Abstract
This paper hypothesizes that higher proficiency in the medium of instruction (MI) is a precondition for effective instructional communication (IC), with the latter being essential for higher cognitive processes, positive affects, and better performance in the learning environment. The reported study used questionnaires comprising open-ended questions to survey 341 content instructors who taught on 26 undergraduate programs with English as the MI (EMI) in a Saudi public university. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the resulting qualitative data, and the results reveal four themes. The first theme is the advantages of using the students’ mother tongue (Arabic in this case) as an MI; the findings show that doing so is related to robust IC, with the latter leading to better cognition, positive affects, and stronger performance in the learning environment. The second theme is the advantages of using EMI, which can be classified into three main areas: more educational resources, better international research collaboration, and more international job opportunities. The third theme is the use of code-switching in EMI classes because of poor IC; instructors code-switch for three purposes: cognitive, affective, and performance. The fourth theme is suggestions from participants for how to improve IC in EMI programs: the findings recommend the use of IC theory and linguistic relativity to examine EMI programs; also, collaboration among IC researchers, cognitive linguists, and EMI researchers will help understand how the MI influences students’ success; furthermore, policymakers must design curricula that consider the perspectives of content instructors and provide them with training to overcome several IC barriers in EMI programs.
Keywords
Introduction
Language is the primary tool of communication, and in a learning environment, higher proficiency in the medium of instruction (MI) enables instructors and students to communicate and interact successfully. Universities around the globe use the policy of English as the MI (EMI) for their internationalization and rankings (McKinley et al., 2022). Macaro (2018) defines EMI as “the use of English language to teach academic subjects other than English itself in countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” (p. 19). Other terms—such as content and language integrated learning, content-based instruction, and content-based language teaching—incorporate both language-learning and content-learning goals. The research on EMI is in its infancy (Galloway & Rose, 2021), and more research is needed to understand the EMI phenomenon. One of the main challenges that researchers encounter is the lack of MI theories; this lack of a theoretical framework hinders our understanding of how to examine the effectiveness of EMI programs, and applied linguists must use available theoretical frameworks from related fields such as communication and cognitive linguistics to understand the MI context.
Achieving communicative competence in a foreign language such as English is a complex process and requires strong effort and much time. Foreign language speakers frequently encounter problems communicating because they lack the linguistic resources necessary to succeed in their communicative endeavors (Palmer & Christison, 2018). Language influences not only communication but also cognitive processes. The theory of linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis) argues that people experience the world based on the structure of the language that they use habitually. According to linguistic relativity, language and its structures limit and determine human thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception (Hickmann, 2000). It is clear from linguistic relativity that the MI affects students’ thought processes, therefore students might have different thought processes based on their proficiency levels in the MI.
Drawing on evidence from recent research on EMI, we use instructional communication (IC) and linguistic relativity to understand (i) the advantages of using the students’ mother tongue (Arabic in Saudi universities in this case) as the MI and (ii) the benefits of using EMI based on the experiences of content instructors (CIs). We also explore code-switching purposes due to poor IC in the EMI context. Finally, we present suggestions from CIs for how to improve IC in EMI programs.
Theoretical Framework
Instructional Communication
This study uses IC as a theoretical framework to examine the MI in undergraduate programs. IC is an emerging interdisciplinary field at the intersection of educational psychology, pedagogy, and communication. It focuses on the interaction between instructors and students to enhance the teaching and learning processes. Mottet and Beebe (2006) define IC as “the process by which teachers and students stimulate meanings in the minds of each other using verbal and nonverbal messages” (p. 5) and Farris et al. (2018,) reported that the results of 40 years of IC research show that IC “influences student learning, motivation, and engagement as well as teacher satisfaction, credibility, self-efficacy, and a myriad of other positively and negatively valenced outcomes” (p. 5).
IC examines the human communication process across all learning situations, subjects, levels, and environments (Myers et al., 2016). For example, it studies effective teaching behaviors that support student learning, how instructors communicate with their students and provide feedback, and the students’ attitudes (Goodboy, 2018). IC focuses on all issues that arise from classroom discourse between instructors and students and among students. Since its recognition as a field of study in 1972 by the International Communication Association, IC researchers have examined the relationship between communication and three main areas: affective, behavioral, and cognitive (Myers, 2017). The affective concept examines students’ and instructors’ attitudes, values, and beliefs that are related to learning and teaching; positive affects help students succeed in learning content and create an engaging learning environment. The behavioral concept refers to students’ performance and physical movements in the learning environment. The cognitive concept examines how students remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create knowledge. Myers (2017) stressed that IC researchers generally “focus on the study of affective learning and cognitive learning rather than behavioral learning” (p. 712). Viewing language as the main tool of IC, how can the class have effective IC and students speak the MI as a foreign language or with limited proficiency, such as in the EMI context?
Linguistic Relativity
Concerning IC, the MI plays a significant role in increasing communication effectiveness in the learning environment to gain knowledge and master the content. Language influences the way in which people gain knowledge, understand, memorize, and act. Linguistic relativity stresses that people experience the world based on the structure of the language that they use habitually. Wolff and Holmes (2011) noted that linguistic relativity involves three main assumptions: (i) that languages can differ significantly in the meanings of their words and syntactic constructions; (ii) that the semantics of a language can affect how its speakers perceive and conceptualize the world; and (iii) that speakers of different languages think differently because language influences thinking. Language and thought are not separate: proficiency in a language affects people’s thoughts and cultural features, and limited MI proficiency might lead to little understanding, weak analysis, and inaccurate evaluation. Figure 1 illustrates the linguistic relativity hypothesis (Wolff & Holmes, 2011, p. 254). Given the strong relationship between language and thought, how can students succeed in the EMI context if they have limited MI proficiency or speak the MI as a foreign language?
Classes and subclasses of hypotheses on how language might affect thought. From Wolff and Holmes (2011) Copyright 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The theoretical framework helps us to form two central hypotheses: (i) higher MI proficiency among students and instructors is a precondition for effective IC; (ii) robust IC in the MI leads to higher cognitive processes, positive affects, and better performance in the learning environment.
Research Gaps and Questions
The present study contributes to the literature by examining IC challenges in EMI-policy programs based on the experiences of CIs. Although IC is crucial in education, most published studies did not explore IC in EMI programs. The present study uses IC as a theoretical framework to understand MI issues in EMI programs, and it contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between the MI and linguistic relativity. Also, few studies have examined the perspectives of CIs in EMI programs and presented the IC challenges that they experience in the learning environment. The present study fills the aforementioned gaps by (i) considering the views of CIs from different colleges and academic disciplines in a single study and (ii) understanding the voices of CIs by using qualitative methods to avoid several disadvantages of quantitative research methods in understanding participants’ experiences, given that most previous EMI studies used quantitative questionnaires (Curle & Derakhshan, 2021). In particular, the present study answers the following four questions based on the experiences of CIs in EMI programs.
Q1: In which areas does using a mother tongue as the MI have more IC advantages?
Q2: In which areas does EMI have more IC advantages?
Q3: What are the main purposes of code-switching as an IC strategy in EMI classes?
Q4: What are the suggested ways to increase the effectiveness of IC in EMI programs?
Literature Review
Views of Content Instructors
A CI is an instructor who teaches a subject (e.g., physics, engineering, and medicine) rather than a language, and CIs are essential stakeholders in an EMI environment (Macaro et al., 2021). Abouzeid (2021) concluded that curriculum designers in EMI programs should include instructors’ views regarding their students’ linguistic proficiency and learning needs. The opinions of CIs vary based on their countries, mother tongues, and scientific disciplines. Macaro et al. (2021) surveyed 461 EMI university lecturers from more than eight countries: the survey explored the teachers’ discipline, age, experience, professional development, teaching context, and the role of English proficiency in their professional capacity, and the findings showed that the views of CIs vary with discipline and country of residence; Macaro et al. concluded that instructors’ profiles remain heterogeneous because of the different EMI contexts. Some researchers (e.g., Lasagabaster, 2022; Macaro et al., 2020) have stressed that EMI teachers need professional development programs to teach effectively in an EMI environment. Training CIs will equip them with the required skills and strategies to teach in EMI contexts.
Medium of Instruction and Instructional Communication
The MI is a crucial factor in the success of a learning environment, and lack of solid MI command prior to embarking on teaching and learning can lead to poor IC. In a South African EMI context, De Jager and Evans (2013) found that misunderstandings arose mainly from the student teachers’ poor oral proficiency and inadequate speech-act realization patterns, indicating a lack of pragmatic awareness in South African EMI schools. In a Chinese context, McKinley et al. (2022) stressed that switching to EMI implementation caused social and academic issues for students and lecturers in Chinese higher education; those problems included unfair promotion opportunities, unequal access to EMI classes, inadequate learning outcomes, and poor teaching quality.
Higher MI proficiency leads to better cognition and understanding of the content. Espinas and Fuchs (2022) reviewed the literature on mathematics education and found that differences in the structures of languages and individual variations in language abilities are associated with students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. Also, Wilson (2021) found that low MI proficiency hinders students’ comprehension and achievements of learning outcomes in US public schools. Krabbe et al. (2021) stressed that human language is crucial for expressing complex and abstract ideas in physics: they found that MI proficiency correlates with the understanding of complex physics concepts, and they recommended that language promotion should be an inherent part of physics teaching.
The MI is also associated with students’ emotions and feelings. In a Hong Kong context, Hennebry and Gao (2021) found a relationship between students’ motivation and the MI: students in EMI classes had higher motivation and more-positive attitudes toward English than did students in classes with Chinese as the MI. Moreover, in a Japanese context, Thompson, Aizawa, et al. (2022) observed that students’ self-efficacy and other factors could predict success in an EMI course: students with stronger self-efficacy beliefs made more effort and considered course activities as development opportunities; their results highlight the need for self-efficacy development opportunities for students entering EMI study. In a similar study, Thompson, Takezawa, and Rose (2022) found that students in EMI business programs who had stronger self-efficacy beliefs succeed more in the programs than did students with weaker self-efficacy beliefs. In the context of universities in Saudi Arabia, Alhamami (2021) reported that (i) Saudi computer-science students preferred to learn computer subjects in Arabic, their native language, and (ii) their societal attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs significantly predicted their preferred MI. In the context of undergraduate healthcare programs, Alhamami and Almelhi (2021a) found that most healthcare students held negative attitudes toward the EMI policy, whereas instructors held more-positive beliefs toward EMI in healthcare programs; the researchers recommended that to design better EMI programs, policymakers should focus on improving students’ English proficiency and understanding stakeholders’ beliefs and attitudes.
The MI also correlates with students’ performance: students with higher MI proficiency achieve the program’s learning outcomes better than do those with lower MI proficiency. Alhamami (2022) highlighted that on 5-year engineering programs, engineering undergraduates with higher English proficiency achieve a higher cumulative GPA at the end. Espinas and Fuchs (2022) found that certain MIs meaningfully improve performance in several mathematical domains, providing strong evidence of a linguistic pathway in mathematical development. In the context of undergraduate science programs, Alhamami and Almelhi (2021b) found a strong positive correlation between students’ English proficiency in the first year and their achievement of program learning outcomes as indicated by their cumulative GPA; the researchers concluded that educationalists and program policymakers should direct more attention and interventions toward the MI. In a Spanish context, Block (2022) stressed that the EMI policy is problematic and presents more challenges to students and instructors; Block called for a contrarian and critical view of EMI or “the dark side of EMI.”
However, the EMI policy has advantages, as found by many researchers around the globe. Using EMI helps with sharing and collaboration among international institutions. Macaro (2018) stressed that one of the main advantages of EMI is the internationalization of education. In the context of Chinese universities, Gu et al. (2022) found that EMI instructors use different teaching materials for the same phenomenon to facilitate the understanding of students from various backgrounds in EMI classes; the researchers found that instructors use different materials to engage students with diverse proficiencies, and they incorporate semiotic resources to facilitate their teaching of content knowledge. Alhamami (2015) surveyed 27 Arabic-speaking scientists who emphasized that access to learning materials and research opportunities is the main advantage of the EMI policy, given that most published learning and research materials are in English.
Code-Switching in EMI Classes
Code-switching to the students’ mother tongue in EMI classes is a common phenomenon. In a Philippines context, Perfecto (2022) reported that instructors use different strategies such as direct translation, code-switching, and metalinguistic comparison and contrast; using various linguistic and semiotic resources allows more-efficient teaching and learning and more-active participation from students in EMI class activities. However, in a German context, Zhang and Lütge (2022) found that international students in a German university generally had negative views of code-switching in EMI; code-switching by local teachers was found to constrain the international students’ academic integration and social participation in the university because they did not speak German as their mother tongue. In a Chinese context, Zhou et al. (2021) found that students had positive attitudes toward code-switching as a helpful tool in comprehension and content learning, but some participants expressed reservations about accepting code-switching as a standard formal linguistic choice in EMI classes; the researchers emphasized that EMI teachers should recognize the linguistic resources of students in their teaching and incorporate them into classroom activities to promote biliteracy and the learning of academic content.
Methodology
Context
The reported study was conducted in a Saudi public university. In Saudi universities, most science, healthcare, and technological colleges use the EMI policy to teach science subjects such as chemistry, nursing, engineering, and biology, but the EMI policy presents IC issues in university classes because in their compulsory education, students are not familiar with learning content in English. In Saudi Arabia, Arabic is the MI of all subjects in elementary, intermediate, and secondary education, and it is the only official language, with all Saudis speaking Arabic as their mother tongue. Saudi students start taking English courses in elementary schools, and it is a core course in their curriculum in compulsory education. However, they finish high school with a limited English proficiency that does not qualify them to enroll in EMI university programs. Saudi universities have established a preparatory year to help students gain better English proficiency (McMullen, 2014), but having 1-year intensive courses in English implies gaps in secondary-school preparation for university programs (Johnson & Tweedie, 2017). In 2005, the Ministry of Education endorsed preparatory-year intensive English programs at all local higher education institutes to help Saudi first-year undergraduates enhance their linguistic and communicative competencies together (Barnawi & Al-Hawsawi, 2017). Unfortunately, the transition from Arabic as the MI in compulsory education to EMI in college programs poses IC challenges.
By implementing the EMI policy, Saudi universities can hire CIs of different nationalities. According to the official websites of the studied colleges in the targeted Saudi public university, their CIs come from diverse backgrounds: those in the colleges of science, engineering, healthcare, and computing are from different countries (e.g., Bangladesh, the UK, Egypt, the Philippines, India, Jordan, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, and the USA); they also finished their higher education in different countries, and they speak several mother tongues (e.g., Arabic, English, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu, French, Bengali, and Tamil). Table 1 lists the EMI undergraduate programs offered in the seven studied colleges.
EMI Undergraduate Programs Offered in Targeted University.
Instruments and Design
One of the primary purposes of qualitative methods is to examine the views and experiences of people in a specific context, given that qualitative methods focus on the meaning that people construct about a particular phenomenon (Suter, 2012). In quantitative research, researchers design treatments and tests (e.g., closed-ended questionnaire items) and impose their operational definitions of variables on the participants. However, through qualitative methods (e.g., open-ended questionnaire items), researchers empower individuals to share their stories and opinions (Roulston, 2008). Qualitative methods help researchers to examine the content in more detail, explore a problem or issue in depth, and understand variables that are difficult to measure quantitatively. Unfortunately, in most published EMI studies, the researchers used quantitative methods (Curle & Derakhshan, 2021). Instead, the present study used open-ended questionnaire items to examine CIs’ perspectives and present their voices and experiences, this being because quantitative methods do not provide a detailed narrative and generally provide less-detailed accounts of participants’ perceptions (Suter, 2012). Herein, we present the results of eight open-ended questions. Closed-ended question results have been reported in another study due to the large number of participants and the complexity of open-ended questions’ analysis (Suter, 2012). Brown (2009) stated that “Open-response items are relatively difficult to analyze and interpret. The task in analyzing and interpreting such data is to find the useful and interesting patterns and reduce what is usually a large amount of data to a relatively small number of patterns” (p. 211).
Before collecting data, the present researcher obtained approval from the university’s ethical committee and permission from the university administration to distribute the questionnaires among the instructors. Also, the questionnaires had an online consent form to inform the participants that their participation was voluntary. The consent form was written in both Arabic and English to help the instructors understand the content. The researcher used Google Forms to design four online surveys for CIs in four leading schools, that is, healthcare, science, engineering, and computing, each of which follows the EMI policy in all its undergraduate programs. To help instructors to express their perspectives without limitation, the survey did not include questions related to background or biodata such as age, race, nationality, and mother tongue.
The CIs’ questionnaire items were written in both English and Arabic because some instructors could not speak Arabic; the participants were free to answer the items in Arabic or English. The items of the four surveys were the same in content except that the researcher changed the CIs’ area of study (i.e., healthcare, science, engineering, or computing) to address them directly; the researcher changed only the adjectives in each question (e.g., from healthcare to engineering). Table 2 gives the qualitative survey questions, with the ellipsis replaced by the CIs’ general field (i.e., engineering, healthcare, computing, or science). After designing the questionnaire items in draft, the researcher sent the four questionnaires to six reviewers to review the questionnaire items and check their content validity; each reviewer had a Ph.D. in applied linguistics, spoke Arabic and English fluently, and was an instructor in the college of languages and translation. After receiving their comments and suggestions, the researcher revised the questionnaire items based on their feedback.
Survey Items.
Next, using Google Forms, the researcher sent the healthcare questionnaire to the instructors in the colleges of applied medical sciences, medicine and surgery, dentistry, and pharmacy; the science, engineering, and computing versions were sent to the instructors in the colleges of science, engineering, and computing, respectively. The E-Learning Deanship and administrators in each college helped the researcher to send the survey to the CIs’ official emails and post it on their official Blackboard accounts. In total, 341 CIs responded, and their breakdown by college is given in Table 3.
Descriptive Statistics of Content Instructors (n = 341).
Analysis of Results
After obtaining the data on Google Forms, the researcher copied the results to an Excel file. The answers for each question were pasted in a separate Excel sheet. All responses were posted in one column, and answers from each instructor were posted in a separate row in the same Excel sheet. Next, the researcher read the data several times to become familiar with them; Braun and Clarke (2013) stressed that qualitative data analysis starts with a process of “immersion” in the data. The researcher used suggestions and guidelines on the procedures of qualitative data analysis, for example, the seven approaches for analyzing qualitative data due to Brown (2014), who suggested that researchers need to re-read the data, look for patterns, map out tentative patterns, organize and reorganize the categories, search for connections, and consider multiple perspectives.
Specifically, the researcher used thematic analysis, which is “a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79). Thematic analysis helps researchers to gain a meaningful understanding of the points of view of participants; it is helpful for analyzing open-ended questions because it examines patterns from participant communication that are not constrained by any limitations to the responses (Swart, 2019). The researcher also considered the following six steps to analyzing open-ended questions using thematic analysis as suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006): familiarization with the data, coding, generating initial themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up.
Results and Discussion
Mother Tongue as MI and IC
The results from the first question present the advantages of using the students’ mother tongue (Arabic) from the perspectives of the CIs to enhance IC. Participants gave several benefits of using Arabic as the MI, and the results of the first theme demonstrate the advantages of Arabic over English. The benefits of a mother tongue manifest in three main areas: cognition, affect, and performance. Speaking Arabic as the mother tongue enables students to think and understand better: better cognition is associated with positive feelings toward the learning environment, and better comprehension with positive emotions leads to higher performance in classes. Linguistic relativity explains that language influences the ways in which people gain knowledge, understand, memorize, and act. Also, fluency in the MI is essential for effective IC: in the present context, using Arabic enhances IC more than does using a foreign language. The advantages of Arabic as the MI over EMI can be classified into three categories: cognitive, affective, and performance.
Cognitive Domain
The first category is IC benefits related to cognition and knowledge acquisition. Cognitive learning focuses on acquiring knowledge and the ability to understand and use knowledge. Participants wrote that using the mother tongue as the MI in undergraduate programs is more effective in achieving the program learning outcomes and course outcomes in terms of quantity and quality. Higher MI proficiency correlates with better thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception. These merits can be challenging to accomplish in EMI policy programs. Regarding Arabic, a participant from a healthcare college wrote “Better mastering of knowledge and improved ability to convey it to patients.”
Strong IC causes these cognitive values, and IC is robust by using the mother tongue. In programs in which the mother tongue is the MI, students have a more profound and faster understanding of the material content and better comprehension of lectures, they analyze the content better and have stronger concentration, and they focus more on the contents of textbooks and lectures. A participant from the science college wrote “من التركيز على اللغة الانجليزية ذاتها زيادة التركيز على المادة العلمية وتحقيق مخرجات التعلم بدلا”; the participant is noting that using Arabic as the MI increases students’ attention to scientific concepts and achieves the learning outcomes instead of focusing on English language learning as the main topic. A participant from the engineering college wrote “I believe the undergraduate level course should be in mother language. Students are fighting to understand English not the Engineering concept if he is not excellent in English.” In classes in which Arabic is the MI, there are fewer distractions caused by language barriers; the students are engaged more in class discussions and spend less time and effort comprehending the contents.
IC is better in programs that use the mother-tongue policy. Students in classes in which the mother tongue is the MI have a better understanding of the course materials and better comprehension of lectures; they do better in terms of content analysis and comprehension of the content of textbooks and lectures. By contrast, there are several language barriers in EMI classes, and students spend more time and effort to understand the scientific topics during class discussions; this finding is in line with those of other researchers (e.g., Espinas & Fuchs, 2022; Krabbe et al., 2021; Wilson, 2021). Higher proficiency in the MI will lead to better cognition and understanding of the scientific content, whereas poor IC due to low proficiency in the MI will lead to misunderstandings and weak comprehension of the course learning outcomes. As highlighted by McKinley et al. (2022), the EMI policy might cause social and academic issues such as unfair promotion opportunities, unequal access to EMI classes, inadequate learning outcomes, and poor teaching quality.
Affective Domain
The second category is IC values related to affects and feelings. Higher MI proficiency correlates with positive emotions and feelings, and participants believed that in programs with Arabic as the MI, students are more motivated to learn and study because they can comprehend the content without language barriers. Using the mother tongue as the MI helps students to appreciate the content because they can understand it easily; a participant from a healthcare college stressed this point when writing “الطالب كثيرا ويشجعه ويحفزه في حب المادة فالتدريس بلغة الام يخدم”. Another point from participants is that students have higher self-efficacy beliefs and better confidence to talk and write in their mother tongue rather than in a foreign language that they cannot understand fully. A participant from the science college wrote “بلغتنا العربية ونقرها في دراستنا شي جميل جدا ان نفتخر”; here, the participant is stressing that students and instructors feel pride in programs in which the MI is Arabic, their mother tongue. By contrast, students in EMI classes might feel depressed and feel that there is no point in attending classes because of low English proficiency; students might start missing classes because they cannot understand the instructors, as mentioned by participants.
The results demonstrate that higher language skills are linked to more-positive attitudes and feelings. Because students can comprehend the content without language obstacles, they are more motivated to learn and are more likely to enjoy classes in which their mother tongue is the MI. Other researchers (e.g., Thompson, Aizawa, et al., 2022) found a correlation between success in EMI and students’ emotions and feelings. In a Hong Kong context, Hennebry and Gao (2021) found that students in classes with Chinese as the MI had more-negative attitudes toward English than did students in EMI classes. Students’ positive attitudes toward the use of their mother tongue as the MI were also documented by other researchers ( Alhamami, 2022; Alhamami & Almelhi, 2021b). This indicates that CIs agree with students’ views about the mother-tongue policy.
Performance Domain
The third category presents benefits related to performance. Participants wrote about several merits pertaining to students’ behavior and performance. Strong IC due to implementing the mother-tongue policy leads to an accurate assessment of students’ performance and fair grades in their courses. Student have higher performance in exams and assignments, and they can express their views in class discussions without language barriers. There are equal opportunities and fair chances to talk and share ideas. A participant from a healthcare college wrote “In the presence of international faculty in medical colleges, use of English language is unavoidable. The students are likely to perform better and secure better grades at undergraduate levels if they are comfortable with the language.” Students are more creative in their mother tongue. A participant in the science college wrote “طبيعيا تؤدى إلى تنمية الفكر والابداع باعتبار ان اللغة وعاء الفكر فإن الفائدة أن الدراسة باللغة الام”; here, the participant is saying that language is a vessel for thought; the benefit is that studying in the mother tongue naturally leads to developing thinking and creativity. Another point that participants motioned is that using Arabic as the MI increases the publication of materials in Arabic because authors know that their textbooks and reference books can be used in programs; this will enrich and revive the Arabic vocabulary and communicate scientific knowledge to society. A participant in the science college wrote “لجعلها احد لغات العلوم المعتمدة عالمياً الاعتزاز باللغة الأم وتوفير المراجع باللغة العربية والسعي”, which translates as “being proud of the mother tongue and providing references in Arabic, and striving to make it a recognized scientific language internationally.” Also, instructors can cover more content because they are not spending time on language issues; CIs spend some time translating into the students’ mother tongue, as we will explore in the next theme: code-switching. Other advantages are that students (i) are well prepared to be science teachers in elementary schools because science and computing are taught in Arabic in compulsory education and (ii) perform better in government sectors because Arabic is the official language of the government.
Participants highlighted several benefits relating to student behavior and performance in class. CIs believe that students’ performance is assessed accurately and that they receive fair grades in their courses. Students do better on exams and assignments and express their views accurately in class discussions. Without language barriers, students have an equal and fair chance to speak and exchange ideas. These views are in line with the findings of Alhamami (2022), who found that engineering students who had higher proficiency in English at the start of a 5-year engineering program achieved a higher cumulative GPA at the end. In mathematics education, Espinas and Fuchs (2022) also found that certain MIs meaningfully improve performance in several mathematical domains. Using a foreign language as the MI hinders students’ performance, and instructors do not evaluate students’ performance accurately in exams and class discussions because of low proficiency in the MI. The EMI policy might be problematic and present more challenges, or what Block (2022) refers to as “the dark side of EMI.”
Advantages of EMI Policy
The results from the second question form the second theme in this study, presenting the advantages of the EMI policy from the views of CIs. Compared to the EMI policy, using Arabic as the MI has several drawbacks from the perspectives of CIs. English has some advantages that are difficult to achieve in programs with Arabic as the MI, and these can be classified into three main categories: learning resources, collaborative research, and future international goals.
Learning Resources
The first category pertains to the merits of learning resources due to English being the lingua franca of science and technology. Participants wrote that instructors and students have limited materials published in Arabic, with most published in English. A participant from the computing college wrote “All the relevant books are in English, and many interesting online learning materials (courses on YouTube, codes, . . .). So if the student studies in Arabic, he may surely have struggle studying from textbooks and other possible materials.” Another participant added “All the computer languages C, C++, Java, and Python are in English. There is no point in teaching the computer subjects in Arabic.” Also, some English words have no equivalent in Arabic, and the translation might not convey the full meaning. A participant from a healthcare college wrote “some medical terminologies cannot be translated.”
This category deals with problems with learning resources caused by Arabic’s poor IC. Because most of the available materials are in English, participants believed that teachers and students have limited access to content learning materials. Based on the views of participants, there are insufficient Arabic educational materials, and most of the published content learning materials used for teaching and research are in English. This finding aligns with that of Alhamami and Almelhi (2021a) that access to learning materials and research opportunities is the main advantage of the EMI policy because most published learning and research materials are in English; this finding shows that English published materials such as textbooks, websites, audio-visual materials, etc. dominate the market. In the context of Chinese universities, Gu et al. (2022) stressed that in EMI programs, instructors can use different teaching materials to explain the same phenomenon and help students understand a specific scientific concept.
Research Collaboration
The second category pertains to research and international collaboration. In programs with Arabic as the MI, students are not updated about research findings because most research outputs are written in English, and students cannot attend and participate in international conferences because English is the lingua franca of such conferences. Also, students have limited opportunities to share their research with the international community. A participant from the engineering college listed the following limitations: “Fail to compete in the international platform, sharing research is impossible in global word, English is the only language which connects people around the globe.” A participant from a healthcare college wrote “They cannot surf the internet and look for information in English language plus all the research, and the new inventions are in English, students won’t be able to interact and communicate with other medical students that do not speak Arabic, they won’t be able to attend scientific meetings and communicate in English.”
This category is related to research and collaboration: most research outputs are written in English, graduates from programs with Arabic as the MI find difficulties in attending international conferences because English is the common language of such conferences, and Arabic-as-the-MI graduates have limited opportunities to share their research with the international community. By contrast, the internationalization of education is one of the main goals of the EMI policy (Macaro, 2018). We can summarize the problems with collaboration and research as follows: limited opportunities to attend and participate in international conferences and read and share research in international journals.
Future International Goals
The third category pertains to the merits of EMI related to student’s future goals. In programs with Arabic as the MI, students find more difficulties pursuing their graduate studies and continuing their education abroad because English is the MI in most graduate programs abroad. A participant from a healthcare college wrote “They will not develop proficiency leading to difficulty at the postgraduate level, especially in foreign countries.” Students struggle to find job opportunities to work in international companies or teach in international institutions. A participant from the engineering college wrote “The only disadvantage is he may face problems in global job and higher education, but it can be managed by giving them English lessons.”
This category represents the future challenges of Arabic-as-the-MI alumni; such graduates have difficulties pursuing their higher education abroad because EMI is the common policy in graduate programs around the globe. They also find problems joining international organizations because English is the lingua franca of all global companies. This might limit their opportunities to get jobs outside Saudi Arabia. The limitations can be summarized as (i) continuing graduate studies and (ii) getting jobs in international organizations.
Code-Switching and IC
The results from the third question form the third theme, that is, code-switching in EMI programs. Code-switching is an effective IC strategy in EMI programs. CIs use the students’ mother tongue (Arabic) because of the students’ limited English proficiency. Code-switching objectives can be divided into three main categories: cognition, affective, and performance.
Code-Switching and Cognition
The first category involves code-switching for cognition, in which CIs use Arabic to convey new and key terms to help students understand the concepts. Participants stressed that they used Arabic to highlight essential points that students must understand deeply; a participant wrote “أثناء شرح المواضيع التي تحتاج فهم واستيعاب أكثر”, which translates as “while explaining topics that need more understanding and full comprehension.” CIs also code-switch because they think the content is easier to understand if they use Arabic. Participants used Arabic to clarify complex concepts and when using examples from the students’ cultures to help them understand and relate to the content; a participant from a healthcare college wrote “when I want to simulate something from their life or community.” Also, CIs use Arabic when asked for translation, when they encounter problems, and as one participant wrote, “when the students can’t understand English.”
CIs use Arabic to teach new and essential terms that help students understand concepts, and they use Arabic to emphasize important points that students must understand clearly. Similarly, Perfecto (2022) found that CIs use direct translation and code-switching to enhance efficient teaching and learning and encourage more-active participation in EMI class activities.
Code-Switching and Affective Domain
The second category involves code-switching for affects. Participants used Arabic in EMI-policy classes to greet students and make them feel more comfortable, to trigger students’ attention by making them feel appreciated or recognized, and as a break for relaxation. A participant from the science college wrote “Only to make breaks for relaxation or if students do not understand,” and another participant wrote “I use the Arabic language in greetings of my students and sometimes to clarify some difficult issues.”
CIs use Arabic in their EMI-policy lessons to greet students and make them feel more comfortable, and to draw students’ attention by using their native language to make them feel recognized and valued. As discussed by Zhou et al. (2021), students usually have positive attitudes toward code-switching. However, as discussed by Zhang and Lütge (2022), code-switching is ineffective when students speak different mother tongues.
Code-Switching and Performance
The third category involves code-switching for performance. CIs use Arabic to answer questions that contain difficult English words, when they explain instructions for experiments and tasks, and during class discussions. A participant from the science college wrote “When I give them opportunities to share their opinions.” Perfecto (2022) found similar results in a Philippines context. Ultimately, code-switching increases students’ participation.
Suggestions for Improving IC in EMI Programs
The results from the fourth question form the fourth theme, that is, suggestions for improving IC in EMI-policy programs. Lack of effective IC in EMI programs due to students’ limited English proficiency leads to several disadvantages, and participants suggested several solutions to overcome language barriers in such programs. Having higher IELTS (International English Language Testing System) scores before enrolling in university programs would help to improve IC; a participant wrote “English language is mandatory. All the students enrolling in undergraduate course must have IELTS score seven and above.” Also, a university could design its own English entrance test to be taken by all students; a participant wrote “I would strongly suggest that university should work on improving English language skills of students. An entrance test may be included to ensure the English language skills.” Furthermore, there could be courses on English for specific purposes, in which students are introduced to the common scientific terms and words that are used in their fields, thereby becoming familiar with the academic discourse of their majors before enrolling in undergraduate programs. Also, there could be a bilingual policy allowing students to use their mother tongue to answer specific questions that require higher language proficiency (e.g., open-ended questions and essays), or a university could have two tracks based on either English or Arabic as the MI, with students choosing the track that fits their needs and language proficiency background based on their goals; a participant wrote “teaching in Arabic while using terms in English is a good idea.”
Training CIs about teaching courses in English is a good solution, and several researchers have stressed that CIs need training on how to teach in EMI programs. The university administration might make it a condition that CIs are fluent in Arabic if they need to code-switch and translate essential points. Another strategy is to encourage students to enroll in more English classes and be aware of the importance of English in their field. Students should be fully aware that they will not be successful in their academic majors without higher English proficiency. Motivation and awareness are good ways to encourage students to take more English classes and take them more seriously.
Encouraging CIs to collaborate with translators to translate essential books from English into Arabic will enrich the Arabic content. However, some participants made different points about translation, such as “Honestly, I don’t like the change from English to Arabic in medical colleges. In my original country ‘Sudan’ we had failed a trial like that for a while, and then we returned to English in the medical colleges after finding that it was not succeeding. Mainly because of the reference’s translation, it was not in proper Arabic.”
Conclusions and Recommendations
The main findings of the present study are summarized in Figure 2. Proficiency in the MI and IC in the classroom are related, and this positive and directive relationship leads to cognitive, affective, and performance advantages.
Summary of relationships between medium of instruction and instructional communication.
The findings of this study show the usefulness of using IC as a theoretical framework to examine EMI contexts. EMI researchers should use communication theories to explore EMI contexts because language is the main communication tool in the learning environment. Collaboration between IC researchers and EMI researchers will help in understanding MI issues. With their background in IC theories, IC researchers will help in understanding (i) the interactions between CIs and students and among students and (ii) how to develop communication relationships to help students respond favorably to the learning environment. IC focuses on three main parts of the learning environment, that is, cognition, affect, and performance, which are crucial to the success of EMI programs.
Using linguistic relativity helps in understanding the extent to which language affects cognition and understanding, and researchers are recommended to use linguistic relativity. EMI researchers should pay more attention to the relationship between language and thought processes. Advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics would be helpful as a theoretical framework to explore EMI contexts. Collaboration between cognitive linguistics and EMI researchers will lead to more-comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the MI and students’ comprehension. There is a need to examine the link between linguistic theories and actual language use in EMI environments. Also, using qualitative methods to examine EMI contexts is helpful; qualitative methods help researchers to understand participants’ views and document their experiences, struggles, and suggestions.
The present findings also lead to practical recommendations. The results show that CIs understand the context deeply and hold different views about the MI (Macaro et al., 2021), so policymakers should include CIs’ beliefs and consult them when designing program policies. Also, program policymakers should provide CIs with training courses and workshops on EMI; CIs need training on how to teach in EMI contexts to enhance IC. Lasagabaster (2022) stressed that a low percentage of institutions prepare lecturers to teach EMI courses, and the recommendation was to organize pre-service or in-service courses to help EMI instructors to teach effectively in EMI teaching scenarios. Some potential teachers are reluctant to participate in EMI programs, whereas some in-service EMI teachers complain of helplessness arising from a perceived lack of assistance from their institutions (Lasagabaster, 2022).
In EMI programs, institutions should have a strict language-proficiency policy, and students should not join any program without first achieving higher English-proficiency test scores; having an entrance test is necessary to filter students before they enter programs. Also, institutions should provide ongoing language support; institutions should provide private language tutorials and extra language learning courses for students who need to improve their language while studying in EMI programs. Also, having courses on English for specific purposes that introduce key terms might help students become familiar with the academic discourse in their fields.
Regarding limitations, the present findings are limited to a context in which most of the students shared the same first language, and future work might explore the views of CIs in a context in which that is not the case; CIs might have different views in a multilingual context. Also, future work might replicate the present study in a similar context; doing so would help in understanding the views of CIs regarding EMI versus using the mother tongue as the MI. Future work might also compare and contrast the views of CIs and students in a single study. Also, the present findings are limited to undergraduate programs, and the views of CIs might be different in the context of graduate programs.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author extends his appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding this work through General Research Project under grant number (G.R.P- 170–43).
Ethical Approval
The Ethical Committee of the Scientific Research, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia. Ethical issues were considered before conducting the questionnaire. The researchers obtain approval from the university research committee. In addition, the questionnaire has an online consent form to inform the participants that their participation is voluntary. The consent form was written in Arabic and English to help the participants understand the content. In addition, the participants were free to answer the items in Arabic or English.