English Medium Instruction in Universities: A Collaborative Experiment in Turkey

Abstract

We report on a study exploring the level of success of collaboration in lesson planning between English language specialists and content teachers in Turkish universities where academic subjects are being taught through the medium of English. Although some previous research exists on collaboration of this kind at the secondary education level, and there is some reference to it in Content and Language Integrated Learning in Europe, no research to date has explored the potential for collaboration between specialists at the tertiary level. Using pre- and post intervention interviews with nine “collaborating pairs” of teachers using a “collaborative planning tool” we additionally explored content teachers’ beliefs about their students’ language competence, their conceptualization of language as a medium for understanding content, and their knowledge and beliefs about the preparatory English programme. Our findings on the whole suggest that collaboration of this sort can be highly beneficial and we provide case studies of both successful and less successful aspects of the intervention.