Content and language in EMI assessment practices: challenges and beliefs at an Engineering Faculty in Turkey

Sahan, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4423-3108 and Şahan, Ö. (2022) Content and language in EMI assessment practices: challenges and beliefs at an Engineering Faculty in Turkey. In: Kirkgöz, Y. and Karakaş, A. (eds.) English as the Medium of Instruction in Turkish Higher Education. Springer, pp. 155-174. ISBN 9783030885960 doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-88597-7_8

Abstract/Summary

With recent trends toward the internationalization of higher education, the number of English-medium programs at higher education institutions around the world has grown rapidly. Research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has examined stakeholders’ attitudes, classroom interaction, students’ achievement in content subjects, and teachers’ and students’ levels of English proficiency. However, what is missing from this growing body of work is research addressing issues of assessment in EMI contexts, where students’ English proficiency is not explicitly measured but inevitably plays a role in the assessment process, as students are required to interpret and respond to assessment tasks in English. In this chapter, we attempt to address this research gap by examining the relationship between content and language in EMI assessment practices. The chapter begins with a theoretical discussion conceptualizing the role of language in EMI assessment, addressing issues of content knowledge, academic literacy, and the explicit and implicit linguistic demands of assessment tasks. The chapter then provides an overview of existing empirical research on EMI assessment. Given the lack of theoretical and empirical research on assessment practices in higher education contexts, this research aims to investigate assessment practices in EMI engineering courses in terms of course-related, teacher-related, and student-related issues. Employing a qualitative research method, data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions with university lecturers and students at an engineering faculty in Turkey in order to explore how lecturers and students perceive the role of language in EMI assessment and describe their own assessment practices. The findings shed light on how students use the resources available in their linguistic repertoires to make sense of assessment tasks and how teachers approach students’ responses to assessment tasks with consideration for students’ language proficiency and preference. The findings have implications for EMI teachers’ pedagogical practices as well as for EMI teacher training courses.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/128589
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/978-3-030-88597-7_8
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Institute of Education > Language and Literacy in Education
Publisher	Springer
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