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Connected to the growing internationalisation of higher education in the world, the English language is increasingly being used as medium of teaching and learning, thereby contributing to the roles of English for transnational mobility, career development, access to new information and research, and the facilitation of global communication. While the label English-medium instruction (EMI) has been widely used in the last two decades to capture this phenomenon, we consider it an unfortunate choice in that it falls short in conceptualising the complexity of English in twenty-first-century higher education. First, EMI solely focuses on English, ignoring the increasing multilingual realities of higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide; secondly, EMI does not explicitly include reference to higher education, even though learning and teaching at the tertiary level is in crucial ways different to lower levels of education. Thirdly, EMI talks about “instruction” and thus views education as a non-relational process where teachers teach and learners learn. From this unilateral perspective, the co-construction of knowledge as a key feature of higher education remains unacknowledged.
Against this backdrop, our paper sets out to argue for the conceptual need for an alternative label, known as English-medium education in multilingual university settings (or EMEMUS). This label, we argue, portrays more accurately and specifically the growing multilingual reality of current internationalised HEIs, the complex and highly situated roles that English plays in relation to other national and local languages, and the importance of interpreting education as a social-constructivist process. Moreover, EMEMUS will enable HEIs to re-examine comprehensively the range of activities that respond locally to global phenomena, from policy issues (e.g. regulations, implementation and management) to university practices (e.g. teaching, research, administration and teacher professional development) in an inclusive and multifaceted manner. Ultimately, this comprehensive conceptualisation aims to redefine English and internationalisation in a much more nuanced light.
