Abstract/Summary

This thesis is an investigation of interactional practice within an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) context in Saudi Arabia. Previous investigations of EMI classrooms in Saudi Arabia have focused on implementation challenges and describing the final product of learning rather than examining the language used inside the classroom. The previous literature pays insufficient attention to how teachers and learners use available language resources in EMI classrooms to communicate and negotiate meaning in the presence of other linguistics difficulties. Examining interaction within EMI classrooms to explore several implementation practices about which relatively little is known in a context like Saudi Arabia is the research gap that this study aims to address. The thesis investigates research questions related to the characteristics of interactional practices in EMI business lectures in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it explores the effect of employing Self Evaluation of Teacher Talk (SETT) on interactions in EMI business lectures and the perspectives of Saudi faculty members about the impacts that reflective practice frameworks have on their interactions. This study was carried out in EMI business lectures in a public university in Saudi Arabia and data was collected in two different phases. In both phases, the audio-taped lectures were transcribed and analysed qualitatively using Conversation Analysis (CA) and quantitatively by using pre-defined modes of the SETT framework with a special focus on the lecturers’ talk. The findings suggest several pedagogical and methodological implications for the EMI context. The pedagogical implications suggest that self-observational instruments like SETT can help lecturers to identify interactional challenges and facilitate interaction by creating interactional opportunities. On the institution level, the results imply that SETT can be adopted and amended to design training programmes. The methodological implications demonstrate that SETT also provides a valuable tool when applied with CA to track and observe interactional changes to provide research-based support that can influence practices in different EMI contexts.