Perceptions of Hong Kong sub-degree students on the use of Chinese in the EMI classroom

What is it about?

The study aims at exploring Hong Kong sub-degree students' perception of the utilization of Chinese in the EMI classroom. Based on findings from six unstructured interviews with Chinese-English bilingual students, a thematic analysis identified 19 themes of the possible advantages associated with utilizing Chinese in the EMI classroom. Following this, a questionnaire comprising 19 items (later reduced to 18) was developed and distributed to a cohort of 103 associate-degree students in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong for further investigation. Descriptive statistics indicates that the informants were not resistant to using Chinese in the EMI classroom, and that they believed L1 could help apply their own study skills, increase their motivation to learn, and enhance their confidence of learning. Exploratory factor analysis using principal components extraction and Varimax rotation further identifies five factors that can affect students' perception of using Chinese in the EMI classroom: i) benefits to "learning through formal lectures", ii) benefits to "doing exercises in class", iii) benefits to "doing take-home assignments", iv) benefits to "active learning / self-regulated learning", and benefits to "teacher-student relationship". These five factors explain approximately 70% of the variance. The model built by multiple regression using the stepwise method suggests that beliefs in the benefit of using Chinese for assessments are good predictors of sub-degree students’ evaluation of using Chinese in the EMI classroom, but that beliefs in such a benefit for teacher-student relationship are not. These findings are partially elucidated by another round of interviews conducted with those six students thereafter. It is recommended that frontline college teachers utilize the shared L1 to recap or summarize any information or explanations that have been given in L2 previously. This may assist students in completing take-home assignments, rather than solely establishing rapport with them.

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Photo by Changbok Ko on Unsplash

Photo by Changbok Ko on Unsplash