Multilingual and Multimodal Approaches in EMI for Enhancing Disciplinary Literacies

ongoing

Language-related challenges in English Medium Instruction (EMI) affect academic outcomes in disciplinary courses in higher education, as students who use English as a second language are often found to struggle with discipline-specific discourse. Although the need for a more integrated approach to content and language in EMI and the usefulness of multilingual and multimodal practices are recognized in research, there has been little exploration of their impact on learning as perceived by students. More specifically, the patterns of the use of various linguistic and semiotic resources and their role in the moment-by-moment construction of subject-specific knowledge remain underexplored. This project seeks to investigate the use of multilingual and multimodal resources by EMI instructors across disciplines and their impact on students’ learning within the classroom. It aims to refine the concept of bi/multilingual disciplinary literacies, developed in a recent COST Action, CLILNetLE, by incorporating perspectives from tertiary-level EMI content specialists and students. To this end, the project will employ an innovative combination of Multimodal Conversation Analysis, Epistemic Network Analysis, and the Idiodynamic Method, which allows the exploration of interactional details of teaching, the constellations of linguistic and multimodal resources, and students’ self-assessed understanding of discipline-specific content. The project outcomes will contribute to EMI teacher training, inform educational language policies, and promote inclusive teaching practices that address the needs of EMI students from diverse backgrounds—all increasingly important as EMI programs expand across Europe and beyond.