ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by reviewing the trajectory of English Medium Instruction (EMI) as it has emerged from two other approaches to teaching academic subjects through the medium of a second language: Content Based Teaching and Content and Language Integrated Learning. It discusses how, in the 1980s and 1990s, EMI programmes spread among European universities, and how such programmes were adopted in many higher institutions in Asia by the early years of the millennium. By the turn of the present century, EMI programmes began to be widely introduced in universities in Asia, as elsewhere across the world. In the early 1980s, the Dutch government approved the introduction of English medium streams in the senior classes of three selected state high schools. The chapter concludes by reviewing the current situation as reflected in a world-wide survey carried out under the auspices of the British Council.
