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English Medium Instruction (EMI)

What is it?

An increasing number of higher education institutions are adopting English as the medium of instruction for parts of or entire programs. This means that vital academic exchanges are now taking place more frequently in second languages (L2) from both the teacher and student side. While this clearly enhances not only the international reputation of the university but also the degree of proficiency and confidence in the language of instruction (English, the lingua franca), it can also prove challenging for all parties concerned and thus inhibit communication and ultimately know-how transfer between teachers and students. Currently the University of Freiburg offers 15 Masters programs taught either partially or entirely in English. As this trend is bound to continue, a project team has been established to offer guidance and support to lecturers/academic staff who teach in English.

The Sprachlehrinstitut (SLI) (link) has launched a program to address this growing field in Europe. In an effort to support academic staff entrusted with teaching and guiding international students in English, two native speakers (link to our uni-pages) with extensive backgrounds in language instruction as well as experience in multicultural settings will be providing numerous services to this target group.

Services offered

• General weekly courses to clean up inconsistencies, practice speaking and hone vocabulary (link to Anmeldung)
• Specific courses such as
  • structuring lessons for international settings (link to course description)
  • dealing with and responding to questions
  • moderating and fostering group discussions
  • vocal and oral pronuciation training
  • pedagogic quirks
  • intercultural aspects dealing with critical incidents (i.e., cultural expectations in academia)
  • departmental courses/block seminars to work on subject specific issues (upon request- link to request form)
• Individually tailored block sessions of coaching for lecturers based upon initial evaluations (link to email, request form)
• Translations, proofreading and language consulting for lesson and conference presentations
• Presentation workshops for academic and research conferences

The benefits

• Fine tune your target discourse
• Retool teaching strategies adapted to second language skills
• Incease confidence in delivering quality lessons in English
• Develop and hone skills to cope with student communication difficulties in the classroom
• Become more aware of cultural aspects at play in the classroom and be better prepared for the multicultural learning environment
• Enhance necessary soft skills when engaging and guiding students in workshop like environments as well as outside the classroom
• Build communities of practice among colleagues (i.e., sharing best practices and experiences)
• Assurance that your presentations and writings are presented in a linguistically appropriate fashion

The next step

In order to provide competent coaching for those interested, an initial evaluation is requested. This is generally followed by classroom observation, which allows the EMI instructors to get a personal picture of the classroom dynamics as well as the lecturer's language and soft skills. Upon observation, a feedback meeting is scheduled to present our proposals, discuss any additional options and set up the agreed upon measures. Please direct all enquiries to:

Gregg Dubow– gregg.dubow@sli.uni-freiburg.de

Joshua Lange– joshua.lange@sli.uni-freiburg.de