Content and Language in EMI Assessment Practices: Challenges and Beliefs at an Engineering Faculty in Turkey

Abstract

With recent trends toward the internationalization of higher education, the number of English-medium programs at higher education institutions around the world has grown rapidly. Research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has examined stakeholders’ attitudes, classroom interaction, students’ achievement in content subjects, and teachers’ and students’ levels of English proficiency. However, what is missing from this growing body of work is research addressing issues of assessment in EMI contexts, where students’ English proficiency is not explicitly measured but inevitably plays a role in the assessment process, as students are required to interpret and respond to assessment tasks in English. In this chapter, we attempt to address this research gap by examining the relationship between content and language in EMI assessment practices. The chapter begins with a theoretical discussion conceptualizing the role of language in EMI assessment, addressing issues of content knowledge, academic literacy, and the explicit and implicit linguistic demands of assessment tasks. The chapter then provides an overview of existing empirical research on EMI assessment. Employing a qualitative research method, data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions with university lecturers and students at an engineering faculty in Turkey to explore how lecturers and students perceive the role of language in EMI assessment and describe their own assessment practices. The findings shed light on how students use the resources available in their linguistic repertoires to make sense of assessment tasks and how teachers approach students’ responses to assessment tasks with consideration for students’ language proficiency and preference. The findings have implications for EMI teachers’ pedagogical practices as well as for EMI teacher training courses.