Tom from Oxford EMI reflects on our consultancy work for the BEST programme in Taiwan. In April, 2021, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan announced an ambitious and well-funded initiative “The Programme on Bilingual Education for Students in College” or BEST programme. This is set to run until 2030 with the two main goals of cultivating English proficiency and, by doing so, elevating international competitiveness.  

The Oxford EMI consultancy team was chosen by the MOE and British Council, Taiwan to evaluate the early implementation of the programme across the whole island two years after its launch. In this post, I’d like to reflect on some elements of that evaluation project and share some of the findings we presented at an international conference held at National Taiwan University (NTU) back in 2024.

Largest EMI study carried out 

The evaluation project gave Oxford EMI the chance to carry out probably the largest English Medium Instruction study to date, involving 45 HEIs from all across Taiwan. Here are some of the figures to show what our evaluation entailed:

• 10 000+ survey responses from key stakeholders
• 80 EMI classes observed and audio recorded
• 32 programme administrators interviewed
• 16 universities visited
• 7 focus groups held

Campus visits

The campus visits, which included the class observations and programme administrator interviews, took place in the spring of 2023. I led two visits to Taiwan with Oxford EMI team members Dr Ben Beaumont and Simon Dunton, spending a total of 40 working days gathering data. This gave us great insight into what was really happening on the ground in EMI classes in Taiwan, which was fed into our evaluation.

Classroom observations

For me, one of the most gratifying and enlightening elements of the visits were the class observations. We saw 80 EMI classes, covering a whole range of subjects across the sciences and the humanities, and we were able to talk to the teachers and the students before and after each observation. A dream come true for anyone involved in teacher training! 

Our goal in carrying out these observations was to identify good practice and pass that on in the form of recommendations in the 70+ reports we delivered to the Ministry and the universities. And we did see some fantastic examples of key elements that we look for when observing classes. For example, we saw:

• interactive classes where students were asked to work in groups to answer questions or solve tasks.
• international students working together with domestic students in groupwork, which fomented the use of English.
• students making use of other languages where necessary in groupwork, e.g. to generate and communicate ideas or to check understanding, but communicating results to the class in English.
• teachers using technology to check comprehension of key concepts or to interact with students in ways that allowed for anonymity – a key factor in successful EMI teaching.

Continuing work in Taiwan

As Head of Training, I’m very pleased that we are able to use some of the findings from this evaluation project, as well as research evidence from across Taiwan and the wider region, to update and adapt our EMI training courses and continue to support universities with their EMI implementation. This includes the over 1,200 EMI teachers in Taiwan who have taken our online self-access or online trainer-led courses, as well as those that have attended our face-to-face training courses, such as that recently hosted by Taiwan Tech in July 2025.

The whole Oxford EMI team looks forward to furthering this collaboration as universities across Taiwan expand the scope and quality of their EMI programmes.

Blog writer

Tom Spain is Head of Training at Oxford EMI team. You can find out more about him on the Meet our team page.