In this post, we sit down with Oxford EMI consultant Dr. Ikuya Aizawa, an expert in English Medium Instruction (EMI) who has conducted research into the challenges, successes, and future of EMI in Japan.

The EMI Landscape in Japan

Interviewer: Dr. Aizawa, thank you for joining us. To start, can you define EMI and explain its rapid growth in Japan?

Dr. Aizawa: EMI, or English Medium Instruction, is the use of English to teach academic subjects other than English itself in countries where English is not the primary language (editor’s note: see Julie Dearden’s reflections on her definition of EMI here). 

The growth of EMI in Japan has been rapid and is largely driven by government policies aimed at internationalising higher education. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has offered various incentives to universities to expand EMI, with the goal of promoting global talent and improving students’ English proficiency. This push is also seen as a way to attract international students and faculty, which helps improve a university’s global rankings.

Student Challenges and English Proficiency

Interviewer: Some of your work has focussed on the language challenges students face. What were the main issues you found?

Dr. Aizawa: Our research with Japanese undergraduates showed that a student’s general English proficiency was a significant predictor of the challenges they faced. In general, students with higher TOEIC scores experienced fewer language-related challenges. However, we also found that discipline-specific academic skills (such as the ability to participate in subject-related discussions), not just general proficiency, were a source of difficulty. Students reported challenges with:

• Speaking: Delivering oral presentations and participating in seminar discussions.
• Reading: Understanding textbooks with a lot of unfamiliar terms.
• Listening: Comprehending lectures, especially those with specialized vocabulary.
• Writing: Producing academic essays with the correct style and conventions.

Interviewer: That makes a lot of sense. So, a higher level of general English proficiency helps, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success on EMI courses. Was there a specific proficiency threshold that seemed to make a big difference for students?

Dr. Aizawa: That’s a great question, and it’s one of the key findings of our study. While our quantitative data showed a clear linear relationship—the higher the proficiency, the fewer the challenges—there was no single, “magic” threshold where challenges suddenly disappeared or levelled off. Even students with very high proficiency (B2/C1 on the CEFR scale) still reported facing language-related challenges, such as the need for more time to prepare for lectures and grappling with specific academic and technical vocabulary. 

Having said that, the interview data also showed that some students with lower proficiency felt their level was “sufficient” for taking EMI courses, despite facing struggles. This suggests that the perceived threshold is highly personal and depends on how a student interprets their own learning challenges.

Beyond Proficiency: Other Factors at Play

Interviewer: Your research also mentions other factors that influence an EMI student’s experience. Can you elaborate on those?

Dr. Aizawa: Absolutely. The interviews revealed that a student’s L2 proficiency isn’t the only thing that matters. Other factors play a crucial role in mitigating challenges, including:

• Prior content knowledge: Knowing the subject matter beforehand can help.
• Motivation: Students who were more motivated to study their degree in English were more satisfied with their learning, even if they faced more challenges than they would in a Japanese-taught course.
• Self-efficacy: A student’s belief in their ability to succeed.
• Support systems: This includes preparatory courses, like the “English for Specific Purposes” (ESP) course in our study, which helped students with confidence and academic skills.
• Effort and learning strategies: Students mentioned spending more time on preparation and using out-of-class resources like online TV series, music videos, and news to improve their skills.

Dr. Aizawa speaking during an Oxford EMI Face-to-Face course at Waseda University

Key takeaways for EMI teachers

Interviewer: This highlights the need for a holistic approach. What are the key takeaways for universities and educators from your research?

Dr. Aizawa: Our findings suggest that instead of just using proficiency scores as a barrier to entry, universities should focus on providing robust language support systems. These systems should be tailored to the discipline-specific academic skills needed for different academic subjects, as we found that writing was less of a challenge in our business programme compared to other studies. Support should also aim to build students’ self-efficacy and encourage effective learning behaviours. 

Finally, EMI lecturers need training to ensure they are aware of the linguistic challenges their students face. Understanding this will help them make accommodations in their teaching in terms of how they present the content through English.

In addition, teachers need to know the importance of creating opportunities for out-of-class learning and to create the time and space needed for EMI students to engage with and process what they are hearing and reading to enhance comprehension of the subject content. 

Up-to-date research, such as that conducted by Dr. Aizawa, informs the content of our teacher training courses. If you’d like to know more about these courses, please get in touch.

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Dr. Ikuya Aizawa is a researcher and consultant for Oxford EMI and Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at the School of English, The University of Nottingham. You can find out more about him on the Meet our team page.

A selection of Dr. Aizawa’s publications on EMI in Japan:

Aizawa, I., & Rose, H. (2019). An analysis of Japan’s English as medium of instruction initiatives within higher education: the gap between meso-level policy and micro-level practice. Higher Education, 77(6), 1125-1142.

Aizawa, I., & McKinley, J. (2020). EMI challenges in Japan’s internationalization of higher education. In English-medium instruction and the internationalization of universities . In: Bowles, H. & Murphy, A.C. (eds). English-medium instruction and the internationalization of universities. (pp. 27-48) Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Aizawa, I., Rose, H., Thompson, G., & Curle, S. (2023). Beyond the threshold: Exploring English language proficiency, linguistic challenges, and academic language skills of Japanese students in an English medium instruction programme. Language Teaching Research, 27(4), 837-861.

Aizawa, I., Rose, H., McKinley, J., & Thompson, G. (2024). A comparison of content learning outcomes between Japanese and English medium instruction. Language and Education, 38(6), 911-930.