The EMI Sphinx-Transforming the Challenge of English Medium Instruction into an Effective Approach to Learning to Meet the Needs of Our Time
EMI can seem like a daunting challenge to both teachers and students whose mother tongue is not English.The difficulty of trying to use/follow the language compounds the problem of trying to explain/understand the subject.That loaded combination of subject plus English as the medium of instruction is what this paper terms the EMI Sphinx,and as more and more international programs are taught in English,the EMI Sphinx poses a riddle at the very heart of the educational debate:how do language and knowledge connect?Effective learning in any form depends critically on that connectivity.This paper suggests the notion of"the inaudible tongue"as a metaphor for the critical link,producing silent streams of thought that we"hear"as words and which we can communicate to others,and translating the words we hear or read back into some conscious experience of knowing.While making no claims to have any solution to the mysteries of consciousness,we explore the riddle of the Sphinx in a way that offers useful and practical insights for EMI purposes.Building on the"4 Cs"framework of CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning),our holistic approach brings the transformational thinking of yin and yang into a"Seven Seas"model that illustrates the dynamics of the learning process,and that teachers can easily adapt for their own use.And by setting EMI in the context of the emergence of English as a global lingua franca,the paper offers a deep historical perspective on how it can help to meet the needs of our time.Against the increasingly fraught and complex backdrop of globalization those needs include respect for linguistic and cultural diversity,with English serving as"second among equals"in a multilingual world.And they include the need for a healthy relationship with technology in view of the tremendous potential it now offers for both good and ill.Thru an informed and ethical discussion the EMI Sphinx is thus brought to life both as a practical tool for teaching and as an imaginative means for exploring the kind of education that a shared future for humanity requires.
CLIL the 4 Cs the"Seven Seas" lingua franca holistic approach yin and yang paradox metaphor consciousness the Chinese Room the inaudible tongue
Timothy Kingham
西北工业大学外国语学院
国内会议
西安
英文
234-251
2019-07-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）