| In the past 30 years,English has become increasingly popular as an international language as a result of globalization.Consequently,in order to cater to the trends of internationalization,a large number of universities all over the world have started to adopt English as the medium of instruction(EMI)and set up some international departments to enhance their competitiveness as well as attract students.In order to meet the needs of the country’s economic and social opening up to cultivate international talents with an international perspective and ability to participate in international affairs and international competition,many Chinese universities have followed the world trend and conducted various types of EMI courses.Affected by the globalization of business and trade,the development of EMI courses,especially EMI business courses in higher education,is inevitable.Against the background of the vigorous development of EMI teaching,many scholars at home and abroad have conducted research on EMI classrooms.Although existing surveys have involved the implementation of EMI classrooms,teachers’ and students’ beliefs and the use of the first language(L1),few studies have explored students’ feelings in EMI classrooms from the perspective of cognitive load.To fill this gap,the study was designed to investigate the attitudes of students to find out whether students feel a high or low cognitive load in EMI courses,and whether they believe teachers’ L1 use could be a good way to improve learning outcomes so that it could reduce the cognitive load they feel.In this case,the study took the university students in China as an example.It involved 102 students who have attended EMI business courses from the School of International Trade.The study was designed to explore the students’ feelings aboutcognitive load in EMI courses and students’ opinions on whether L1 use of teachers could be a way to reduce this load.A total of 102 questionnaires were collected and analyzed by software and 6 interviews were coded.The results showed that:(1)The students who participated in the business EMI class in this study generally felt relatively high cognitive load,including intrinsic load and extraneous load.They thought that the professional courses taught in English were more difficult,and the teacher’s teaching design and explanation in classes were not reasonable enough,so they needed to put more mental effort to improve the learning effect.(2)Generally speaking,students had a positive attitude towards teachers’ L1 use in EMI business courses.They believed that the use of L1 could reduce the difficulty of learning academic content,increase learning motivation,help them to stay focus and overcome problems caused by limited English proficiency,which could promote the learning outcomes of such EMI courses.The study reflected that the use of teachers’ L1 could be an element to reduce the intrinsic cognitive load and increase the germane cognitive load.(3)Although this study explored students’ cognitive situations from different English levels,the results were not significantly different.According to the findings and results of the survey,some useful suggestions for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of EMI teaching for teachers and universities were put forward by the author.The study ended with the limitation of this study and gave suggestions for further research.Future studies on this topic could reduce these limitations and explore the implementation of the EMI courses from different points of view. |
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