My most recent paper published in ELT Journal, titled 'Trust and Translanguaging in English Medium Instruction' addresses a topic that has gained increasing interest in ELT: English-medium instruction (EMI) in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). It does so by investigating the perceptions of ten undergraduate students, from Engineering and Business majors, in a South Korean HEI towards translanguaging in their English-medium instruction (EMI) experiences to understand how it affects their access to the subject content.

During the submission process one of the reviewers described the paper as follows:

"This is an extremely interesting article on a topic of current importance, employing a strongly qualitative and interpretivist approach well, and drawing some insightful conclusions.  It gives a useful overview of the key concepts and issues for readers less familiar with the area of translanguaging and EMI, as well as developing a coherent and distinctive argument relevant to practice."

The interpretivist approach is based on the principles of Charmaz’s (2014) Constructivist Grounded Theory. The emerging theory indicates that students’ experiences of ‘monolingually framed’ shifts between L1 and L2 systems can be understood using the notion of ‘trust’ and that trust reinforces binary choices, in particular EMI situations, of using either the L1 or the L2 system. Giddens (1990: 34) defines trust as ‘confidence in the reliability of a person or system, regarding a given set of outcomes or events’. This definition helped me view trust as an intuitive psychological construct within a social context that affects future action.

It became apparent that students, majoring in Engineering, perceive L1 as the language of communication, with L2 English as the language of engineering and that students, of both majors, place their trust in different linguistic systems for different purposes. Similarly, the limitations of EMI (L2 only) classes for subject learning are also revealed in the study. Further discussion indicates that, over time, these patterns of trust may constrain learning. The study suggests that instilling a competence of translanguaging in students will help them overcome these constraints.

The conclusion offers some ideas for reviewing EMI policy in South Korean HE settings, making a strong case for a 'translanguaging pedagogy'. The final point questions the continuing value or relevance of EMI as a term in that the study identifies that English is not the language of instruction in South Korean EMI, but rather is a language of instruction.

Charmaz, K. 2014. Constructing Grounded Theory (Second edition). SAGE.

Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Polity Press.