Abstract:

Bilingualism at university, i.e., teaching and learning through a language which is not learners’ first language and most of the time, is not the lecturer’s either, has become a tendency in this educational context. Due to different reasons – collateral damage of EHEA (European Higher Education Area); the increase in the international mobility of students; or the strategic decision of being a university opened to international markets -, most Spanish university institutions currently offer programmes through the English language.

Likewise, learning and teaching in a second language have strongly developed in educational levels before university, but with a significant difference in comparison to higher education. In both education levels, primary and secondary, the different examples of bilingualism are supported by CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), an educational approach with a dual focus: the learning of content and the learning of a language (which at the same time is the means through which learners will get to the content). At these levels, and taking into account the double objective, a series of strategies and learning techniques are used to support both agents in the process: learner and lecturer. However, at university level, teaching through English or EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) seems to have as unique objective the acquisition of content or knowledge. A second language is a requisite rather than an objective. During instruction in English, learners may acquire language in an accidental way, but the learning of it is not explicit. That is why, EMI has not received any encouragement as methodology, and it is difficult to find any description of strategies or specific techniques for this kind of teaching.

For our study, we started assuming the hypothesis that university lecturers draw on their own teaching strategies to face the challenges and difficulties of any EMI class. To analyse this hypothesis a questionnaire was designed and distributed to all the lecturers at Universidad Loyola Andalucía who teach their subjects in English. In the questionnaire we asked them about several aspects such as the use of their mother tongue in their interactions with students in and outside the class; the use of oral input, written academic input and techniques to deal with both; the linguistic scaffolding they may provide their students with; correction techniques; and, finally, discourse modifications they normally use when interacting in English. A sample of 32 lecturers answered the questionnaire and a descriptive and inference statistical analysis was carried out to obtain information on the activity developed by these lecturers as well as to check the generalization of the main findings.

The study confirms the starting hypothesis: the need to develop specific strategies to overcome the challenges that arise in this type of education and in turn obtain the maximum performance.

Keywords:

EMI, teaching strategies, second language.