Bringing Specialised Language into Focus in English-Medium Instruction

The current trend for internationalisation in European universities, which includes the implementation of English-taught courses and degree programmes (British Council & Studyportals, 2024; Marginson & van der Wende, 2007; Wilkinson, 2017), is resulting in an increase in numbers of students who need advanced and specialised English language competences to meet the demands of studying academic content in a foreign language. This paper explores the main linguistic challenges that some students face in English-Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts, particularly their limited command of specialised English and lack of familiarity with subject-specific vocabulary (Ackerley, 2017; Al Zumor, 2019; McKinley & Rose, 2022). It also suggests how a corpus of subject-specific texts provided by lecturers can be used to develop specialised language learning materials in the form of subject-specific terminology and phraseology exercises, thereby providing the opportunity to turn students’ language development from an accidental by-product to a planned and tangible objective of an EMI language support syllabus. The approach was investigated through the creation of subject-specific corpus-informed activities designed for a group of undergraduate students enrolled in an English-taught degree programme at a northern Italian university (Brian, 2020). The exercises were informed by a careful investigation of a corpus of module materials and were delivered via an interactive online learning platform.