ABSTRACT
As is the case throughout Southern Europe, the spread of EMI in Italy has accelerated after the Bologna Process (1999). In fact, at present around 90% of Italian universities offer content courses in English. In this context, university professors find themselves having to manage a new type of teaching that entails both a change in the teaching language (90% of EMI lecturers in Italy are native-speaking Italians) and an adaptation of teaching to classes with international students. This chapter aims at (1) giving an overview of strategies that have proven to be effective in enhancing comprehension, (2) outlining the context of the study by giving an overview of studies on EMI carried out in Italy, and (3) describing how strategies derived from the literature have been translated into good practices based on transcriptions and observations of EMI lectures in Italy. The data provide indications (among others) regarding linguistic input presentation strategies such as: the use of questions to check comprehension, the use of definitions, the use of repetitions, continual reference to real-life examples, the use of discourse markers to signpost specific moments of the lesson, and the summarising of content. The acronym Q-DRESS that represents these basic linguistic input presentation strategies was created. These suggestions apply to Italy, but they could also be exported to similar situations in other countries.
