Researcher Year Participants Research Method Location Research Findings
Wu. Yen-Ling 2018 Grade 4 Action Research Taichung 1. The overall speaking proficiency has increased especially for the lower proficiency level students.
2. Obstacles solved throughout the action research process.
Kuo, Yi-Chieh 2017 Grade 2 Experimental Research
Tainan 1. Students with EMI outperform the students in bilingual instruction in listening comprehension with positive responses about the curriculum.
2. Positive attitudes towards EMI.
Lin, Yi Chun 2017 Grade 3 Experimental Research
Taipei 1. There is no significant difference found between the experimental group and control group.
2. The majority of students have a positive attitude towards EMI.
Chen, Kuo-Ying 2016 Grade 6 Experimental Research
Taoyuan 1. The overall listening proficiency has increased with a positive attitude towards EMI, however, students confirm that L1 is
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needed.
2. The listening comprehension of low proficiency students have improved significantly and there is a significant difference between the experiment group and the control group of the medium level students.
3. Learning attitude would affect performance.
Chen, Yi-Chun 2016 Grade 5 Experimental research
New Taipei city
1. No significant differences on achievement test was found in the experimental group (62% of L2) and control group (17% of L2).
2. Students in high proficiency level get used to the English instruction faster while students in low proficiency level did not benefit from the experiment.
3. Anxiety level were not been affected by different amount of English instructions.
Li, Xiou-Jin 2014 Grade 4 Experimental Research with qualitative data
analysis
Pingtung 1. Students are motivated by EMI.
2. No significant difference in achievement was found between the experimental group and control group.
3. Obstacles arose when teaching abstract nouns, classroom management is harder when using L2.
4. Positive attitude to EMI as well as L1 usage.
Chang Yu-Ying 2010 University students
Quantitative Research
Taipei 1. Although students do not think they have comprehended the lecture, they do not show negative attitudes and they agreed that EMI help them with English learning.
2. The participants think that EMI helped them improved in English proficiency level especially in listening.
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Lin Yen-Chin 2007 Grade 5 Case study Chiayi 1. Problems arose when adopting EMI, such as communication breakdowns between teachers and students, spend a lot of time on explaining course content and too much attention on the lower achiever leads to increase in anxiety.
2. Suggestions to overcome the obstacles.
3. Students perceived the L1 use is needed.
Tai, Feng-Ying 2003 Grade 10 Qualitative research
Kaohsiung 1. Students have positive perceptions to English dominated instruction (95% L2 with 5% L1)
2. English dominated instruction lower the anxiety of English learning.
3. Students perceived their improvement in both listening and speaking.
4. Students show needs in L1 in the particular fields.
From this research in different regions, interestingly, most of the research participants either have improved in their English achievement results or have a positive attitude towards English learning. The only research that has a rise in students’ anxiety is because the
researcher noticed that she put too much focus on these lower proficiency students. When comparing these research findings in Taiwan, I discovered some issues and inferences listed below.
First of all, EMI is defined as English as a medium of instruction, among the researches, various terms were adopted, such as Teach English Through English (TETE), English-only instruction, English-Medium instruction, using English to teach English, and Whole English
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teaching. Whether it is a 100% English classroom environment is also different in the
research. As Tai (2003), used the term English Dominated Instruction and by her meaning is a 95% of English usage. In Chen’s research, only 62% is considered a large amount of English usage. In the current research, by definition, the aim is for 100% usage of English
instructions. I agreed with Turnbull’s ideas that once the L1 is allowed, it is difficult to limit the use of L1. Considering that in every process, L1 is always easier and faster to adopt, once the teacher has adopted L1 as an excuse, the genuine communication may not happen and therefore L2 would not be acquired. As I wanted to encourage the students to speak more in English, have the lessons well prepared, and being a good language model is therefore very important.
Second, although we have seen research in the Western countries of the EMI approach with a negative social cost that one might lose the identity of their nation, or the native language is at a lower social status, it seems quite different in Taiwan. I inferred the reasons that unlike English-only being a top-down policy in the United States, which might be seen as a political or social cultural problem of the minority countries, however, the situation in Taiwan is quite different. First, English is known as a global language that is widespread and everyone is eager to learn. Second, the education system adopted EMI gradually and as volunteering for the university to decide, therefore, it is not as a top-down policy which forces everybody to accept. Third, there is no threat of losing the Chinese language.
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Third, the outcomes are rather positive, or not as negative, after the adoption in EMI.
For example, in Chang’s research (2010), there is the claim that although the university students do not think they have fully comprehended the lecture, they perceived they are improving in their academic results, of which coincided with the research done by the British Council of 55 countries worldwide of the EMI policy, where the researcher stated “Although public opinion is not wholeheartedly in support of EMI, especially in the secondary phase, the attitudes can be described as ‘equivocal’ or ‘controversial’ rather than being ‘against’ its introduction and/or continued use” (Dearden, 2015).
Last but not least, the studies shown in Table 2.1 gives one an insight into the challenges of EMI adoption from different regions in Taiwan. Teachers can be discouraged by the
problem that arose in their classrooms. The obstacles of communication breakdowns, classroom management problems, and abstract words explanations, should be overcome as the monolingual teachers will also be faced with these problems. From my point of view, the most important thing in my classroom is how to keep the students motivated, and how does a teacher design interesting teaching materials. Furthermore, when it comes to the problem that L1 is needed from the perspective of the students, I was an English learner, and from my own experiences, to be fully immersed in an English environment is the best way to learn,
especially when the time allocated to English is very limited, and the L1 used in the classroom is considered as shortsighted.
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From the above discussion on the research found in Taiwan, I have noticed that the current research is very different in three ways. First, the current research considered that the real life scenario is one of the most important issues in the curriculum design, and therefore, I have adopted the Task-based Language Teaching approach, which other researchers have probably adopted, however, without the implementation of EMI. Second, the current research is an action research which helps this teacher/researcher to first investigate and then solve the problem, same as the action research by Wu (2018), the current research focuses on both listening and speaking, and the aural performance is further investigated as compared to Wu’s research. Furthermore, I am also looking for other unexpected outcomes as well as obstacles in the four skills. Third, the four perspectives of learning attitudes were different from the other researches in Taiwan. The current research would like to investigate the attitudes toward teaching materials, teaching styles, motivations, and self-learning, which are different from the motivation in Li’s (2014) research, and with different perspectives of learning attitudes as compared to Lin’s (2017) research.