What is EMI?
English Medium Instruction, or EMI, has been defined as “The use of the English language to teach academic subjects in countries or jurisdictions where the first language (L1) of the majority of the population is not English.” Deardon (2014: 2). While CLIL does not mention which particular language academic subjects are to be studied in, EMI is explicitly concerned with English as the language of education. Furthermore, while CLIL has the aim of furthering both content and language, in an attempt to simultaneous improve the student’s language skills, alongside the content of the class, EMI does not necessarily have that objective. The term EMI is quite often used to describe tertiary level classes given through the medium of English. In the last decade, EMI courses in tertiary education outside English speaking countries have tripled, motivated by “the increasingly competitive recruitment process of universities and the mobility policies within the European Union”, as well as economic factors, with universities “trying to attract fee-paying students” (Pérez-Vidal, 2014: 36).
Given that such immersion contexts offer the teaching of both content and language, in theory the benefits could be doubled. However, this is only the case if the course is well organised and implemented. The following sections contain advice to teachers and students alike, concerning how to do so and how to get the most out of such learning environments.
https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2018/05/04/emi-clil-programmes/