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Empirical Studies of EMI

Most empirical studies on EMI in Taiwan have utilized a survey approach to assess the perceptions of students and instructors (Chang, 2010; Cho, 2012; Wu, 2006; Yeh, 2010). There are some interesting but mixed findings. For example, most students in EMI programs recognized the benefits of acquiring content knowledge through English but reported difficulties in understanding the content of learning (Chang, 2010; Huang, 2012; Wu, 2006). In Wu’s survey, 28 graduate students from applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, and technology management departments were asked about the strengths and weaknesses of taking EMI courses. The findings showed that the advantages of EMI identified by these participants included their (1) improvement in English, (2) exposure to global views and international culture, (3) opportunities to express ideas in English, and (4) opportunities to become familiar with textbooks and other resources written in English. However, the disadvantages were all related to English language proficiency, including students’ (1) difficulties in understanding course content, (2) struggles in expressing ideas fluently in class, and (3) lack of incentives to participate in class. Overall, this study showed students’ dilemma: they were positive about EMI courses but experienced difficulties.

Instructors’ perspectives on EMI programs have also been investigated (Chang, 2010; Cho, 2012; Yeh, 2013). For example, Yeh interviewed 22 national and private university instructors and found that the motivation for instructors to offer EMI courses included accommodating international students’ needs, improving local students’ English ability, and maintaining their own English proficiency. The global status of English in academic and professional field seemed to be the main motivation for adopting EMI. Regarding the impacts of EMI on student learning, many instructors interviewed in Yeh’s study were concerned about students’ inadequate English proficiency, the depth of content knowledge acquired, and students’ motivation. Code switching was, therefore, adopted as an instructional strategy to facilitate students’ comprehension. When asked about their views on the emergent popularity of EMI in Taiwan, most instructors had reservations. Language issues came up repeatedly as either teachers’ or students’ inadequate English proficiency could result in the oversimplification of content and language used to engage complex concepts. One participant in Yeh’s study stated, “Taking courses in a language yet to be mastered may have disadvantaged students’ acquisition of content knowledge” (p. 226).

Regarding the instructional strategies employed by EMI instructors, Yeh (2010) surveyed 348 university teachers and found that a variety of strategies were utilized, such as checking frequently to ensure students understood the lecture, using simplified English, speaking at a slower pace, and switching to Chinese occasionally. These instructors were satisfied with their EMI course instruction but acknowledged that their students’ limited English proficiency was the biggest obstacle for EMI.

This brief review of empirical studies on EMI seems to indicate that students and teachers held an ambivalent attitude toward EMI. On the one hand, they perceived EMI to have double benefits in helping students simultaneously acquire content knowledge and improve their English ability. On the other hand, both students and teachers also acknowledged that the depth of class interaction and knowledge dissemination was questionable in an EMI environment. Bearing the controversial findings of EMI studies in mind, we undertook this case study to document instructional activities that could motivate learning in tourism.

Motivation and Learning

A quick search on activities that motivate learning will reveal many principles and suggestions that are proposed by researchers and classroom teachers in various fields. For example, James (2014), an education consultant and researcher, identified six principles that are essential when designing activities to engage learners: (1) make the activity meaningful, (2) build up students’ competence, (3) provide autonomy support, (4) include collaborative learning, (5) establish positive relationships, and (6) promote mastery orientations. These principles engage students in their behaviors and help them become emotionally and cognitively invested (Fredricks, 2014). Brown and Lee (2015) also identified eight principles of language teaching: automaticity, transfer, reward, self-regulation, identity and investment, interaction, languaculture, and agency. Although an EMI class is not a language class, EMI classes are usually conducted in an EFL context, and proficiency in English is an important factor to determine the outcome of content learning. Therefore, we wanted to explore whether these eight principles could be adopted to analyze the class activities in the chosen site of this case study. Below is a brief introduction of these eight principles identified by Brown and Lee (2015).

  1. 1.

    Automaticity: This refers to progression from controlled to free processing of language forms, which can be achieved through meaningful and purposeful practice.

  2. 2.

    Transfer: Being able to transfer knowledge learned in one context to another is a manifestation of meaningful learning.

  3. 3.

    Reward: Rewards can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Those that are generated intrinsically are the most powerful type of reward.

  4. 4.

    Self-regulation: Learners’ ability to be in charge of their own learning—i.e., learner autonomy—is an important factor leading to the success of learning.

  5. 5.

    Identity and Investment: Learners’ perceptions of their own roles in the learning community—their identity—will determine how involved they are in this learning context.

  6. 6.

    Interaction: Collaboration and interaction among peers help create a social network of learning.

  7. 7.

    Languaculture: This term, coined by Agar (1994), emphasizes the interconnected nature of language and culture. In an EMI context, we can define “culture” as the culture of a particular field of study, rather than that of a group of language speakers.

  8. 8.

    Agency: This refers to a person’s choice to pursue a goal for personal actualization.

In this study, we use the above principles to analyze the pedagogical activities of one tourism program to identify elements that motivate learners.

Background of the Case Study

The aim of this study was to identify the features of EMI tourism instructional activities that motivate learners. We chose the Department of International Tourism Management (DITM), located in an EMI campus as a site for exploration. DITM is affiliated with a private university which has about 27,000 students and four campuses in northern Taiwan. The salient features of this EMI campus are: (1) all courses are taught in English; (2) students study abroad in their junior year; and (3) it is a residential college.

In the semester of spring 2015, we invited Professor C and the 21 students from one of her undergraduate classes, Tourism Resource Management, to participate in our study. Tourism Resource Management is a three-credit, elective course for sophomores in DITM. The course objectives are (1) to introduce types of tourism resources, (2) to introduce how to manage tourism resources, and (3) to provide students with opportunities for real-world experience in tourism resources management through an 18-h service learning. Throughout the semester, Professor C spent most of the class time introducing types of tourism resources and ways to manage those resources. In addition to presentations, she also included case studies, role plays, and guest lectures as instructional activities to meet the first two objectives. To ensure the quality of service learning, she devoted 3 h to explaining the goal, logistics, and arrangement of this project before students went out into the field and 3 h afterward to have students reflect and share their experiences.

Professor C was in her 30s. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from a university in Taiwan, she pursued further studies in the United Kingdom. She holds a master’s degree in Tourism Development and Planning and a doctoral degree in Marketing. It was her second year teaching in this EMI campus. She was introduced to us by another faculty member, Professor D, who had participated with Professor C in the same 5-day professional development program focusing on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Australia in February 2015. According to Professor D, Professor C has a good command of English, participated actively in the CLIL training, and seemed to be a teacher who is skilled at engaging students (personal communication, March 1, 2015).

The 21 students were mostly Taiwanese sophomore females, whose English proficiency was between B1 to B2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The demographics of the student participants are shown in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1 Demographics of the student participants
Full size table

The following research questions are addressed in this study:

  1. 1.

    What instructional activities can be used to motivate learners in a tourism program?

  2. 2.

    What are students’ perceptions toward these instructional activities?

Case Study

In order to answer these two research questions, we employed a qualitative approach to collect and analyze the data. Specifically, the data were collected from classroom observations, videotaped recordings of classes, a student survey, separate interviews with the teacher and students, and website materials such as the course Moodle.

To have access to the syllabus and other related course materials posted online, we asked Professor C to allow us to register as visitors in the course Moodle. Moreover, we requested to sit in on two class meetings (4 h total) and record five other meetings (10 h total) to document the instructional activities conducted in her class. At the end of the second observation, we administered a self-designed survey to the 21 students. The survey, which consisted of five demographic questions and ten open-ended questions, was aimed at exploring why students chose to study in an EMI campus, what difficulties they had encountered, as well as what they thought contributed to the success of an EMI program. At the end of the survey, we left a space for those students who were willing to participate in a follow-up interview to provide their contact information.

Among the five students who provided their contact information, two accepted our invitation and answered some follow-up questions via emails. One of the students, Student A, is a Taiwanese. She was then a senior from the Department of International Tourism Management. The other student, Student B, is a foreign student from St. Lucia. She was a junior from the Department of Global Political Economy. Both of their comments about the course will be quoted throughout the rest of the paper. To triangulate the data, we interviewed Professor C at the end of the second observation to listen to her thoughts and experiences of teaching EMI courses.

Overall Findings

Through class observations and video analysis, we found that throughout the semester, Professor C employed various instructional activities to engage her students. Those activities, e.g., presentations, case studies, role plays, guest lectures, field trips, and service learning, were mostly informative and interactive in nature. Students who participated in the follow-up interview had a positive attitude toward these instructional activities. In the following sections, we will describe how those activities were conducted and how the students perceived them. We also analyzed each of the activities to see if they match Brown and Lee’s (2015) eight principles of language teaching: automaticity, transfer, reward, self-regulation, identity and investment, interaction, languaculture, and agency.

Presentations

The objectives of the course were threefold: (1) to introduce types of tourism resources, (2) to introduce how to manage tourism resources, and (3) to provide students with opportunities for real-world experience in tourism resources management through an 18-h service learning. From the analyzed data, we found that presentations were used quite often to fulfil the first two objectives. Moreover, when making presentations, Professor C usually started with some warm-up activities, either sharing her own story/experience or asking students to ponder some thought-provoking questions first individually and then in groups. For example, in our first observation, she began the presentation on “Tourism Development and Planning” by sharing an anecdote, in which she asked two of her freshman advisees what they wanted to do after graduation. After these students had set a goal, she further asked them what they needed to do to reach their personal goals. From this goal-setting and plan-making activity done in an academic setting, Professor C then switched to the national government’s goals and plans for doubling the tourist arrivals in Taiwan, initiatives that were launched in 2002 and 2008.

During the presentations, we found that Professor C liked to encourage her students to answer questions to earn bonus points. Moreover, she often used concrete examples to illustrate the theories and models in tourism. For instance, in a lesson on “Tourism Demand,” she played a news video clip on the construction of the railroad from Taipei to Yilan to explain why there was a need to build such a railway.

After the presentations, Professor C often employed some follow-up activities so that students could recap the key points in lectures. Take our second observation as an example. After that day’s presentation, “Tourism Seasonality,” Professor C announced that she was going to post two questions on their class Facebook page. Students had to think as a destination manager and write down their solutions to the following problems: (1) a tourist spot where it rains almost every day and (2) a hot spring resort which does not receive many tourists in summer. After another presentation, “Understanding and Measuring Tourist Destination Images,” Professor C asked students to work in groups to create a collage of “My Perception of Y City as a Tourism Destination” using the photographs of urban scenes that she had previously asked them to bring to class. Obviously, Professor C’s presentations of the course content had a clear structure beginning with a warm-up stage, followed by idea introduction and development, and ended with student presentations or follow-up activities. This is in line with the structure of a language lesson identified by Richards and Lockhart (1995).

During the interview, Professor C commented that the purpose of the course was for the students to learn not only some theoretical models of tourism resource management but also the practical part of implementing these theories/models with essential skills. When making presentations, she usually started with a warm-up activity and then she would intersperse the presentation with activities and questions to engage her students. Her students were quite positive about this style of teaching. They thought that Professor C’s lively and interactive instructional style was conducive to their learning. They wished more professors would teach in a similar manner. As one student put it:

I liked the format of how the course was conducted. I actually wish more professors would set their courses in a similar structure. It was highly interactive and allowed students to be engaged. (Student B, personal communication, August 24, 2015)

Overall, Professor C’s presentations showed that Brown’s principles of reward (e.g., giving bonus points) and interaction were being utilized to engage students and motivate them to learn.

Case Studies

In addition to the lectures that introduced different models and theories of tourism resource management, Professor C employed two case studies near the end of the semester to show her students how theories are integrated into practice. In the first case study, Professor C assigned the students to read “Developing a Strategy for the Angkor World Heritage Site,” an eight-page (without references) journal article in English. In order to lower students’ stress in reading, Professor C divided the students into groups and conducted a jigsaw-reading activity, in which students in the same group were assigned a small portion of the reading first and then they had to summarize the key points of that portion for the whole class.

In the second case study, Professor C used another English-language journal article, “How the History of Scotland Creates a Sense of Place,” to illustrate how a sense of place can be constructed through a nation’s culture, people, and landscapes. In this activity, Professor C began by sharing her 6-year experience of living in Scotland when she pursued her Ph.D. study there. Next, she introduced the first part of the paper with a PowerPoint slide and divided the class into four groups. Then she assigned each group to summarize the four themes mentioned in the second part of the article, using the first page of a worksheet she had created. Finally, she did a recap by using the “Visit Scotland Brand Essence Wheel” provided on the second page of the worksheet.

In addition to having students read the two case studies mentioned above, Professor C also asked the students to conduct their own case studies by applying different models/theories to places with which they were familiar. For example, after introducing G. Crouch’s Model of Destination Competitiveness and Sustainability (Ritchie & Crouch, 2003), she asked students to apply this model to study the cities or towns of their own choice.

When introducing case studies in class, Professor C tended to let students work in groups to discuss and share opinions first and then she would ask one student from each group to present a summary of their discussion. Professor C required each presenter to say something different instead of just repeating the answer. As oral presentation was challenging for some students, Professor C used strategies such as listening attentively and offering encouragement to assist those students to fulfil the task. Student B indicated, “Many times she [Professor C] would really encourage my classmates to give their own opinions even though they were a bit shy” (personal communication, August 24, 2015).

When Professor C asked students to read the cases in groups, the principle of interaction was applied; when students were asked to conduct their own case studies to integrate theories into practice, the principle of transfer served to engage these learners.

Role Play

The role play, Choice of City Versatile, was designed by Professor C to be a problem-based learning project. It served as a review session of the units on “Tourism Development and Planning” and “Tourism Impact.” In the role play, a scenario was provided and each of the students was assigned a role. Students had 30 min to prepare for their lines based on the description and duties of their roles. In addition to the main roles that included city mayor, chief engineer, finance chief, town mayor, headman of a village, and villager, shadow characters were also assigned to support the main characters; their purpose was to think up strategies to be heard in the meeting as well as develop the overall story line.

Role play was quite new to the students. As it is not a common classroom activity done in a Taiwanese college setting, Professor C would occasionally switch to Chinese to ensure that students understood after she had first explained it in English. Students felt that this activity was interesting and well organized. As Student A put it, “The way it [the role play] was conducted was just like playing computer games—with a setting/scenario and characters—and you communicate and negotiate with others by using your assigned identity” (personal communication, August 7, 2015). Additionally, communicating and negotiating with others using an assigned identity provided students with a chance to actively use the theories and models they had learned in class. Student B commented, “I believe that working in service industry, especially in the Tourism sector, you need to fill out other roles besides that of your proposed position. I think that the role play is indeed fundamental for active learning” (personal communication, August 24, 2015).

Besides involving interaction with peers, role play activities no doubt aim at helping students transfer what they have learned to a real situation, with the goal that the tasks required will reach automaticity. Therefore, three of Brown’s principles have been applied here when role plays are built into the classroom activities.

Guest Lectures

Two 100-min guest lectures were delivered by invited speakers during the semester. In the first guest lecture, two speakers were invited to share their experience and the process of establishing a new nature park in northern Taiwan. One of the speakers, a local government official, described how this project had begun as early as the 1980s and how this nature park influenced the environment, culture, transportation, real estate, and the quality of life in that area. The other speaker, the CEO of an environmental ethics foundation, shared how they had planned and managed the resources in that attraction and highlighted its educational functions so as to distinguish it from other tourist sites.

In the second guest lecture, the secretary for the head of the culture division in the local government was invited. Having previously served as the vice-president of a newly built museum in Taiwan, she shared her experience in organizing various cultural activities at the governmental level, as well as her experience in establishing the ground rules for managing a museum.

After the first guest lecture, Professor C asked the students to write a reflective essay on the lessons they had learned from the guest lecture, as well as their attitude toward “tourism resource” and “management.” Similarly, after the second guest lecture, she devoted some class time to having the students share their thoughts on the abovementioned questions.

In the interview, Professor C confessed that although she required her students to participate in the 18-h service learning so that they could observe how the theories/models were implemented in reality, it was still difficult for the students to understand how all the tourist resources were collaboratively put together and allocated. Fortunately, the three invited speakers all addressed the importance of collaboration among different departments, as well as allocation and management of different resources. Although this was an EMI course, the invited speakers used Mandarin Chinese. For Student B, a foreign student whose Chinese proficiency was lacking, Professor C provided her with a summary and translation of what was said. As Student B observed, “My peers…seem to have enjoyed the speech and during the Q&A sessions they were very eager to ask questions and seek further information from the guest speakers” (personal communication, August 24, 2015).

By inviting outside experts to give guest lectures, Professor C connected her students with the real world and prepared them to transfer the knowledge gained in class to real-life situations. Thus, the principle of transfer was fulfilled.

Field Trip

To allow students to connect the theories they had learned in class with the tourism industry, Professor C organized a class field trip to two tourism factories (one making soap and the other making food) and an “old street” (i.e., a street with shops that sell traditional products). These sites are all popular tourism spots in northern Taiwan. After the visit, Professor C asked the students to compare the two factories and tell which one they liked better and why. Next, she asked the students to identify some problems they found in these factories. To conclude the activity, she asked the students to share their general impression of the old street.

Students appreciated the opportunity to visit the two factories and the old street because the trip was well organized. Professor C arranged interpreters in the two factories to explain the day-to-day operations. In addition to learning about different services provided by the two factories such as DIY activities and community service, the students also learned a great deal about the history of the factories. Student A commented, “Visiting factories was a good idea because students rarely had opportunities to do so by themselves” (personal communication, August 7, 2015).

By arranging the field trip, Professor C aimed at providing students with first-hand experience of the operation of the tourism industry to allow knowledge transfer from the classroom to the field and vice versa. This is another example of the principle of transfer being built into the course.

Service Learning

As mentioned earlier, one of the objectives of this course was for students to experience real practice in tourism resources management through an 18-h service learning. Professor C arranged for her students to serve and learn in an expo that lasted for 6 weeks. Students had to work in one of the following places during both days of the weekend: the information center, the shop selling local organic produce, and the environment education center. Before students tackled this project, Professor C participated in an information meeting so that she could prepare her students. Also, she asked two student volunteers to interview an officer of the expo and the other two students to serve as editors to help the project’s assistant compile a service learning booklet that included students’ service learning logs, group reflections, and the interview with the event organizer. At the end of this experience, students were required to present in class what they had learned, and each student received a copy of the service-learning booklet as a reward for their hard work.

This service learning was well received by the students as they felt it was a very meaningful way to experience the ups and downs of providing a service and how, when presented with challenging situations, they must think fast and take the right course of action. According to Student B, “It [service learning] gives us a reality check on what it is in the real world” (personal communication, August 24, 2015). Since Student B could not communicate easily in Mandarin Chinese, Professor C paired her with a student who was fluent in English and also briefed her (Student B) beforehand on what to expect. Both Student A and Student B indicated that they appreciated the opportunity to learn through providing service to others. Additionally, they felt that they were fully supported throughout the weekends of service learning. Student A stated:

I appreciated the opportunity of service learning, although it had to be done during the weekend. The whole experience was worthwhile. We had provided services in different areas. After the service learning, Professor C asked us to share our reflection in class, and she also shared hers with us. (personal communication, August 7, 2015)

Service learning is another way to transfer what is learned in class to the real world and from field experience to knowledge consolidation. This experience also facilitates the acquisition of automaticity. As service learning allowed students to be immersed in the field for an extended period of time, the culture of that real-world site could become part of the experience. Thus, languaculture, another principle identified by Brown and Lee (2015), was manifested.

The above recount of Professor C’s class shows that five out of Brown’s eight principles were manifested in Professor C’s pedagogical activities: automaticity, transfer, reward, interaction, and languaculture. The other three principles—self-regulation, identity and investment, and agency—were not clearly evident.

Highlights and Challenges

From the classroom observations, survey, interviews, and document analyses, we have found some highlights and challenges of this EMI course in tourism. At the time of this study, Professor C was only in her second year of teaching in this program, but she had already successfully implemented various instructional activities to overcome one of the challenges in teaching this course—to engage her students. In the interview, she stated:

Students tend to think “Tourism Resource Management” is quite boring just by judging the course title… It involves too many aspects…It’s challenging for me to cover all of the topics with limited class meetings…Students find some of the content hard to understand because they lacked related experiences…I find it extremely difficult to motivate the students. (personal communication, June 8, 2015)

According to Professor C, her approach to teaching was very different in the past. She shared an example with us:

In one of the courses I taught last year, I did all the lectures (teacher talking and students listening) from the beginning to the end, including case studies. The students felt bored, and so did I! I was very angry at them because I had worked so hard and they did not even bother listening! (personal communication, June 8, 2015)

What has transformed her teaching approach? Professional development. She asserted that she had benefited very much from the 5-day Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) training in Australia, which was organized and funded by her university. After the training, she realized that when teaching EMI courses, she was not only a content teacher but a language teacher as well. She used to take it for granted that students knew the English terminology in tourism because she herself had studied in the United Kingdom, an all-English environment. However, after the professional development training, she became aware of the problems in her teaching methods and incorporated the strategies she had learned in order to more effectively engage her students.

Professor C’s passion for teaching and learning could be the key to the success of the course. It is her passion in teaching that provided her with the drive to change, and it is her passion in learning that motivated her to participate in various professional development activities so as to gain new ideas. As Student A wrote,

Professor C has many new ideas. We are all very grateful for what she has done for this course. From this class, we have learned that Professor C is passionate about living and loves to travel. We have learned a lot from her thoughts about different cultures and the travelling experiences in different countries. It’s a great plus for this course. (personal communication, August 7, 2015)

There is no doubt that Professor C’s passion in teaching and creativity in activity design is one of the highlights that contributed to the success of this tourism program. However, challenges also existed in this course taught in an English-immersion college. Professor C’s English was clear and fluent, but her students’ command of English language, ranging from IELTS five to six (CEFR B1 to B2), was not quite sufficient for handling EMI courses. From the survey, 76% of the students indicated that they chose to study in this EMI program because they wanted to improve their English in order to become more competitive in the future. Although most of the students said they wanted to work in the tourism sector after graduation, 67% of them felt that their English ability was not adequate. According to Professor C, about one-third of the students didn’t understand what she said in class. She stated,

We have raised the threshold of English scores on the entrance exam. Although we only admitted those students whose English score was ranked top 25% to our program, there is still a huge gap [between the top and low students]. Whether the course is taught in Chinese or English, students should get the same knowledge. ….Students needed to know some basic terminology in the field to understand and participate in class activities. (personal communication, June 8, 2015)

In addition to students’ inadequate language proficiency, Professor C also felt disappointed with the students’ learning attitude. She didn’t think the students were diligent enough, and they seldom previewed the material. In the interview, Student B echoed Professor C’s comments on the learning attitude of her peers, “I am a little disappointed in many of my classmates because we had sufficient time to prepare [for the role play] but it was evident that they did not give their best” (personal communication, August 24, 2015).

This discussion of highlights and difficulties reveals that Professor C invested considerable time to make herself a better EMI teacher; she had taken a training course overseas and assembled various resources to enrich her class activities, and she did all these passionately. Brown and Lee’s (2015) principle of identity and investment emerged, therefore, not in the students, nor in the class activities, but in the instructor. If students had adopted the principle of self-regulation and demonstrated more autonomy in learning to empower themselves—which is the principle of agency—then the course analyzed in this case study would have manifested all eight principles that Brown and Lee identified as being crucial in learning.

Summary

In this chapter, we have described the instructional activities used in a tourism resource management class based on data collected from class observations, transcriptions of class videos, and interviews with the instructor and students. A variety of pedagogical activities that motivated students to learn were found: Presentations, case studies, role play, guest lectures, field trip, and service learning. All of these activities involved student participation, and even the most traditional format—lecturing—was conducted in a manner that included student-teacher interaction. We found the class to be conducive to learning for several reasons: First, the instructor was fluent in her command of English, and the class was conducted in clear English. Second, the instructor was very enthusiastic about teaching and constantly sought ways to motivate her students. Third, there was a variety of activities that engaged students to explore the theories and practice of tourism. The fact that some components of the class, such as the guest lectures and service learning, were conducted in the students’ L1, Mandarin, and that the instructor incorporated some timely code-switching was another factor contributing to students’ positive attitudes in learning. Finally, the students, being fully aware of and prepared to take up the challenge of acquiring content knowledge in English prior to attending this English-medium college, were very positive about taking content courses in English and hoped that their English language proficiency would improve as a result. Although the students probably didn’t realize how much content covered in class they had failed to grasp, their positive attitude and beliefs in the benefit of EMI courses are one of the factors that make the program sustainable.

Based on the results of this study, we suggest that administrators of EMI programs offer professional development opportunities to support EMI teachers. An intensive immersion program like the one Professor C took part in or a support system to allow fellow EMI teachers to share ideas and learn from each other will empower teachers. Administrators should also communicate to students the rationale for offering content courses in English and provide students with a choice of the same courses taught in Mandarin and English. After all, students’ motivation to learn and their investment in learning activities are as important as teachers’ passion to offer activities that are conducive to learning.