation and Student Perception of Studying in an English-medium University, Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, Vol.1, No.1, April 2005.
14. Kırkgöz, Y. (2014). Students’ Perceptions of English Language versus Turkish Language Used as the Medium of Instruction in Higher Education in Turkey, International Periodical for Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic Volume 9/12 Fall 2014, p. 443-459
15. Kirkpatrick, A. (2014). The Language(s) of HE: EMI and/or ELF and/or Multilingualism? The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, Vol. 1 No. 1, 2014, pp. 4-15.
16. Littlewood, W., & Yu, B. (2011). First language and target language in the foreign language classroom. Journal of Language Teaching, 44(1), 64-77.
17. Sert, N. (2008). The Language of Instruction Dilemma in the Turkish Context, System 36 (2008) 156-171.
18. Spolsky, B. (2004) Language Policy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.