Roles of teacher feedback in promoting effective english-medium instruction of a business subject

Abstract

Despite the recent expansion of English-medium instruction (EMI) in a non-English speaking educational context, few studies have investigated teaching methodology for EMI. Using a mixed method, this study examines the effects of teacher feedback on college students’ their perspectives of learning a business subject through EMI. The quantitative part of the study investigated questionnaire responses of two groups of students enrolled in a course on entrepreneurship: the control group of the lecture-style class offering little teacher feedback (n = 158) versus the experimental group featuring extensive feedback (n = 153). For the cross-examination of these quantitative results, a semi-structured interview with four respondents followed. The analysis showed that the students’ disciplinary backgrounds (general studies, business, and engineering) create differences in their perspectives of EMI and learning the business subject. Among the three major groups, the business major students ranked English proficiency as the most important for their career purposes. The feedback-concentrated instruction contributed not only to learning the subject, but it also moderated the differences between the disciplines. Notably, the participants’ comprehension of the subject significantly correlated with their evaluation of EMI. These findings highlight the crucial effect of teacher feedback on acquiring discipline-specific knowledge and cultivating new perspectives of EMI. © 2004 AsiaTEFL.org. All rights reserved.