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University English-medium instruction in Türkiye – what instructors say

  • Yavuz Kurt ORCID logo EMAIL logo und Yasemin Bayyurt
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 17. Oktober 2023
Language Learning in Higher Education
Aus der Zeitschrift Language Learning in Higher Education Band 13 Heft 2

Abstract

The rise of English-medium instruction (EMI) and the increasing number of international students in Turkish universities call for a change in the language support programs that prepare students for EMI. English as a lingua franca (ELF) is a promising perspective to achieve a more linguistically and culturally inclusive pedagogy. This paper reports the views of 10 English language instructors who took a teacher training course on ELF and experimented with ELF-aware teaching with several lessons in the classroom. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the instructors to explore how they conceptualized the relationship between ELF and their teaching context, and how they evaluated their teaching experiences. Results reveal that when preparing students for EMI, instructors saw ELF as a useful frame of reference that promoted students’ confidence, motivation, and critical thinking. Instructors’ teaching preferences were shaped by the curriculum they were supposed to follow, the materials at their disposal, and the characteristics of their learners. Findings highlight the need to equip students for the variability in the English language, and become more confident with their linguistic skills as multilingual speakers, as well as engage in critical thinking about English and its use in their context.

Keywords: English as a lingua franca; English-medium instruction; Higher Education; multiculturalism; multilingualism
Corresponding author: Yavuz Kurt, Marmara University, İstanbul, Türkiye, E-mail:

Funding source: Boğaziçi University Research Fund

Award Identifier / Grant number: 12675

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the English language instructors who took part in this study. This paper is based on the Ph.D. study of the first author. This study was approved by Boğaziçi University Institutional Review Board for Research with Human Subjects.

  1. Research funding: This study was supported by Boğaziçi University Research Fund (Grant number: 12675).

  2. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that there is no potential conflict of interest.

  3. Data availability: The complete data set used in this study is not stored in publicly available archives. Further inquiries regarding the data can be directed to the corresponding author, [concealed for anonymity], or the second author, [concealed for anonymity].

Appendix

Guiding questions used during the semi-structured interviews

  1. How do you define ELF?

  2. What do you think about ELF and ELT?

  3. What comes to your mind when I say ELF-aware lesson plan?

  4. How did your experiments with ELF-aware teaching go?

  5. What kind of factors shaped your decisions when designing the lessons?

  6. Can you talk about your lesson planning and delivery processes?

  7. Why did you incorporate ELF in your lessons in the particular ways you did?

  8. Was your ELF-aware teaching experiences any different from your regular teaching practices? If so, how?

  9. How did you feel during the experimental lessons?

  10. Did you have any additional teaching ideas that you were not able to put into practice because of various reasons?

  11. Did you face any challenges when preparing or delivering the lessons?

  12. As far as you observed, how did the students receive your lessons?

  13. How successful do you think your lessons were in achieving the learning aims?

  14. Which aspects or parts of the lessons were more effective or less effective?

  15. How do you think your experimental teaching practice will affect the students if it will in any way?

  16. How do you evaluate your experiences within this study?

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Received: 2023-01-18
Accepted: 2023-08-23
Published Online: 2023-10-17
Published in Print: 2023-10-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. Introduction: the variety of realities of language learning and teaching in Higher Education throughout the world. A step forward to keep on sharing ideas
  4. Research Articles
  5. Model United Nations: a thematic analysis of Japanese EFL students’ reflections on intercultural communicative competence
  6. Japanese tertiary students’ perceptions of group work with explicit scaffolding
  7. A critical literacy class: beyond English learning and teaching in Higher Education
  8. Predictors of English Medium Instruction academic success in Vietnamese Higher Education
  9. University English-medium instruction in Türkiye – what instructors say
  10. Testing English for Medical Purposes: the effects of traditional and distance education on learning outcomes
  11. Using corpora in teaching vocabulary to advanced EFL learners in a higher education context
  12. Digital multimodal PechaKucha presentations in ESP: insights from students’ learning experiences
  13. From face-to-face tuition to online classes: ‘Re-styling’ a course of English for academic purposes
  14. Turning the tables on online exam cheating via language mediation tasks
  15. Attitudes to Spanish language variation. A study on Portuguese students of Spanish as a Foreign Language
  16. “Mur de paroles” – ou tentative de promotion de l’expression orale en langue française
  17. Activity Reports
  18. « Being plurilingual is a gift we make to ourselves. » : amener les étudiants à valoriser et développer leurs compétences plurilingues et pluriculturelles
  19. International collaborative tasks in language courses for engineers integrated in a multidimensional teaching format
  20. Training citizens as users of languages and digital technology. Real-world tasks to tame the digital wilds
https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2023-2034
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
English as a lingua franca; English-medium instruction; Higher Education; multiculturalism; multilingualism

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Introduction
  3. Introduction: the variety of realities of language learning and teaching in Higher Education throughout the world. A step forward to keep on sharing ideas
  4. Research Articles
  5. Model United Nations: a thematic analysis of Japanese EFL students’ reflections on intercultural communicative competence
  6. Japanese tertiary students’ perceptions of group work with explicit scaffolding
  7. A critical literacy class: beyond English learning and teaching in Higher Education
  8. Predictors of English Medium Instruction academic success in Vietnamese Higher Education
  9. University English-medium instruction in Türkiye – what instructors say
  10. Testing English for Medical Purposes: the effects of traditional and distance education on learning outcomes
  11. Using corpora in teaching vocabulary to advanced EFL learners in a higher education context
  12. Digital multimodal PechaKucha presentations in ESP: insights from students’ learning experiences
  13. From face-to-face tuition to online classes: ‘Re-styling’ a course of English for academic purposes
  14. Turning the tables on online exam cheating via language mediation tasks
  15. Attitudes to Spanish language variation. A study on Portuguese students of Spanish as a Foreign Language
  16. “Mur de paroles” – ou tentative de promotion de l’expression orale en langue française
  17. Activity Reports
  18. « Being plurilingual is a gift we make to ourselves. » : amener les étudiants à valoriser et développer leurs compétences plurilingues et pluriculturelles
  19. International collaborative tasks in language courses for engineers integrated in a multidimensional teaching format
  20. Training citizens as users of languages and digital technology. Real-world tasks to tame the digital wilds
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