A Study Of EMI Teachers' Instruction In Higher Education

As an important part of teachers' classroom discourse,teachers' instruction is the main medium for teachers realizing classroom teaching.It can organize and guide students to participate in various teaching activities actively.With the development of internationalization of higher education,English as a Medium of Instruction has become one of the hot topics of higher education in the world.In order to cope with the competition of higher education,more and more countries implement the strategy of internationalization of higher education-EMI.In2015,the State Council issued the "Overall Plan for Promoting the Construction of the World's First-Class Universities and First-class Disciplines",which closely links the internationalization strategy of higher education with the "Double First-class" construction(Lu Xiaobing,2017).Besides,constructing “First-class Teachers” is an important measure to realize the construction of "Double First-class" in China.With the introduction of EMI to universities,more and more EMI teachers participate in the competition of higher education.In 2013,C University and A University in the United States established a joint college,which adopts EMI model of teaching,and all its teachers teach in English.These teachers are EMI teachers.In 2016,the author participated in the training of EMI teachers in universities,and found that many EMI teachers have weekness in teaching skills,especially the teachers' instruction.Therefore,the author took the teachers' instruction as the starting point and took EMI in C University as the research object aiming to explore that whether EMI teachers' instruction meets the requirements of teachers' instruction principles,etc.The author chose 10 EMI teachers in C University.According to the principles of teachers' instruction,and the function,the form,and the relationship between teachers' instruction and student's cognitive thinking,the author first compiled the observation scale and then took the classroom observation.In addition,the author also conducted interviews with students and EMI teachers for exploring that whether teacher instruction meet the requirements.The results are listed as follows:(1)The words and sentences that EMI teacher instruction use accords with the principle of using simple words,simple sentences and compound sentences.(2)EMI teachers' functional instruction is single.(3)EMI teachers' instruction form is single.(4)EMI teachers' instruction could influence students' cognitive thinking,but it can't achieve the goal of deeply communication.The results of teacher interviews and student interviews further exemplified that EMI teacher instruction is not perfect and it is affected by many factors such as their own English ability,students' English,the contents of subjects and so on.The study suggests that EMI teachers should improve their instruction skills through theoretical learning and practical operation.The universities should provide platforms and some training opportunities for teachers' learning and communicating teaching skills,so that teachers can provide a better service to teaching.