Abstract
Summary of Project Self-Evaluation Results
This project includes three major aspects: (1) Improving students' English ability; (2) Constructing EMI teaching and supporting system; (3) Using online teaching materials to support English teaching. Features and accomplishments of the project are summarized as follows:
1.Improving students' English ability
To improve students' English ability, the involved teachers have produced four sets of teaching packages for English listening, speaking, reading, and writing to improve students' learning outcome. In addition, two workshops for teaching assistants were held to have them work together on EMI implementation. The themes of the workshops are EMI definition & Online platform and Online Platform Session-EZTEST. They were held on March 28 and April 1. Moreover, seventy-four seed teachers of EMI course at the university were invited to attend a consortium, in which they discussed teaching methods, support faculty and staff could provide, and ways to solve students' problems. The school offered two sessions of English classes, 8 classes in total, in the evening. 198 students took the classes using materials designed by our teachers to improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing. The first session was from April 11 to May 12 and 117 students were enrolled in the classes, while the second session was held from May 23 to June 9 and 81 students were enrolled in the classes. Six business English courses offering a total of 432 credit hours were provided in the Academic Year 2021-2022. The content of the courses, online materials and support provided to these courses were all designed to improve students’ English ability in order to take course conducted in English in the future. The project has conducted a pretest and post-test on over 4,000 students and found a significant improvement in learning.
2.Constructing EMI teaching and supporting system in school
The colleges and departments of CCU provided 42 EMI professional courses during the Academic Year 2021-2022 with the support of the administrative office. 15.65% of the second-year students and first-year graduate students have taken one or more EMI courses. The school planned to provide more than one EMI course for students in the second year and first year of graduate studies in the spring and fall semesters of the Academic Year 2022-2023. By the time the semesters end, 70% of the second-year students and first-year graduate students had more than one EMI course. Moreover, the school administration meeting on April 11 has passed the Rules Regarding Awarding Full-time Teachers for Teaching EMI Courses to encourage teachers to use English as the medium of instruction. In order to understand the impact of the EMI courses on students’ learning, the school has conducted a student opinion survey. The average score was 85.29, a little lower than the average score for all courses, 89.34. However, the result of another survey conducted with questionnaires on 22 EMI classes from June 6 to June 19 found that students thought highly about these classes and felt satisfied with the teaching method. According to the survey results, the teachers would revise their teaching materials, adjust ways to assess student performance, and promote publicity in order to get better results in the future.
3.Using online teaching materials to support English teaching
In each EMI course offered in the Academic Year 2021-2022, trained teaching assistants were assigned to help the teacher to perform online instruction. To solve the problems students encountered while learning in the professional courses, teachers placed videos of their lectures online before or after class. The project has acquired video cameras and related equipment for teachers. All the videos made by the teachers were placed in the “EMI Section” of school system for students to download. Students could do the preview and review according to their learning schedule. Of all the courses offered during the spring semester of Academic Year 2021-2022, a total of 8,890 minutes of films were made and stored online. To obtain the best outcome of EMI teaching using online system, the school has established three teacher-supporting groups. Members of these groups are teachers from the College of Science, Collee of Business and the Language Center. These three groups are recruiting teachers to adopt EMI instruction.
The Bilingual Learning Promotion Office of the university is responsible for the EMI project implementation. The vice president of the university serves as the director of the office. The director of the Center for Institutional Research, a first-level administrative unit, serves as the chief executive officer. The office includes the curriculum development section, learning evaluation section, textbook and teaching method section, teacher training section, and section of inter-school and international cooperation. The university faculty and staff work together to support the office to complete the tasks. In addition, the College of International Studies and Foreign Languages and General Education Center are responsible for course development and teacher training. The Office of Academic Affairs helps the departments with course enrollment, conducts student learning assessment while the Center for Teaching and Learning Resources trains TA for EMI courses, evaluates their performance and assists teachers in attending development groups to improve their teaching. The General Education Center helps teachers with the development of online courses and is at the same time responsible for promoting these courses. The Bilingual Learning Promotion Office schedules and arranges self-evaluation on all the tasks of the project. The Center for Institutional Research conducts teacher's teaching assessment, student opinion survey to understand students' willingness to take EMI courses and evening English intensive classes. The opinions and suggestions of the EMI teachers in discussion sections and consensus camp conducted by the center are considered and adopted for improving the way the EMI courses are conducted.
Following the international trend while facing global competition, the university actively carries out the Bilingual Learning Project proposed by the Ministry of Education under the government's Bilingual Nation 2030 Policy. With good planning and execution, the project is believed to realize the vision and goal of the policy - "enhancing the English proficiency of Chinese people, enhancing national competitiveness, and cooperating with international industries.”
