EMI

English-Medium Instruction: the use of English as the language of instruction for academic subjects in contexts where English is not the first language of the majority of the population. Macaro (2018) defines it as teaching academic subjects (other than English itself) through English in such settings, typically without an explicit dual content-and-language objective.

Origin and Scope

Dearden (2014, English as a Medium of Instruction — A Growing Global Phenomenon, British Council) surveyed 55 countries and documented rapid expansion of EMI in higher education and, increasingly, in secondary schools. Drivers include internationalisation of universities, recruitment of fee-paying international students, perceived employability gains, and policy emulation. Macaro (2018, English Medium Instruction: Content and Language in Policy and Practice, Oxford University Press) provides the most comprehensive synthesis to date, structured around terminology, policy, participants, classroom instruction, and learner strategies.

Distinguishing from CLIL and CBI

Feature	EMI	CLIL	CBI
Explicit language objective	No	Yes (dual focus)	Yes
Typical setting	Higher education in non-Anglophone countries	European primary/secondary schools	North American K-12 and post-secondary
Teacher background	Subject specialist	Subject + language trained	Language teacher with content
Curriculum integration	Subject curriculum unchanged	Integrated content-language curriculum	Language curriculum organised around content

The distinction matters for staffing and assessment: EMI lecturers are typically subject experts whose institutions assume English proficiency rather than develop it; CLIL teachers are expected to plan for both content and language outcomes.

Implementation Issues

Macaro (2018) and the EMI Oxford Research Group catalogue recurring concerns. Lecturers report reduced lesson interactivity, slower pace, and difficulty assessing nuance. Students report comprehension gaps, reluctance to participate, and reliance on translation strategies. Institutional policy often presupposes a B2 or C1 CEFR threshold for staff and students, but enforcement varies widely. Co-existing first-language pedagogical traditions in lectures, seminars, and assessment surface as friction points when transposed into English.

Application

Sustainable EMI provision usually combines: lecturer development for English-medium teaching (not generic English courses); pre-sessional and in-sessional EAP support for students; bilingual or translanguaging-tolerant policies; and longitudinal monitoring of content learning, not only language gains. Treating EMI as a purely linguistic problem, Macaro argues, misses its character as a content-pedagogy problem first.

Critiques

Critics raise concerns about content loss in subjects taught through a weaker language, equity effects favouring privileged-English students, and language-policy displacement of national languages from advanced academic registers. Empirical evidence on whether EMI produces measurable English gains remains mixed.

References

• Dearden, J. (2014). English as a Medium of Instruction — A Growing Global Phenomenon. British Council.
• Macaro, E. (2018). English Medium Instruction: Content and Language in Policy and Practice. Oxford University Press.
• EMI Oxford Research Group (ongoing). Department of Education, University of Oxford.