English Medium Instruction or Exploitative Models of Income? International students’ experiences of EMI by default at an Australian university

Author:

Steele Carly1ORCID,Tankosić Ana1ORCID,Dovchin Sender1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. School of Education , Curtin University , Perth , Australia

Abstract

Abstract International education is Australia’s largest services export, and third largest export altogether, generating between $22 billion and $40 billion per year over the last few years. Higher education represents half of this ‘market’ with over 25 % of students being from overseas. Despite the important role that international students play in the fabric of Australian society and specifically in higher education, the findings from our linguistic ethnographic study of international students at an Australian university showed that the English language learning needs of these students were frequently unmet. Using James Scott’s theory of official and hidden transcripts, we reveal that students reported feeling that their “English is not good enough” and assumed personal ‘(ir)responsibility’ for this outcome. In this broad English Medium Instruction (EMI) context, where English is not the first language, but it is used as the language of instruction and as the lingua franca amongst international students, English-dominant perspectives acted to marginalise international students, impacting their academic performance and confidence for social networking. In this paper, we describe the shifts in higher educational policy in Australia over the last few decades to provide context to the current neoliberal educational climate for international students. We draw on principles of social justice to examine the present-day system and argue that Australian universities need to shift from an EMI by default model to a genuine EMI offering.

Funder

Australian Research Council

Curtin University Humanities/Curtin International Postgraduate Research Scholarship

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Reference60 articles.

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2. Arkoudis, Sophie, Mollie Dollinger, Chi Baik & Allan Patience. 2019. International students’ experience in Australian higher education: Can we do better? Higher Education 77(5). 799–813. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0302-x.

3. Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS]. 2023. International trade: Supplementary information, calendar year. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/international-trade/international-trade-supplementary-information-calendar-year/latest-release (accessed 31 August 2023).

4. Australian, Government. 2023. Australian universities accord – interim report. CC BY 4.0 International.

5. Australian Government: Department of Home Affairs. 2022. Adult migrant English program. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/settling-in-australia/amep/aboutthe-program (accessed 25 September 2022).

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