Review of English-Medium Degree Programs in Japanese Universities: Learning from the European Experience

Review of English-medium Degree Programs in Japanese Universities: Learning  

                     from the European Experience

                        Zheng Qun, Suzanna

    Triggered by the pressure of internationalization in higher education, Japanese government has issued a series of decrees to promote EMI degree programs. The urgent expansion causes a lot of problems in EMI practice. Europe, with a long history in EMI, has accumulated rich experiences in this field. Annette Bradford (2013) compares the European experience and Japanese practice of English-medium degree programs in the rationales for adopting EMI and challenges in implementing EMI, aiming at providing recommendations for Japanese stakeholders. A comparative approach is adopted throughout the paper to depict vivid pictures of both regions and make explicit the similarities and distinctions of them.

The rationales of the two regions are largely the same: to attract the international students and internationalize the domestic students. This is due to the globalization atmosphere, in which no nations can be excluded. However, there exist some regional distinctions concerning the reasons. Promoted by some regional organizations, such as the 1999 Bologna Declaration for the notion of pan-Europe, students’ exchange in high education around the Europe was accelerated and EMI was greatly facilitated. Even though, countries with different languages in Europe took different tempos in the progress. Japan became more alert of EMI at the beginning of this century with the declining economic and population growth. A more international-oriented policy in high education was adopted. Concerning the reasons, Japan is more interested in attracting international students than internationalize the domestic students.  

In the real practice concerning the facing challenges, the universal features display the nature of EMI and the discrepancies account for the contextual and cultural differences. Annette Bradford compared the challenges in implementing EMI in linguistic, cultural and structure perspectives.

    Linguistically, it has been reported both in the Europe and Japan that the inadequate English competence of professors and students impairs the effect of EMI education. For the students, the unfamiliarity of subject vocabularies and difficulty to process “the density of information” in English are obviously been witnessed. While for the professors, the limitation of English skills often causes frustration in teaching and confidence deficiency in learning. The general solution for the issue is to “screen” the students and teachers in their English proficiency. Japanese researchers also advocated taking action to improve the English proficiency of students with the support of academic writing training and recruiting faculty with oversea (Anglo-Saxon countries) study experience or native English speakers.