Navigating official and de facto EME language policy at a Saudi HE setting: An online qualitative case study in the medical school

Abstract

The field of education has seen a boom in English as a medium of instruction/education (EMI/E) as a model to be applied, particularly in higher education (HE). Many non-Anglophone institutions in different countries are involved in the implementation process as a strategic response to globalisation and internationalisation. Particularly, EME has become prevalent in both public and private universities in Saudi Arabia (SA) to internationalise Saudi HE institutions and facilitate engagement in the local and global markets. EME has been implemented by top-down agencies that pay little attention to the educational implications of learning through a second language that might affect millions of students. Moreover, the language policy (LP) associated with EME is often thought to endorse a monolingual and native-standard English approach by key agents involved in its application. This approach disregards the reality that EME is established in a multilingual community and imposes communicative and expressive restrictions on multilingual students and teachers. Numerous studies explore EME in various Anglophone and non-anglophone countries from a language policy perspective but with less focus on English as a lingua franca (ELF) and translanguaging perspectives. Besides, EME in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is still under-researched, particularly in the Saudi context. A limited number of existing studies only focus on the usefulness of EME by examining its advantages and disadvantages, with data collected from mostly questionnaires, few interviews, and no classroom observation. To gain a better understanding of the linguistic beliefs and practices of EME agents, an online qualitative case study was conducted to investigate the current language policy, including both official and de facto policies, in the medical EME programme from the lens of ELF and translanguaging. Through data collection and analysis, the study presents findings from online material and site documents, interviews with students and teachers, and classroom observations. It provides insights into what the current state of the LP appears to be in this institution, how far EME appears to be interpreted as an 'English-only' policy, where such ideas come from, and what their implications are for teachers and students, and how the key actors in the setting negotiate and construct de facto language policy in their daily pedagogical activities. The findings of the study suggest that the documents emphasise the implementation of internationalisation (abroad, at home, and in the curriculum) at the national level and the medical school through having incorporation and agreements with international Anglophone universities to provide services to the medical school. However, the data suggests that the agents/managers behind most documents are either ‘unknown’ or ‘invisible’ to the participants involved in the study, as well as no clear guidance of explicit official LP is written in the documents regarding teaching, communication, and assessment. All medical students and teachers recognise theintentional ambiguity of LP in the documents, which results in two consequences. First, they take advantage of using their rich linguistic resources, including reversed Arabizi, flexibly and creatively in teaching, communication, and assessment. Second, they find an opportunity to have more authority to negotiate and shape de facto LP based on their daily language practices and depending on the circumstances and expectations. Because of this absence, most EME agents disagree with having explicit LP because avoiding fixed explicit LP on official paper/website is harnessed as helpful to balance tensions between the accreditation that appears to push for English only to maintain the internationalisation and academic accreditation in the medical school and the classroom needs, which benefit from flexible and open policies to use overt translanguaging. On the other hand, a few students and teachers believe it is crucial to set flexible explicit LP to minimise bullying, mockery and fairness issues emerging in the classroom and assessment and solve the conflicts over variations of language practices among teachers due to the absence of clear LP. However, there are leading factors that influence the students and teachers from using their full linguistic resources via overt translanguaging and push them to a parallel-monolingual approach: 1) societal/religious/professional influence, 2) studying-related skills, 3) using technology, and 4) programmatic/institutional academic accreditation. Finally, the documents and EME agents’ beliefs and practices tend to concentrate on meaning-making and intelligibility (content accuracy) as part of medical ELF, which is from a disciplinary-specific perspective. In contrast, there is a tendency to focus on linguistic accuracy (i.e., spelling and pronunciation) as a requirement for patients’ safety in the medical/health sector.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Sonia Moran Panero: orcid.org/0000-0001-9895-4379

ORCID for Darren Paffey: orcid.org/0000-0003-2709-8012

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