An exploration of factors that influence Taiwanese undergraduate students’ academic speaking literacy in university EMI lessons

Thesis

This research aims to investigate the factors that predict Taiwanese undergraduate students’ academic speaking literacy in EMI lessons, and identify the speaking challenges they face, which can be supported by their universities. This is an important topic to look into as EMI lessons have been widely implemented in Taiwanese universities, due to the establishment of the Bilingual 2030 policy. Moreover, while speaking holds great importance in language and content development in EMI lessons, it has been suggested that this is Taiwanese students’ weakest skill, when compared to listening, reading, and writing. With extremely limited research that specifically investigates speaking skills in the Taiwanese EMI context, this is a crucial gap to explore. This research studied 57 local Taiwanese university students using questionnaires,and invited 8 of them to participate in followup focus group discussions. ANOVA and simple linear regression were employed to find out the relationships between variables – including year of the study, discipline, EAP experience, and EMI experience – and students’ speaking literacy. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the qualitative results collected from the questionnaires and focus group discussions, which provides insight into students’ speaking difficulties and the possible methods by which the university could provide support them.

The results suggest that EAP experience and EMI experience, both inside and outside the university, predicts students’ speaking literacy. It also suggests that universities can use EAP and EMI courses to support students through challenges, including speaking confidence, vocabulary, the ability to present ideas and information and to ask questions, as well as the use of L1 in class. Moreover, a discussion around grammar and fluency indicates the importance for universities to consider the practicality of teaching some speaking sub-skills, and whether those skills are equally important as others for EMI lessons, to decide the type of speaking challenge to offer support with. These findings provide useful implications on how the Taiwanese government should continue their implementation of supplemental EAP lessons and EMI lessons at the school level. It also provides important pedagogical implications on how universities can support students’ speaking challenges.

Authors: Yang, CH

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-yrqjrmpmr
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: mixed methods; Taiwan; ALSLA; ALSLA2024; EMI; speaking literacy; focus group; questionnaire
• Subjects: Focus groups; Second language acquisition; Mixed methods; Applied linguistics; English