The aim of this study was to shed light on an EMI Master’s Program, the linguistic features in its lectures, and how they match with students’ perceptions of them. The present study attempted to find differences and/or similarities between linguistic features in the explored lectures. Furthermore, it aspired to find a connection between students’ perception of the lectures and the use/non-use of the specific linguistic features. Finally, it compared the same lecturers’ ELF lecture and native language (NL) lecture for the linguistic features.
The major finding of the present study is that the use of interactional features in lectures influences the way students perceive them, while the perceived quality of lecturer’s English does not correlate with students’ perception of them.
Figure 9.1 depicts these findings.
Figure 9.1 An Overview of the General Findings
This figure depicts how the English skill average calculated from students’ evaluations has no specific trend while, since the lectures were in their order of comprehension value averages, the lecture curve ascends. The points for the numbers of interactional features are from the transcribed lectures and the difference between the challenging and the accessible lectures is quite striking. The outlier embedded cases, Lectures C02 and A21, are notably lower in their English skill averages, but, as discussed above, at the opposite ends of the comprehension value averages. Therefore, the interactional features can be seen as devices which assist the audience with comprehension.
What makes this finding reliable and, therefore, also valuable is the methodological approach through which this was discovered. In addition to this, contrary to earlier studies (Klaassen, 2001; Kaur, 2009; Airey, 2009; Hellekjaer, 2010), this study shows that interaction in NL lectures occurs far less than in all but one ELF lecture.
In this chapter I will discuss the findings of the present study and summarize the main conclusions based on the presented results, and then suggest directions for further research.
The discussion is organized through the research questions presented in Section 3.4.2.
These questions also relate to the phasal approach applied in this study. Due to its descriptive nature, as well as the case study method, no hypotheses were provided.
Naturally, I had some expectations, and views on what may influence students’ perception.
In order to allow the research to be data driven and not be biased by my preconceptions, I tried to remain as neutral as I could. A set of propositions was compiled based on previous studies. These propositions were the following:
- Lecturer’s English interferes with lecturing/comprehension.
- English is used daily or weekly with mostly NNSs of English in anticipated working life of the students.
- Comprehension is influenced by identifiable linguistic features.
Further details on the propositions for this case study are listed in Table 3.1 in Section 3.1.
Although not hypotheses, these propositions are the prior notions on the research topic and they were used in the design of the study.
9.1 Discussion on Findings
This study has many parts to it and this may result in a somewhat fragmented image of the results. Since the goal was to obtain a holistic understanding on an EMI Master’s Program, all these parts were seen as necessary. They are like the pieces of a puzzle and, at the moment we are ready to put these pieces together to see what the picture looks like.
The findings will be discussed in a phasal, spiral like order, i.e. in the order I conducted the study. This should allow the reader to be able to acquire the pieces of the puzzle in a similar manner I obtained them when working through this study. This should also enable discussion of each phase.
9.1.1 How is English used in the working life of (paper) engineers?
This question was posed to determine what requirements await the students after they graduate from the EMI Master’s Program. For this purpose, an on-line survey was conducted among the Finnish Paper Engineers’ Association members on their English use (see Sections 3.1 and 4.1). Although the response rate was quite low, as it usually is for on-line questionnaires, the responses provided valuable information.
The main findings from this survey show that most of the respondents use English daily or at least weekly and mostly with NNSs of English. Despite this, problem situations occur quite rarely (see Mauranen, 2006). These findings support the use of EMI, since it prepares the students for their future working lives, especially when the instruction and other studies are conducted in ELF.
The respondents also felt that the most important reason behind these problem situations is their interlocutors’ poor spoken skills. This is quite an interesting finding and it may be connected with Finnish (all the respondents were Finnish, see Section 3.1) education where the model of English is the native speaker. Since the NS model is currently also used in education elsewhere and it may especially influence the way people react to pronunciation (see Jenkins, 2007).
Despite the useful information gathered through this survey, it could have been conducted differently. In order to obtain information on all former graduates, the survey could have been conducted among the alumni. Another option would have been to contact all the other associations related to FBI (Forest Based Industries). Nevertheless, the strength and image of the Finnish Paper Engineers’ Association as an integral part of the forest products and paper business justified the survey being conducted among its members. Had the purpose of this survey been more central to this study, another approach would have been selected, such as the alumni survey.
9.1.2 How do the student performance results differ between the Master’s Program in Finnish and EMI Master’s Program?
Although student performance cannot be seen as a direct result of their comprehension of lectures or even as a successfully organized Master’s Program, students’ course results provide some information on their studies. Since universities commonly use these types of results as indicators of teachers’ or the whole academic community’s performance, the student performance results between the Finnish Master’s Program and EMI Master’s Program were compared (see Sections 3.2 and 8.1).
At first, due to the major changes in the university course structure at the same time the change in the instruction language took place, this comparison seemed impossible. After investigating the courses and course contents, ten similar courses in the Finnish program (in the academic year 2001-2001) and in the EMI program (in the academic year 2006-2007) were identified. Students’ course grades in these ten courses were compared and the results were almost identical in slight favor of the EMI program with a few more students passing the courses.
Another way to study student performance would have required the use of methods applied in several comprehension studies (see Section 3.2). This was not possible, since the performance of the first group in 2001-2002 was only available in course grades. If comparing two groups within the same time frame, measuring comprehension through various tests (multiple-choice, cloze, gap-filling) or by asking students to identify the main