Research presented at the EMI Oxford Symposium on 4 November 2015.

1. Exploring the Effects of EMI on
Teaching and Learning
Contact: ronmartinez@ufpr.br
1. Context
I. Much of the class involves the lecturer demonstrating how to use a particular
software package; this multimodal support seems to have a facilitative effect.
II. Students in Portuguese group often seen in ‘off-task’ activity (e.g. Facebook).
III. There is an observable higher degree of attention, interaction and
‘involvement’ (e.g. humor) in EMI class among both students and lecturer.
IV. The EMI group generally progresses faster than Portuguese group.
V. Test scores from EMI group from past 2 semesters show that EMI group
consistently outperforms Portuguese group.
Dr. Ron Martinez1
, Dr. Francisco Fogaça1
, Dr. Eduardo H. Diniz de Figueiredo1
1
Department of Modern Languages, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Setor de
Tecnologia
UFPR
I. Two intact Civil Engineering
undergraduate classes at a
private university in Curitiba.
II. Classes taught in Portuguese
on Fridays, and the same
content delivered by the
same lecturer to an EMI
group on the following
Monday.
III. Students in EMI group (n=12)
are self-selected – no
proficiency requirement. Two
non-Brazilians in class.
IV. Portuguese class is of
equivalent size.
2. Rationale
3. Method
4. Some preliminary findings
5. What’s next?
What can be gleaned from the above findings? Issues of motivation, identity,
self-efficacy and even SES all merit further investigation (see below). However,
evidence of a consistent pattern of a kind of ‘practice effect’ can also be
observed. For example, Figure 1 shows Eve extemporaneously writing on the
board while teaching the Portuguese class; Figure 2 depicts the EMI version of
the same class, in which Eve strategically changed both the timing and
organization of board content. One current developing hypothesis, therefore,
is that the EMI class benefits from the Portuguese class as a kind of ‘trial run’.
We have only scratched the surface of this research, but our next phases will
add lecturer/student interviews and questionnaires to the observations. Some
clear lines of inquiry are going to center on issues of motivation, identity, and
teacher cognition.
Portuguese class EMI class
Figure 1 – Unplanned writing on board Figure 2 – Board work strategy change
EMI is a new phenomenon in
Brazil. Although EMI policies are
already beginning to take shape,
there is very little local research
available to help inform such
policies. This initial phase of the
research is therefore
ethnographic in nature to first
try to assess the phenomenon
more carefully.
•20 hours of video-recorded
parallel observation so far;
•1 lecturer (‘Eve’);
•3 observers (1 American, 2
Brazilian);
•Initial observations open, later
observations contributing to
observation schedule;
•1 initial formal interview with
lecturer + less formal exchanges.