Critical stances towards English Medium Instruction (EMI), and to a lesser extent the similar use of French, Portuguese and Spanish Medium Instruction in former colonies of European states, have been growing since ‘independence’ in the 1960s. This discussion contextualises ‘Southern’ critiques of EMI within early decolonial debates, ‘southern multilingualisms’ and ‘transknowledging’ (reciprocal translation and exchange of knowledge), which are often invisibilised in EMI. This is illustrated through critiques in two former British territories: the first, with critiques that circulated in Southern Africa from the 1960s; the second, with critiques that surfaced four decades later in Australia. Whereas EMI is readily recognised in South Africa (with 8 per cent L1 English speakers), Australia (with 250 Aboriginal linguistic communities at colonisation and 250 years of in-migration from all continents) is an EMI context for 23–30 per cent of citizens. Aggressive marketing of Australia as an educational destination for students from the Asia-Pacific amplifies its multilingual and EMI reality in higher education. The critique of EMI includes a history of cognitive capture, debt-trap diplomacy and educational failure. Included are key agents that advance EMI, invisibilise multilingualisms and perpetuate coloniality despite the claims of social justice and access that accompany EMI rationales.

This chapter aims to discuss the presence and implications of using English Medium Instruction (EMI) in two contexts of the Global South; namely, Malaysia, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Brazil in Latin America. In both countries language policy and planning are complex. EMI has been adopted following a recent trend towards the internationalization of the higher education system where English has also become the main language for research and publication. The dominance of Western scientific paradigms, the promotion of English as the language of education, and the dissemination of knowledge through English have led to a neglect of knowledge produced in languages other than English. Furthermore, the adoption of a single language threatens the role of other languages in higher education. This chapter examines this trend in face of the need to protect the national language as well as other languages to guarantee an ecology of knowledges and languages in higher education.

With reference to the ethos of the ‘neoliberal turn’ in education, the chapter critically analyses and interprets English Medium Instruction (EMI) in South Asia as it is promoted exogenously and realised at the grassroots level endogenously. The chapter identifies in what ways EMI creates unequal opportunities for people from different socioeconomic, educational, demographic, and indigenous backgrounds and consequently results in discrimination and social injustice in South Asian contexts. The chapter also shows that EMI policies and practices indicate a strong presence of monolingual biases, ideologies, and negative attitudes towards mother tongues and indigenous languages. In addition, colonialism rearticulated in neoliberal higher education promotes the English language. In the end, the chapter suggests that a more context-driven, rational, synchronised, and holistic approach to EMI is needed to decolonise and liberate EMI policies and establish linguistic equality, language rights, and social justice in South Asia.

The chapter situates the English Medium Instruction (EMI) policy and practices within a private university in part of Kazakhstan to gather the perspectives of the users to examine their orientations towards the use of EMI, the potential they see in the EMI policy, and their perceptions of the widespread expansion of the English language industry in the local market. The study employed qualitative interviews with students, teachers, and administrators. The participants’ perspectives show their entrepreneurial orientations towards English, evident in their repeated discourses of the English language as potential capital and a key to global competitiveness. They also endorse the intense pursuit of EMI policy in Kazakhstan because, as they understand, individual as well as governmental-level investment in English-related language skills make brighter promises and prospects in the current global economy. English is also believed to enhance Kazakhstani citizens’ global competitiveness. In theoretical terms, these orientations are deeply interwoven with the core principles of neoliberalism and neoliberal rationality, characterized by terms such as capital, globalization, global competitiveness, economic advantage, market logic, and private investment.

English Medium Instruction (EMI) researchers have called for studies that extend our understanding of EMI classroom discourse and the role of language in EMI in general (Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2013; McKinley & Rose, 2022; Macaro, 2019). Corpus-based analytical frameworks are well-suited to analyze large amounts of naturally occurring language data and thus to provide reliable and verifiable findings about situationally defined language use such as language use in EMI contexts (see also Chapter 9, Author, this volume).

The primary goal of this chapter is to introduce the principles and practices of carrying out an additive multi-dimensional (MD) analysis (Biber, 1988; Berber Sardina et al., 2019) affording an empirically driven comprehensive linguistic analysis of variation in a register that could be applied to an EMI context. Our case study showcases the methodology using 500,000 words of text from the Singapore EMI corpus (SEMIC). Relying on the results of the MD analysis, this chapter also demonstrates how to identify text types via cluster analysis, which could provide additional information about classroom discourse. It will demonstrate show how these advanced quantitative analytical frameworks can be applied to analyze EMI classroom discourse. The chapter will also highlight practical aspects of MD analysis.

This chapter discusses how questionnaire-based research can be implemented in the English Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts. It presents an empirical study which that examined Chinese EMI university students’ attitudes and motivation (i.e., integrative and instrumental orientations) toward learning content subject knowledge in English. An EMI scale adapted from Gardner’s (2004) Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB), which takes the format of Likert-point scale as explained in Chapter 3 of the this book, was validated and administered to 541 EMI students from three Chinese universities. The validity and reliability of the scale were measured, the correlations of the three dimensions (i.e., attitudes, integrative orientation, and instrumental motivation) were tested, and the role of demographic variables (i.e., gender, level of study, disciplinary background) in EMI attitudes and motivation were explored. The research findings suggest the validity and reliability of the scale, the positive correlations among the three dimensions, and the different degrees of EMI attitudes and motivation between male and female students and between soft science and hard science students. The researchers argue that questionnaire-based research is appropriate for the EMI contexts, but its effectiveness can be enhanced if the mixed methods design is adopted.

English Medium Instruction (EMI) research has highlighted the transition from secondary schools to EMI higher education as a critical stage that shapes students’ learning behaviors and perceptions. However, longitudinal studies that draw on a quantitative design to outline students’ patterns of academic development during the transition period are scarce. While investigating students’ language-related academic difficulties, previous research has predominantly treated students as a unitary cohort without exploring the disparities that may arise from individual difference variables. This chapter reports an empirical case study that adopts a longitudinal quantitative design to identify patterns of change in students’ perceptions of lecture listening difficulties during their first semester transitioning into an EMI university in China. The study also explores variations in these patterns that are associated with students’ English listening proficiency upon entry. Key methodological procedures for designing and implementing the study will be introduced, while along with sharing suggestions for handling the typical challenges of attrition and missing data in longitudinal quantitative research. The chapter concludes with methodological implications of the study for EMI research, and offers suggestions for future research based on a critical reflection of the study’s limitations.