Code-switching strategies in English-medium instruction (EMI) for Korean engineering students

Abstract

Foreign languages have been adopted and promoted as instructional languages in schools across the world in a variety of modes, e.g., immersion in Canada and the U.S., Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Europe, and English-medium instruction (EMI) in Asia. The Korean government has strongly advocated EMI, providing financial support for universities that implement EMI since 2007. Engineering schools have been leading the trend of EMI in Korea. The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean engineering students’ beliefs about EMI and code-switching strategies and to make suggestions for the future direction of EMI in Korean higher-education and other EFL contexts. Five hundred twenty-three undergraduate students from three different engineering schools participated in this survey study. The majority of the questionnaire respondents observed that they would choose Korean-medium instruction (KMI) classes over EMI classes and that KMI was more effective than EMI: they had gained more knowledge from KMI classes than from EMI classes, had more interactions with their instructors in KMI classes than in EMI classes, and had higher levels of satisfaction over KMI classes than EMI classes. Nevertheless, most of them agreed that their schools should continue to offer EMI but with more freedom of choice given to them and professors instead of school’s mandatory policy that requires all students and professors to be involved in EMI, and they also recognized code-switching as an important learning strategy in EMI classes. These findings require modifications of school administration’s and some instructors’ emphasis on English-only instruction in EMI classes. The theoretical orientation of this study comes from Wong Fillmore (1986), Cook (1996), and Merritt (1992), who claimed that code-switching is natural behavior in bilingual contexts, and Cook and Merritt argued for the development of code switching as a legitimate language learning strategy.