Acceso usuarios
Tamilla Mammadova
Within the last decade, Azerbaijani universities’ upward implementation of English-medium instruction (EMI) policy has spread among most of the country's universities, public and private . Studies show that EMI programs in many universities worldwide are positioned as a language-planning tool to promote students’ mastery of English, which would open up new horizons and facilitate globalization. Considering that language planning and policy is an understudied topic in the Azerbaijani context and that there are practically no or few studies in this vein, it is hard to appraise EMI programs as a language planning tool in terms of this country. The paper reveals the key tendencies of the increasing number of EMI programs in Higher Educational Institutions in Azerbaijan. It examines the nature of EMI-related language policy and investigates how it is enacted in practice. We analyze EMI-related language policies and listen to the voices of the stakeholders at three levels, illustrating how macro (state/national), meso (university), and micro (staff) levels translate into one another. For this, we refer to a qualitative method of data collection that includes (1) a content analysis that studies four state policy documents at the macro level, (2), interviews administered to ten state representatives and policymakers at meso levels, and sixteen university professors at micro levels. The paper is a relevant contribution to understanding the language policy and planning (LPP) tendencies in the country using EMI as a key tool for globalization and internationalization.
