Keywords

The five chapters on EMI practitioner perspectives in Part II yield research-based findings that are necessary to comprehend the recently introduced EMI in Vietnamese higher education. In this specific context, according to Barnett and Pham, ‘EMI has an integral responsibility to society, whilst also being closely tied to university competitiveness, prosperity and international engagement’ (Chapter 1, p. 3). Among the contributions of this volume is the knowledge accrued on the top-down implementation of EMI in Vietnamese higher education, a context characterised by two key realities: students’ low proficiency and a teacher-centred, textbook-oriented tradition embedded in a cultural and educational background that clashes with an active learning pedagogy that EMI seems to call for (Dearden, 2014). EMI agency thus appears to be key in triggering a more student-centred methodology while increasing exposure to the English language—albeit the outsider reader is uncertain to what extent EMI and an active pedagogy have been concurrent innovations in Vietnam. For this reason, the analytical work in all five chapters offers valuable and in-depth information on practices and beliefs held by Vietnamese practitioners facing the double challenge of implementing both innovations.

Going on with the contributions, as most of the studies in this second part draw upon classroom research (Hu, 2005; Nunan, 2005), a high ecological validity can be said to have been attained, implying that the findings obtained may be generalisable in other Asian and East Asian higher education institutions. Indeed, the researchers in the part I have read of this volume offer an external researcher’s perspective of classroom practices that they have themselves observed and, after triangulating observation with interviews and surveys, analyse beliefs, difficulties and pedagogical practices that have also been identified in other parts of the world. Studies in this second part consistently reach the overall research-based conclusion that Vietnamese higher education was rather unprepared for EMI implementation and provide evidence on this lack of readiness along three important strands: classroom practices and stakeholders’ beliefs (Chapters 6 and 7), translanguaging (Chapters 8 and 9) and assessment (Chapter 10).

In the sixth and seventh chapters, EMI practitioners are observed to resort to practices meant to scaffold learning for low proficient students and simplify output while engaging students with interactive activities. For example, in Chapter 6, practitioners are observed to make use of scaffolding techniques that can also be very useful in European contexts where English proficiency is not very high; hence, the EMI practitioners under study regularly ask and check for understanding, use visual aids, diagrams and video clips, code-switch, pre teach key terminology, frequently review and recap, promote group work and make attempts to promote self-study and build relationship with students via social networks. The seventh chapter showcases CLIL-ised pedagogies (Moncada-Comas & Block, 2019) used by one lecturer to scaffold content (e.g. mind maps, high-and low-order thinking questions, hands-on activities, team projects), mostly to engage and motivate students. In the East Asian educational culture with a tradition of teacher-fronted, textbook-based transmission, student motivation and engagement are sought to be attained by a shift towards student-led methodologies. In this context, learning through the medium of English is equated with a student-centred and interactive instructional pedagogy, which is conducive to the perception of EMI as an agent of modernising and democratising teaching and learning—an assumption that is not always shared in countries where student-centred teaching had been implemented long before EMI. Interaction and active pedagogy are certainly highly recommended to EMI practitioners (Sánchez-García, 2018), usually on the grounds of the extra cognitive demand created by learning content in a foreign language. This added difficulty in processing content in another language can for example be mediated, or compensated for, by means of asking challenging questions (Sánchez-García, 2018), Think-Pair-Share activities and teamwork. Activities of this kind, observed and described in both chapters, are expected to give more time for students to process, internalise and understand content knowledge taught in English while relieving pressure and enhancing involvement. Finally, by pointing to the discrepancies and mismatch between the traditional and EMI-focused pedagogy, the authors also bring to the fore a sometimes-neglected dimension in EMI, namely, intercultural competence. Going beyond a mere change in language, EMI can somehow also fuel new and different ways of thinking, working and learning, and infuse global thinking. It should however be taken in consideration that for intercultural outcomes to fully develop, local Vietnamese students should have foreign students in their EMI class, so that well-planned interaction with culturally different others occurred.

The practices reported in these chapters seem extremely useful and generalisable across institutions around the world where EMI is offered to low proficient students. Yet, these practices require highly motivated practitioners willing to make a remarkable extra effort to adjust content and motivate students—the Vietnamese teachers under study even engage in virtual discourses to give feedback to students out of class. This extra workload points to these teachers’ intense involvement in EMI and mirrors the difficulties and pressures undergone when EMI is implemented top-down and at a rapid pace by policy makers, who besides name EMI programmes ‘high-quality programmes’. An external reader cannot help wondering about the sustainability of these practices—whether practitioners will be willing to make this extra effort over a sustained, long period without being institutionally rewarded and fully supported.

The pressure and hurdles for these practitioners, examined in Chapters 8 and 9 on translanguaging, are unveiled when, in the interviews, they voice their sense of guilt whenever they turn to L1 in class. EMI practitioners are depicted as torn between two opposing realities—on the one hand top-down policies pushing towards EMI in a context where the student body is largely unprepared, and on the other hand self-selection for EMI as a career opportunity—and their sense of guilt seems to result from lack of explicit written norms as to what language policy to adhere to. All in all, the underlying motivations to translanguage seem to be (i) to make content comprehensible to low proficient students and (ii) to engage and involve their students. Though the latter (affective) motivation is only mentioned by one teacher in Chapter 8, most teachers believe that translanguaging—or code-switching, the distinction between both concepts is made in Chapter 9—is utterly necessary to make sure students understand content. While the findings in Chapter 8 do not derive from real class observation but from interviews, similar conclusions are reached in the ninth chapter, where data comes from class observation, interviews and stimulated recall. Practitioners in Chapter 9 also hold the tacit assumption that EMI should always be in English, an assumption that is only adding one more degree of unease and pressure, presumably affecting their teaching performance. Two outstanding differences in Chapter 9 are that the two study practitioners teach EFL and that the study draws on a rich, variegated data methodology, as already mentioned. These factors may have a bearing on why the two EMI practitioners analysed in this chapter deploy awareness about the pedagogic and strategic value of making full use of one’s linguistic repertories. Analysis of data thus reveals three main reasons for translanguaging: (i) scaffold complex concepts to transmit and anticipate possible misconceptions; (ii) manage comments, discipline and time; and (iii) create a friendly classroom atmosphere and build rapport with students. Because these two practitioners do not see L1 and English as separated or opposed languages, they are claimed to translanguage and not to code-switch. What remains a revealing finding in both studies on translanguaging is that the practitioners analysed felt guilty for not using English all the time—a negative psychological impact that could be avoided if awareness was raised among these teachers that translanguaging can be a learning aid and if this was made explicit in EMI policy.

Finally, in the tenth chapter, assessment practices are explored via observation and interviews to both students and teachers for a rather unexpected purpose—to engage and encourage student registration. Analysis of the data leads the authors to conclude that assessment for formative purposes does not suffice due to its limited presence (few interactions, few questions and little feedback) and discretional use (i.e. largely dependent on individual teachers’ professional competence). As before, this finding hints at lack of proper training offered to EMI practitioners, who were unable to identify the gap between their students’ current and desired learning: they missed several methodologies and activities like increasing interaction with questions (resonating with Cots, 2013 or Sánchez-García, 2018), promoting peer- and self-assessment, explicitly communicating the assessment criteria and intended learning objectives, or making an informed selection of assessment methods to give rich feedback on student learning. Making a critical appraisal of the bonus marks practice they observe, the authors in this chapter raise the concern that pervades all chapters in this part, namely, the need to reconsider the effectiveness of EMI when practitioners have not received full support and training and when students’ proficiency level is insufficient.

Questioning the effectiveness of EMI in settings like the one described in the volume can also be found in the literature. Carrió-Pastor and Bellés-Fortuño (2021), for example, recommend EMI for settings with proficient students and in international programmes and CLIL for contexts where students’ proficiency is low. Likewise, a critical stance on EMI can also be found in Scandinavian settings where the Englishisation of higher education is not always widely welcomed, or where westernisation can be seen as intrusive if only virtues of Western education are seen as desirable (Bradford, 2019). While voices have been heard about the need for screening in EMI—a C1 proficiency level is advisable to embark on EMI, otherwise educational standards may be impoverished—this also raises the not less important question of equity, particularly among state universities, as sometimes only families with a given socioeconomic status can afford opportunities of rich exposure to English and interculturality to their children, in the shape of formal education or study or stay abroad. It is for this reason that policy making and internationalisation measures relative to EMI should always be informed with context-specific research and knowledge.

To conclude with this commentary, I would like to highlight important lessons that can be derived. The first relates to the fact that implementing EMI in the Vietnamese setting entails two pedagogical innovations, an ambitious challenge, particularly if both innovations take place simultaneously. Second, intercultural competence in the setting described seems to be playing a crucial role because of the changes of paradigm and the mismatch with the more traditionally passive pedagogy in Vietnam. This finding substantiates the oft-mentioned connection between foreign language and intercultural competences and the claim that learning and teaching in a foreign language cannot be seen as a mere change of code (or interface, Aguilar-Pérez & Arnó-Macià, 2020; Arnó-Macià & Aguilar-Pérez, 2021). The agency of EMI could extend to instilling new ways of thinking and behaving in class and at work—resonating with key components in intercultural competence, knowledge, skills and attitude, that help individuals behave and communicate effectively and appropriately in multicultural environments (Deardoff, 2009). As the authors in Chapter 1 rightly point out, ‘it is not just the language and the content that are imported, but also ways of thinking and understanding the world’ (p. 5). The process of cultural othering cannot be ignored in an EMI context; however, Vietnamese teachers seem to be expected to smoothly appropriate a different teaching style and infuse a different way of thinking to students by osmosis, a hard task if no pedagogical intervention is present.

It is for this reason that context-specific research like the one in this volume allows researchers in the field to identify common core problems across continents while bringing to the fore the importance of the local background against which EMI is to be implemented. Such ‘glocal’ understanding of potentialities, benefits and problems inherent to EMI may help us devise the adequate tools and strategies for different higher education institutions, such as training, language policies, pace of implementation or assessment methods. Because a glocal educational approach to EMI may be more effective, inclusive and fair than a one-size-fits-all EMI, in Vietnam a CLIL-ised approach (Moncada-Comas & Block, 2019), supported by tandem teaching between content and language specialists and pedagogical interventions, may prove a sound decision to accommodate low proficient students reluctant to ask and participate. If quality is to be assured, a CLIL-ised EMI could for example be implemented gradually, timely and selectively, as CLIL-ised approaches may accord well in small and interactive classrooms, less daunting places to learn, speak and interact and where some attention to form can be paid.

A lingering concern is that Vietnamese universities are not yet ready for EMI. For EMI to move forward and to effectively be able to contribute to Vietnamese society with ‘competitiveness, prosperity and international engagement’, a static picture of EMI—with its portrayed weaknesses and pitfalls—should evolve to become situated and accommodated to the context-specific needs. The potential of EMI is seen to pivot on the agency of EMI practitioners, whose task in scaffolding is laudable: they can certainly contribute to teaching disciplinary knowledge and literacy enacting an active pedagogy, even raising intercultural awareness, but one feels that they cannot be made accountable for students’ foreign language improvement, which are learning outcomes that fall beyond their professional competence and expertise. Studies like this book are an excellent step towards finding the way to make the most of EMI in a realistic, fair and challenging way.