This article reports a quantitative study that investigated academic achievement in English medium instruction (EMI) courses at a public university in Turkey. Student test score data on EMI and Turkish medium instruction (TMI) courses as well as general English proficiency scores were collected in two academic divisions: the mathematical, physical, and life sciences (MPLS, N = 357); and the social sciences (N = 359). Analysis conducted at the macro (academic division), meso (academic department), and micro levels (academic program) showed subtle differences at each level. Overall, results were consistent: English language proficiency was a strong predictor of academic achievement of social science participants, whereas success in TMI courses predicted EMI success of MPLS participants. These results reinforce the notion that more language support should be given to social science students, whereas learning some content through TMI should be prioritized for MPLS students. Implications for language professionals and EMI practitioners are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research.
This study focuses on the predictive power of linguistic (i.e., general English proficiency; identified simply as “proficiency” in this paper) and non-linguistic (i.e., language learning anxiety and self-regulation) factors on the academic success of English medium instruction (EMI) students studying in engineering and social sciences programs in a Turkish university setting. Data were collected from 705 conveniently sampled EMI students of four academic subjects (international relations; N = 158; business administration; N = 184; mechatronics engineering; N = 181; mechanical engineering: N = 182) representing two disciplines (i.e., social sciences and engineering) from a public university. Pearson correlation and SEM analyses were run to determine the relationships among language learning anxiety, self-regulation, proficiency and EMI success. Findings revealed that anxiety and self-regulation skills do affect EMI students’ proficiency irrespective of academic disciplines. Both self-regulation and proficiency impacted EMI students’ academic success in engineering, while only proficiency predicted academic success in the social sciences. These results are discussed and pedagogical implications are given related to the impact of linguistic and non-linguistic factors in EMI contexts.
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