ABSTRACT
Student mobility has gained momentum thanks to globalisation and the eminent status of English as a lingua franca (Hu & Wu, 2020). Masses of students move to different countries to pursue higher education. There is a quarter-billion of students in more than 20,000 universities around the world (Wit & Altbach, 2020). Attracting international students is considered effective in increasing the visibility of the universities and their global ranking. Therefore, universities strive to expand their opportunities to welcome more international students. This rush for internalisation has then accelerated the shift towards English-medium instruction (EMI) (Galloway & Ruegg, 2020). The courses are offered in English by content instructors so that students from different countries can understand the offered content, regardless of their native languages. This is believed to have a positive impact on the students’ English proficiency and their future careers (Huang & Curle, 2021).
However, EMI at universities brings several issues to the fore in terms of the instructors. Among them, the primary concern is whether/to what extent the instructors have the ability to teach content in English because they mostly do not receive sufficient and relevant pedagogical training (O'Dowd, 2018). Many of them teach through English to linguistically and culturally diverse settings as a result of the internalisation of the education; therefore, they should not only have a good command of English but also know and use the relevant methodologies to deliver the content in English (Block & Moncada-Comas, 2019). In so doing, they need to be equipped with sufficient proficiency in English, including oral, aural, and written abilities, and pedagogical skills to teach in English, such as developing materials, designing/evaluating tests and/or classroom management.
Given that EMI teaching competence centres around linguistic, pedagogical and intercultural aspects (Fortanet-Gomez, 2020; Gundermann, 2013), the EMI teacher training programs need to address those components to develop EMI teachers professionally. Therefore, it will be significant to investigate the EMI instructors’ linguistic and pedagogical needs and understand whether/to what extent the cultural diversity of their students in EMI classes causes different professional needs. Investigation and conceptualisation of these needs will inform future EMI teacher training programs. For this purpose, the linguistic and pedagogical needs of EMI instructors in Turkish universities will be investigated by using evidence from narrative frames and interview data. The qualitative findings will be examined through content analysis and discussed with implications. Pedagogical suggestions will be provided to improve the EMI training programs.
