Introduction

With a dual focus on developing learners’ content knowledge via the instruction of English, content language integrated learning (CLILFootnote 1) has gained increasing interest as a way to balance both content and language development. While CLIL is a more common term in Europe (e.g., [3, 11, 35]), English-medium instruction (EMI) has gained its popularity in Asia. A trend of EMI in Asian universities, such as South Korea [2] or Vietnam [33], has derived from two major reasons i.e., globalization and a competitive market in higher education. To attract international students, several universities in Asian countries have implemented EMI and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs, which integrate both content and language learning.

In many Asian countries, the EMI trend has more content language integrated learning features as it is implemented to develop students’ English language proficiency (e.g., [2, 4, 21, 30]). By implementing EMI, universities expect content teachers to provide English language input while students comprehend content subjects in English. However, what they have not considered is that EMI with a comprehension-focused approach will not provide enough support for students’ language development. In the case of Korea, its implementation cannot advance students’ English proficiency due to students’ low levels of English and content subject teachers’ unreadiness to teach their subject in English [2]. As several scholars (e.g., [9, 27]) point out, language teachers’ roles in EMI programs can be expanded to support students’ learning through collaboration with content teachers. The lack of discussion of language teachers’ views and experiences with CLIL programs calls for studies examining their roles and adjustments in meeting the needs derived from new contexts.

This study examines language teachers’ experiences within the content-specialized ESP program implemented by a Korean university, supported by a government initiative for campus internationalization. The purpose of the study is to explore English language teachers’ beliefs and practices while developing and executing a new specialized curriculum.

Literature Review

Connecting CLIL, ESP, and EMI

CLIL has its origins in Europe, and it is a relatively common practice as part of the consolidation of the European Higher Education Area [8]. In addition to economic and social purposes, CLIL contributes to the European vision for plurilingualism. In Asia, it has become a springboard for internationalization. CLIL has often been understood as a continuum of language- and content-focused teaching [35]. CLIL, with its dual focus, has been known as an umbrella term for ESP and EMI. However, because of the ambiguity in the degree of integration, CLIL cannot be clearly defined when compared with ESP and EMI which show a clear focus in its term. That is, while ESP is more language-focused teaching, EMI is more concerned with subject knowledge [35].

Studies on CLIL (e.g., [26, 27]) have discussed both advantages and challenges in its implementation as a new teaching approach. Commonly mentioned advantages are students’ increased motivation, language awareness, high mobility, and employability, which are similar to the benefits of EMI. As the topics of the courses are related to their major, students’ motivation is increased [5, 34]. With an advance of language proficiency in content subjects, students are expected to be competitive in global markets.

CLIL practitioners have to balance between the target language and professional subject matter in their instruction. As CLIL needs to balance the dual focus [5, 10, 31, 32, 34], both content and language teachers need to fulfill various roles. Research on CLIL has addressed the challenges in combining content and language focus, as well as adding new demands for content and language teachers [1, 13, 27, 35]. They call for more research at the local, national, and international levels to help teachers cope with the demands of this new approach.

Coyle [5] points out the role of content in learner motivation which is often overlooked in language classrooms. CLIL has a crucial role to play in shifting the language skill development to its integration with content knowledge and engaging students more fully and deeply. Yang’s [35] study reported different focuses and activities between traditional language classes and CLIL courses and between language and content teachers in CLIL. In his study, language teachers who support the communicative approach were willing to allocate more time for students to practice English such as group discussions and presentations, whereas content teachers were more concerned about students’ comprehension of content.

One of the concerns in CLIL is related to the lower levels of English proficiency among university students and teachers. Yang [34] claimed that taking language-focused classes could be beneficial for CLIL beginners by smoothing their adaptation to EMI courses. However, Evans and Morrison’s [12] study indicated that traditional language courses, such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) failed to prepare students for the variety and complexity of the demands in their disciplines and make them sensitized to the salient rhetorical and linguistic features of key disciplinary genres. Their findings revealed that EAP programs might not be sufficient for students to prepare for EMI courses. This calls for a more comprehensive approach to address new demands which EAP programs have not covered.

New Demands and Challenges for Language Teachers in CLIL

Researchers have noticed that ESP and EMI are not absolute opposites, but they may in fact share some similarities and complement each other. As EMI is focused on mostly content subjects, students need courses for practicing English language and academic skills. Jendrych [17] discusses the complexity of ESP teaching and the emergence of CLIL as an attribute of the development of ESP. She claims that the new developments of ESP have brought challenges for language teachers, as it requires higher qualifications, such as discipline knowledge and transferable academic skills. These new demands can cause difficulties, constraints, and negative attitudes on the part of language teachers and further be perceived as a threat to their status and identities as language teachers [9, 27]. Due to this reason, language teachers might be hesitant to teach CLIL courses. Besides language, they need to consider other dimensions such as content, content-relevant culture, learning, and environment in CLIL. Thus, CLIL requires language teachers’ shift from their traditional practices to a new perception of their roles as language teachers.

In CLIL and ESP, language teachers are expected to meet dual purposes i.e., to improve students’ language proficiency and to support comprehension in their content courses (e.g., [5, 22]). In understanding language teachers’ challenges and their adjustments, Dale et al. [9] provide a useful framework. Their analysis of teachers’ various positions provides language teachers’ pedagogical approaches to language and content. Depending on language teachers’ focus and orientation, their positions can be varied from language/form, content/meaning, culture-specific, and subject-specific orientation. Their analysis addresses the diverse identities language teachers might take and further suggests the flexibility that they need to develop to meet the multiple roles in CLIL.

Unlike CLIL and ESP, content teachers of EMI in post-secondary settings simply hope their students understand the content subjects they teach and are less interested in language development (e.g., [2]). In supporting students’ comprehension of EMI content, Yang [35] argued that language teachers felt that they had been forced to give up their language professionalism to learn additional content knowledge to teach ESP courses. Language teachers’ identities and roles could be affected when focusing more on supporting students’ comprehension of content knowledge than teaching language. It is because understanding terms and concepts in disciplines requires not only acquiring relevant vocabulary and reading skills but also transferring the shared knowledge to the target language. Supporting students’ conceptual shift experientially and intellectually [27] is often overlooked, but it is a critical role for language teachers to bridge between different academic disciplines and target language competence.

In fact, language teachers’ use of the students’ mother tongue (L1) in some CLIL courses is not strictly forbidden, and sometimes, it is even encouraged to facilitate students’ learning [28, 35]. The rationale behind it is its effectiveness in helping students understand the complex ideas and notions that they already possess in L1. By making use of L1, teachers can activate students’ existing knowledge rather than re-conceptualizing the world in a new language [24]. Méndez and Pavón [28] also add that the use of L1 can be helpful in clarifying complex ideas and concepts. More attention to the benefits of L1 use and the role of non-native teachers who can provide support in L1 might yield insights in understanding students’ diverse needs in CLIL.

However, it is not clear how language teachers handle the challenges they encounter in their transition to ESP. To facilitate language teachers in establishing their identities and practices, their challenges, experiences, and perceptions in ESP and CLIL need to be examined.

Complementing EMI with ESP in Korea

Similar to most CLIL cases in other Asian EFL countries (e.g., [33]), government language policy has played an important role in expanding EMI in Korea. In Korean universities, two factors have contributed to the expansion of EMI: the Korean government’s thrust and universities’ efforts for internationalization. The international competitiveness index of universities becomes a crucial criterion used by the Korean government to select recipients of government funding. As Kirkpatrick [20] points out, the main motivation for Korean universities to implement EMI programs was more financial than pedagogical. When an EMI model is adopted, it is administrator-initiated without providing enough support for teachers. As Byun et al. [2] presented, there were challenges of the compulsory enforcement of the EMI case in Korea. It was implemented unilaterally across academic disciplines without sufficient consideration of the language proficiency of students and the readiness of content instructors to conduct EMI classes.

In Korean EMIFootnote 2 cases, there is a fallacy of comprehensible input, which claims that comprehensible input alone is sufficient for language development. As interaction and output hypotheses in SLA argue, learners’ output and interaction are critical in language development, especially to increase learners’ accuracy. When the Korean government encourages universities to adopt EMI courses, it expects these courses to focus on both content and English development. However, EMI courses have brought on content teachers’ burdens [2], lack of students’ participation [4, 25, 34], and its ineffectiveness of delivering certain content subjects [2]. As scholars (e.g., [19, 30]) note, EMI in Korea has faced problems and challenges that seem to disempower faculty and students due to its top-down approach, which is an undemocratic manner of implementation [30] and does not consider students’ low English abilities [18, 30]. In addition, as EMI teachers do not perceive their role in language teaching, there is a lack of interaction with students [14] and limited feedback on students’ work [15]. What has been missing to address students’ language needs in EMI instruction calls for the intervention by ESP teachers. ESP teachers may play a transitory role by adapting content instruction into their roles as language teachers. However, language teachers’ challenges or conflicts which could be entailed by taking up the transitory role have not been explored.

To understand language teachers’ challenges and concerns, which are critical to implement a successful CLIL program, it is necessary to explore English language teachers’ beliefs and practices in CLIL. With this purpose in mind, the following questions were derived for this research:

  1. 1)

    What are English language teachers’ beliefs and practices about CLIL?

  2. 2)

    What is the experience of English language teachers during the implementation of the ESP program?

Methods

The study employed a qualitative methodology to understand two language instructors’ adaptation to the CLIL program in South Korea. The primary data were collected through interviews and classroom observations of the participants over 1 year. Materials relevant to language specialization (ESP) were reviewed as secondary data.

Context

A shift from EAP to ESP of the English program at University X was initiated as a part of the government project to advance general education and globalization. As one of the leading universities in Korea, University X is located in central Seoul with a population of around 3000 freshmen in 12 colleges. Most students entering University X were expected to have an upper-intermediate level of English and take two 3-credit English classes in their first year as a mandatory requirement.

The implementation of the ESP program was expected to play a bridging role by training students to be able to take EMI courses later. The existing EAP courses experienced a major transformation to ESP by adding more content knowledge for various disciplines to the curriculum. The program was overseen by a Korean director outside the program, and 5 sub-committee heads (two native English-speaking and three Korean full-time instructors) implemented the changes to the program.

In spite of the adaptation, there was no additional hiring of language teachers with content specialization. All new ESP courses were instructed by existing language teachers without additional training of ESP. There were 11 native full-time and 22 non-native full-time and part-time instructors. The non-native teachers had a high command of English and their majors were mainly in English language or English literature. While the non-native teachers had similar majors, the native teachers had diverse majors such as photography, music, business, engineering, science, and history, as well as English education and English literature.

The role of the ESP courses was to develop students’ English language proficiency and prepare them to be ready for EMI courses. However, there was no interaction or collaboration between the instructors of the ESP courses and the content teachers of EMI. Following the previous EAP policy, all instructors led their classes in English. However, some instructors would use some terms in L1 to help students understand during or after classes, as well as office hours if necessary.

Course Description

The ESP courses were called “language specialized” classes at University X and centered around reading and writing. The courses adapted 4 common readings from a language textbook, Longman Academic Reading Series, and added 4 different specialized readings for each discipline. These specialized readings were chosen from a pool of about 20 articles selected by sub-committees and were about 3–5 times longer with more discipline-specific vocabulary than the textbook. Both the textbook readings and specialized readings were taught with a focus on identifying patterns of organization, main ideas, and supporting details.

Participants

We invited two language teachers with over 20 years of teaching experience to participate in the study because they knew the most about the history of the English program. They went through all the stages of the transition from EAP to ESP and served as heads of the sub-committee. Ken was a native, male teacher in his early sixties, and Sonia was a non-native female teacher in her early fifties. Ken had a BA in engineering and held a Ph.D. in Education, and Sonia had a BA and a Ph.D. in English Literature. The selection criteria were based on teachers’ similar qualifications with different backgrounds.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data consisted of interviews, classroom observations, teaching materials, and the specialization related documents. The interviews were conducted formally three times with each participant before, in the middle of, and at the end of the observations. The interview questions were semi-structured and focused on their attitudes, perceptions of, and adaptations to the specialization program. The first interview was conducted to understand each teacher’s background and perception about the specialization. The second and third interviews were for an in-depth understanding of their adaptation to the specialization to explore whether their perceptions and attitudes of teaching matched their actual teaching practices during the classroom observations and to trace the changes in their views of ESP’s benefits and challenges. Some examples of the interview questions were as follows: How important is it to improve students’ accuracy of the target language in the language specialization program?, What do you think the major benefits/challenges for teachers and students are?, In what ways can teachers support students to overcome these challenges?, and How are language teachers’ role(s) different from that of content teachers in the language specialization program?. The researchers also had informal talks with the participants before and after each observation to understand and check class objectives, the teaching content, and their responses to the implementation of ESP.

The classroom observations were conducted four times and each class lasted 75 min. Two randomly selected lessons were observed each semester. The focus of the classroom observations was their adaptation to the specialization in teaching practices throughout the course. During the classroom observations, any coordination between language and content objectives, such as the presence of coordinated objectives through activities, were identified and recorded in the field note.

In addition to the interviews and class observations, the researchers reviewed the materials related to the specialization including new readings, course syllabi, and teacher workshop booklets for triangulation of the data. The transcribed interview data, observation field notes, and ESP related materials were read several times and coded by the researchers. Before coding, member checks were done for credibility. Focusing on the research questions, language teachers’ challenges, concerns, experiences, and beliefs were coded separately. Codes by the two researchers were compared and analyzed. Any disagreements were reconciled through discussion. During the analysis, common themes, such as challenges for English teachers and resistance to top-down implementation and sub-themes, such as balance in focusing on language and content, and defining language teachers’ roles emerged.

Findings and Discussions

The findings of the data showed that both teachers’ perceptions of the specialization program were both positive and negative. Their perceptions and beliefs about the new ESP program were affected by its usefulness to their students i.e., students’ language development and increased future job opportunities. They tried to overcome the challenges in implementing the ESP program for supporting their students’ interests and needs in a new global society. However, their negative attitudes were towards the way the program was implemented. As the ESP program at University X was implemented without much discussion with the teachers, they were resistant initially towards the unexpected change including new roles and identities imposed by the ESP initiative.

Both Ken and Sonia’s attitudes towards the implementation of the ESP program showed three distinctive stages: periods of frustration, negotiation, and adjustment. Although their initial responses were frustration, they tried to negotiate their teacher roles and identities and then gradually adjusted their teaching practices to meet new ESP demands. In response to the research questions, the following three themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) negotiating the role of language teachers in the ESP program, (b) meeting challenges for language teachers of different languages and disciplines, and (c) transitioning from language teacher to collaborative facilitator.

Negotiating the Role of Language Teacher in ESP

The top-down implementation and lack of communication between administrators and teachers prior to the transition affected Ken and Sonia’s attitudes towards the ESP programs. The initial transition from the EAP to the ESP program among the English language teachers was not smooth. Ken and Sonia were not invited to the initial decision-making process of ESP, so they both felt frustrated and hurt as language teachers. Ken and Sonia’s initial frustrations were mainly due to the way the new program was initiated and implemented, not the ESP program itself.

Due to the lack of communication, Ken and Sonia, as well as many other language teachers, did not fully comprehend the direction of the new program when the administration tried to implement ESP. As Ken said:

They [the administration] treated it as a nuisance. In the end, the picture that the administration had was we were resisting it, but that’s not true at all. We were doing what we were supposed to do. There was an urgency and lack of leadership on their part.

The method, or lack thereof, of communication was a problem for Ken, and he felt that such a great change to the curriculum should have been announced in advance for teachers to prepare for it. There were no written guidelines or explanations of the policy, except for the verbal announcement of the director. At the beginning of the ESP program, Ken suggested a need-analysis to the administration but it was ignored.

Sonia also expressed her frustration with the way the ESP program was implemented. She felt powerless and expressed that, “language teachers were being forced to make changes to the program that would shake the purpose and goals that had been the center of the program.” She echoed Ken’s frustration that “we felt that much had been hurried and were not clear about the direction that the administration had wanted.” As Dale et al. [9] address, language teachers were “under-represented” (p.367) and their expertise was under-valued, so both Ken and Sonia struggled to define their positions and identities as language teachers.

After the negotiation between the administration and teachers, the new ESP program incorporated both the original language objectives and the specialization for different majors. Teaching authentic and discipline-specific articles would be a great transition and challenge for language teachers as they would need to assume the content teacher’s role, which requires various discipline knowledge. Thus, a compromise between language and content goals was made after 2 months of internal conflicts to accommodate both language teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and the university’s decision to specialize the program for different disciplines.

Another struggle emerged during the implementation, especially in the process of developing a different curriculum. The five sub-committee groupings for specialization were made by the administration without considering teachers’ backgrounds and preferences. No explanation of how the committees were comprised was given to the teachers. As most teachers did not know the purpose of the specialization, the committees were dysfunctional and ineffective. Ken recalled that there were some teachers who were strongly resistant, not only because of the “the fear of the unknown” but also the lack of teacher autonomy [4, 29]. He was quite frustrated with the way it was implemented:

Teachers were against the idea of having a reading pool for ESP as it sets limitations automatically. There were arbitrary rules, such as word length. Teachers should be able to teach what they want to teach. You can bring in your own readings but they have to be approved first by the program office but that’s rather bureaucratic. A lot of the teachers felt that as professionals, it was kind of insulting to tell us, you have to get it approved. We felt that teachers should be allowed to choose their own material.

He felt that the reading pool for content-specific topics should be provided as a recommended list to support teachers, rather than have it required. He added that, “these are the articles that had been researched and looked at, so if you do not want to do the searching yourself, you can rely on the pool. But teachers shouldn’t be forced to use them.” Ken stressed the need for language teachers’ autonomy which he felt had been dismissed. Sonia agreed with Ken about the lack of teacher autonomy in the decision-making process. She lamented that, “what had to be done, had to be done.” Although she was resistant at first to the decision process, she tried to understand the benefits of specializing content for her students in different disciplines and gradually adjusted her teaching to the new program.

Through the committee work over the semester, Ken and Sonia agreed that the activities in their classes, such as discussions, debates, presentations, and writing, should be more relevant to students’ majors. After teaching the actual ESP classes, both recognized the merits of the specialization. Sonia said that although it took much time and effort for her to tailor to the different needs of students with different disciplines, her students became much more motivated. She was surprised at seeing increased motivation and engagement from “not just students of higher English proficiency level but also students at a lower level.” Sonia found her teaching of English much more relevant to her students and became a great advocate of the specialization.

The new ESP program made Sonia and Ken adjust their teaching of academic language skills to accommodate different disciplines, requiring them to not only teach language skills to students but also understand their disciplines and needs. Sonia shared two related cases: one was about the students who were nationally acclaimed dance performers and dreamed of performing at an international stage for their future and the other was about the music major students who were singers and dreamed of studying music abroad. Before the ESP program, those students were reluctant to make presentations or write on general topics such as their favorite place or why something is successful. However, after turning to discipline specific presentations, they participated in their presentations more enthusiastically and confidently—the ballet students analyzed Swan Lake and the history of ballet and the singers analyzed a Verdi opera. Ken also recounted that before he had looked upon the music and dance students as weaker students of English, but now he respected them more as they presented their accumulated expertise in their fields through the specialized program. As Yang [34] pointed out, the ESP classes became more meaningful not only for the students but also for the teachers as well.

Although Ken and Sonia suffered the loss of status as language teachers, they reconsidered and negotiated their roles and practices as ESP teachers [9] by accepting the benefits of the ESP program. Ken and Sonia felt that the ESP program expanded their routine of language teaching i.e., reading strategies and writing skills, to explain content-specific vocabulary and discourses. Through processing content in various disciplines and addressing language skills, Ken and Sonia illustrated that language teachers in the ESP program could be dynamic and responsive in their teaching of language and content.

Meeting Challenges for Language Teachers of Different Languages and Disciplines

There was a difference between native and non-native teachers in accepting the decision of the ESP and the way they adjusted to the new program. Most non-native teachers tried to comply with the administration’s decisions. Sonia said that she and other non-native teachers followed the ESP program without raising much voice while the native teachers requested a need-analysis. Sonia felt that the top-down implementation, culturally, was not uncommon. She was uncomfortable causing trouble with the administration and requesting a need-analysis which would have taken quite an amount of time, requiring the cooperation of content teachers in EMI courses. For Ken, it was quite undemocratic to implement a top-down policy without discussing it with teachers before making a huge curriculum change. Their different attitudes towards the lack of communication and the top-down policy could have been affected by their different cultural backgrounds.

There are similarities and differences in both teachers’ role in implementing the specialization program. As Dale et al. [9] argue, the language teachers were influenced by their disciplinary backgrounds and their language identities. In the case of Ken, his background in engineering enabled him to identify the relevant genres that would be needed for engineering students. However, even in the engineering discipline, he felt challenged as a native teacher with unfamiliar content. In one class, he had students write a process essay and one student wrote about how a nuclear reactor works. Later, he confessed that “I couldn’t judge if it [the content of the essay] was accurate or not so had to do some research upon it later to grade accurately.” He met bigger challenges with business students in another class. When students were giving a presentation on a business that they would open, they talked about a SWAT analysis. During the interview, Ken said that he did not have any prior knowledge of it, so he could not provide any feedback on their presentation in the class.

Sonia also experienced challenges in the content language when she had to teach natural science majors. She said, “I tried to choose readings I could understand and avoided those I was not confident in.” If she felt that there were parts that she did not feel confident with but still felt that they were significant for her students to study, she would “teach concentrating on getting the main ideas and the logic of the passage” instead of going in-depth into the reading. In the ESP program, she realized that there were some limits of not having the content knowledge. It took much more time and effort for her to prepare for science classes in teaching unfamiliar things, such as “logical thinking and understanding processes, chemical interaction, parts of the brain and their functions, mathematical thinking, and prescribed and rational thinking.” She felt insecure and had to negotiate her stance with her students. During her class observation, she often said to her students, “I am not familiar with this topic and you would probably know better.” However, when teaching humanities which she was confident about, she felt her feedback on writing, or questions about content helped the students think more deeply. Despite the difficulties in specializing content for students and herself, she came to advocate the ESP program because students’ motivation was heightened, and learning became much more meaningful as the ESP program increased students’ motivation (e.g., [, 34]).

The teachers showed differences in understanding students and their roles as teachers based on their cultural and language backgrounds. Sonia stated the advantage of sharing the same culture with students:

I believe that non-native teachers know their students better, such as, about their education before coming into the university and also the level of education that they will be facing after English classes are completed. Perhaps non-native teachers know what their students are capable of even if their language ability is low for now. Especially, as I am teaching at my alma mater, I am well aware of the potential of University X students.

Sonia thought that non-native teachers could challenge the students a bit more rather than limiting the students to their present level, whereas native teachers tended to be more concerned with students’ low proficiency. She said that, “non-native teachers might make teaching decisions other than just at the language level.” On the other hand, teaching content to students provided Ken with an insight about his students. Ken said later that, “integrating the specialization in student presentations and writing based on students’ disciplines is educationally very successful.” He stressed the benefits of the specialization, especially for lower-level students, and confessed that he had not considered students’ existing knowledge and their future goals before.

Being a native or a non-native speaker may have had an influence on teacher’s view on using L1 in teaching specialized content. Ken did not think his being a native speaker held a great role in adapting to the specialization. However, Sonia said that, “native-speakers have more access to diverse materials and would be more familiar with a wider range of terminology.” When teaching medical school students, she found herself using Korean words, as she was not familiar with medical terminologies such as organs, illnesses, and symptoms. During the class, she asked her students how some medical terminology would be said in English. Sonia stated that she discovered she had limited ESP resources in teaching in English, which she had not felt before. Even non-native teachers with a high command of English might not be familiar with specialized terms in various topics.

As many scholars (e.g., [7, 28]) of bilingual education argue, it is quite effective to allow the coexistence of L1 and L2 in CLIL classes. Non-native teachers and their students already have shared knowledge about concepts and terms in their first language but not the referent in English. Sonia explained her reason for using Korean, “There has been an increase in the frequency of students who ask questions after class or come to my office hours after the specialization took place.” Sonia added, “while the emphasis on language is still there, students feel the need to understand the content, so even after class, they would try to find out in Korean.” During the class observation, Sonia used the Korean words “Jung Ban Hap” to explain thesis-antithesis-synthesis, which was the organization of the text. When she said the words in Korean, the students’ confused faces changed to expressions of relief. As Lasagabaster [23] and Méndez and Pavón [28] said, sometimes the use of L1 sufficed to encourage fluency and process difficult content. By doing so, Sonia extended her role from language teacher to content facilitator.

Sonia believed, as the content was more engaging for the students, the motivation compensated for the difficulties of both students and the teacher. Sonia said that, “English has become a Lingua Franca (ELF). More and more classes are being taught in English from professors who have experience teaching overseas. Students need to communicate in English to keep up with the fast-paced developments in the world.” While Sonia made a greater shift in the focus of teaching, Ken adhered to his previous practices as a language teacher after shifting to ESP. However, he believed that the specialization helped his students move from “generic forms” of academic skills to those that, “they would need later on in their major to finally promote internationalization.” Seemingly, Sonia viewed ESP from the ELF perspective, emphasizing the process of learning content and their ownership of English. In contrast, Ken emphasized the accuracy of L2 more important than content in ESP as he adhered to the role of language teachers. This difference in Ken and Sonia’s understanding of their roles and the focus of instruction resonated Yang’s [35] findings of native and non-native teachers’ different perceptions about language teaching.

Transitioning from Language Teacher to Collaborative Facilitator

During the ESP program, Ken and Sonia went through a change of roles and identities as language teachers. As Dale et al. [9] described, the foci and goals of their teaching shifted. Sonia recalled that in the EAP program, textbooks were usually abridged with easier topics that were addressed to a more general audience, making students believe that they were progressing in their target language, as Ibarrola and García-Mayo [16] noted about EFL students’ perception. In the new program, however, she tried to “familiarize students with the language and skills that they would need in their disciplines.” Ken had the same purpose in mind; the ESP programs help students “deal with their majors and train them in English needed to deal with EMI classes.” The new specialization made both teachers change the purpose of the English class and their focus on teaching to meet content needs.

Ken and Sonia had a similar view on improving students’ accuracy of English in the specialization program. Ken stated:

Accuracy does not change quickly. Students need time to internalize grammar and vocabulary. The only time I would emphasize accuracy is when I give essay feedback, which deals with language accuracy. I correct their grammar and vocabulary use, hoping they will internalize them.

Similarly, Sonia viewed that her job was to help students improve accuracy on their own, “I feel that familiarizing students with content through English is my goal. I do not feel that language takes priority over content.” It appeared that both Ken and Sonia started viewing their roles as facilitators in the ESP program to ease students into the EMI courses.

There are differences in how each teacher perceived their roles in ESP. Sonia experienced a change in her role as a teacher through the ESP program by focusing on students’ specific needs for their future. Sonia spent about 25% of her time lecturing on language skills and 75% of the time on actually practicing the skills by going through the content in the reading, identifying, and understanding the important ideas. She explained it as “what I want to do is to provide a safe-zone before moving onto EMI classes where their insecurity with English cannot be dealt with. I want to train students to study on their own.” She encouraged her students to choose writing or discussion topics in their field of study. More and more activities in her class reflected students’ choices, and she found students more engaged and motivated. Sonia’s feedback on students’ writing reflected her emphasis on student autonomy [27]. She said that, “I just point out which kind of problems they have and try to get students to fix them by themselves. They do not need to be fluent or accurate if they can just get their ideas across in English.” What is interesting in Sonia’s case is that somehow she felt liberated in the ESP program by focusing less on language skills and accuracy, contradicting Yang’s [35] finding on non-native teachers’ stress on accuracy.

Ken’s view on the ESP courses was different from Sonia’s. Ken identified himself as more of a language teacher, with about 70% of all teaching being language teaching, and about 20–30% of the language teaching was explicitly about form. For him, content is incidental, saying that, “content is there so that students can practice their language skills. I identify myself as a language teacher.” Ken made a clear distinction between language and content teachers’ roles, stating that, “our primary goal is language, to help students improve their language skills, whereas content teachers impart the content. Our role only changed slightly regarding content.” He believed that the act of engaging in the reading would, “give students full satisfaction and the confidence to tackle English texts in the future.” He emphasized that by processing content, students could engage in the readings, which would help them develop good reading skills.

Both teachers’ views on their roles in supporting students for the challenges they encountered in the specialization showed the differences as well. Sonia experienced a shift in her approach from language-specific to content-specific orientation [9]. As she emphasized less on form, she did not expect students to know every specific detail. Before the change, she had emphasized learning language skills, such as paraphrasing figurative language when using just language textbooks. After incorporating authentic and content-specialized articles, she started teaching the structure of the articles and the progress and support of the main ideas, focusing on learning ideas and other content. As the articles for ESP were longer and had difficult vocabulary, she tried to mitigate students’ anxiety by reassuring them that they would not be tested on difficult language structures and linguistic knowledge. She felt there was a limit on how much she could help them with the content, so she gave students much more autonomy by allowing them to select their own topics for their essays and adding more group work to her lessons. In disciplines she was not familiar with, she rather helped them with transferable skills, such as logical and critical thinking and organizing ideas, instead of teaching vocabulary or language skills explicitly. She modified her teaching as she felt the new program required students to construct their knowledge through the actual use of language [27].

Ken regarded that ESP posed a greater challenge for students from a language teacher’s point of view. Ken stated that, “the specialization program is more challenging than the previous EAP program because of authentic texts... I need to give them more scaffolding.” To this end, Ken spent more time preparing for classes. Instead of having students summarize paragraphs for their readings, he provided summaries and had students match it to the paragraphs instead. He said that he used a similar approach in the EAP program, but in the new ESP program, “everything has become longer and more complex,” which just took more time to prepare. Ken focused more on supporting students’ comprehension skills from his stance of language orientation [9] than before.

Both Ken and Sonia gradually accepted that they needed to change their approach of instruction to support their students’ learning in EMI courses. They experienced a transformation of teaching perspectives and practices, as they viewed their roles as a collaborative facilitator in supporting students’ content learning. As Ken said:

At the university level, students should be engaging in the language that they would need later on in their major, so I am very supportive of the idea of the specialization. In fact, I think it should be much more specialized than it is ideally. We should engage them with the type of reading and writing they would have to do later rather than with generic forms. I’d like to see a lot more.

Although there was a difference in the degree of how Ken and Sonia identified themselves, both emphasized the need for specialized content so that students would be ready for EMI courses and their future studies in English.

Conclusion

The findings of the study revealed the English language teachers’ beliefs and practices about CLIL and their experiences during the implementation of the ESP program. There was a lack of teacher autonomy when instituting the ESP program, and much of the preparation and implementation was enforced and contrived. The administration challenged language teachers’ status and identity [6] in the transition to the ESP program. However, through negotiating the curriculum and adjusting their teaching to ESP, both teachers established each of their stances among many roles of language and content teaching [9]. Ken who identified himself more as a language teacher, stressing language skills, whereas Sonia perceived herself as a content facilitator and supported students’ access to English as a lingua franca. Both teachers went through a process of initial resistance but later experienced acceptance of transferring to ESP. They shifted their stances and roles from simply a language teacher to more diverse roles, such as content supporter and collaborative facilitator, to balance language and content teaching.

In addition to being a native or a non-native speaker, there were different challenges for Sonia and Ken due to their different cultural and disciplinary identities [9]. Sonia knew well about her students’ impending needs to take EMI courses for future marketability in an internationalized world. On the other hand, she had a harder time adjusting to different content, as her background was in English literature and was not familiar with other disciplines in English. Rather than emphasizing accuracy, she stressed building confidence with language practice in specialized materials so that students’ transitions to EMI would be more positive, even by utilizing knowledge in L1 [27]. Ken was less aware of Korean students’ background and their future needs. However, as a native speaker with an engineering and language education background, he had a broader span of terminology and was able to identify different genres for disciplines. Ken leaned towards language teaching processes, emphasizing language and form.

Based on the findings of the study, we concluded the following two things. First, in implementing ESP programs, language teachers’ voice and involvement are critical. Language teachers’ initial resistance could have been avoided with open discussion and their involvement in the decision-making process [33]. Seemingly, the top-down approach prevalent in the Korean culture aroused more resistance from native teachers who were not used to such decision-making. Within the school’s administrative structure, the autonomy for language teachers had not been well respected initially, so they had to negotiate their roles and identities [6]. In the process of negotiation, there is potential for power issues among the administration and teachers, language and content teachers, and teachers and students regarding their roles and needs. Attention needs to be paid to these issues as they could affect the scope of language teachers’ roles and identities to increase the benefits of CLIL.

Teacher agency in curriculum development and implementation is important for the successful implementation of the ESP program. Language teachers should be able to choose the disciplines they teach and allow them to participate in the curriculum planning and decision-making process. In that way, teachers can gain expertise in their specialized-content fields and build confidence in the content. Given more teachers’ autonomy, language teachers can initiate and implement necessary changes to address the ever-changing needs in a global society.

Second, it is significant to understand there had been changes in the language teachers’ roles and identities in adjusting to the new ESP program. Their understanding of students’ academic context evolved with the need for English as a lingua franca and competitiveness for future marketability in an internationalized world. As Creese [6] points out, subject teachers often undervalue the fact that students need language training in transferable skills and confidence in dealing with target language materials. As EMI teachers think less importantly of supporting language in delivering content, language teachers may need to take up the role of training students to process content in L2 before moving onto EMI classes. When integrating content into a language curriculum for ESP, language teachers should consider students’ needs and student autonomy so that they can process language on their own.

We suggest that for a successful transition to EMI, a well-balanced ESP program between language and content should be developed and implemented. There needs to be a collaboration between language and content teachers so that they can obtain a better understanding of students’ needs and develop a flexible content language integrated learning program. The collaboration will facilitate students with lower proficiency levels to effectively engage in their content learning. ESP programs can act as a bridge to EMI until students are proficient enough to go directly into EMI classes. Viewing CLIL as a continuum of learning of both language and content, language teachers need to support students’ learning of linguistic, cultural, and content knowledge. In addition, language teachers in ESP programs need to promote students’ motivation and ownership of target language. This will allow students to process content through target language spontaneously and confidently. The success of ESP programs lies in language teachers’ awareness of these multiple roles and their willingness to adjust in the new contexts. Future studies may also look at the students’ perceptions and beliefs of ESP programs and their attitudes towards their language learning.