Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use of metadiscourse devices

Porta Linguarum 37, January 2022 177-192 177 Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use of metadiscourse devices maría Luisa Carrió-Pastor Universitat Politècnica de València Received: 16 December 2020 / Accepted: 17 January 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.30827/portalin.vi37.16957 ISSN paper edition: 1697-7467, ISSN digital edition: 2695-8244 ABSTRACT: This paper explores the outcomes of training pragmatics identifying the metadiscourse devices that are used by the content teachers enrolled on a course leading to a university qualification for teaching in English within the context of a Spanish-speaking country. Specifically, I focus on the analysis of the frequencies of the textual and interactional devices used by university lecturers during an online English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) course with the aim of identifying the use of devices and how it could affect in their profession. The method followed involved the analysis of one hundred teaching units. The first step of this analysis was to collect the final projects written during three academic years by EMI university lecturers who were enrolled on an online course at Universitat Politècnica de València. I then identified the frequencies of textual and interactional devices, analysed their functions in the teaching unit and compiled examples. The results were later compared with the pragmatic training received during the training course and I also proposed some guidelines to help EMI teachers improve the use of metadiscourse devices. Finally, conclusions that could be useful for EMI trainers and trainees were drawn. Key words: teacher training, metadiscourse, EMI, textual devices, interactional devices. La formación de profesores de Inglés como medio de instrucción: El uso de marcadores metadiscursivos RESUMEN: Este artículo explora los resultados de la formación en pragmática, identificando los elementos metadiscursivos que utilizan los profesores de contenido que realizan un curso para obtener un diploma universitario para enseñaren inglés en España. En concreto, me centro en el análisis de las frecuencias de los marcadores textuales e interactivos utilizados por estos profesores universitarios durante el curso online sobre Inglés como Medio de Instrucción (IMI), con el objetivo de identificar su uso y cómo puede ello afectar en su profesión. El método utilizado implicó el análisis de cien unidades didácticas. El primer paso de este análisis fue recopilar los trabajos finales redactados durante tres cursos académicos por profesores universitarios de IMI matriculados en un curso online de la Universitat Politècnica de València. A continuación, identifiqué las frecuencias de los elementos textuales e interactivos, analicé sus funciones en la unidad didáctica y comenté los ejemplos. Los resultados se compararon posteriormente con los conocimientos pragmáticos recibidos durante el curso de formación y también realicé algunas propuestas para ayudar a los profesores de IMI a mejorar el uso de los marcadores metadiscursivos. Por último, se extrajeron conclusiones que podrían ser útiles para los formadores y aprendices de IMI. Palabras clave: formación de profesores, metadiscurso, IMI, marcadores textuales, marcadores interactivos. Porta Linguarum Nº 37, January 2022 178 1. INTRodUCTIoN English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), that is, teaching a subject in English, is an ever-increasing phenomenon in non-English-speaking higher education institutions. EMI teachers are mainly trained in grammar use and as Dearden (2014, p. 6) explains, “it appears to be a phenomenon which is being introduced ‘top-down’ by policy makers and education managers rather than through consultation with the key stake holders”. Most of the training designed for content teachers involved in EMI does not take into account the complex processes involved in EMI. The effects of EMI on English proficiency seems to be vocabulary and grammar acquisition, but only few studies have focused on the analysis of metadiscourse in EMI lectures (Denvera et al., 2016; Broggini& Murphy, 2017). In this light, the study presented here aims to identify the most and least frequent metadiscourse devices used by EMI teachers and thus consider their functions and propose the reinforcement of training in metadiscourse. I believe this study to be innovative in a number of ways: first, because it focuses on the language training of EMI teachers, a topic that has not been of much interest till now. Second, because it focuses on the metadiscourse devices used by EMI teachers at university level. In this sense, here I distinguish between the training of EMI teachers that are qualified to teach in primary and secondary education and those EMI teachers that are competent to teach in higher education, as the cognitive discourse functions are not the same (Breeze &Dafouz, 2017). University students are learning complex subjects through English and their language proficiency entails being able to use grammar and pragmatics to communicate in an effective way. Finally, this study follows a quantitative approach and analyses the pragmatic performance of EMI teachers by studying metadiscourse devices and identifying those not frequently used by teachers trained to become EMI lecturers. The research questions posed in this study are the following: 1. Which are the metadiscourse devices that are most and least frequently employed by teachers who use English as a medium of instruction? 2. What metadiscourse devices should be included in EMI teacher training to guarantee that EMI university teachersuse persuasive strategies in communication? The paper is structured as follows: the introductory section includes the objectives of the study and research questions. Sections 2 and 3 narrate the theoretical background of the study. Then, section 4 describes the corpus used in this study and the method followed to answer the objectives and the research questions. Section 5 is devoted to the results of the study and the discussion of the findings and finally, in the last section, the conclusions and limitations are considered. 2. ENglISh AS A MEdIUM of INSTRUCTIoN ANd TEAChER TRAININg The interest in EMI has been shown in several studies from different points of view, as pointed out by Barnard and McLellan (2013), Blaj-Ward (2017), Margic & María Luisa Carrió-Pastor Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use... 179 Vodopija-Krstanovic (2017, 2018), Bradford & Brown (2017) and Kim, Kim & Kweon (2018).These authors focused on code switching and on the effect, the true aims and objectives of EMI, paying attention to language learning, the effect of glocalisation and lecturers’ perceptions in higher education. All these authors highlighted the benefits of EMI as a way to improve communication skills and linguistic competence, aspects also explained by authors such as Dearden (2014), Belhiah & Elhami (2015) and Macaro (2018).They described the discipline as a growing global phenomenon and a way to enhance participation in classrooms. At the same time, however, researchers also pay attention to some drawbacks such as the low proficiency level in English of students and, in some cases, the scant amount of time available to reflect, consolidate and adjust subject syllabuses (Belhiah & Elhami, 2015). Further to these appreciations, Li and Wu (2018) point out the need to develop and implement training programmes in support of the professional development of EMI teachers regarding assessment. Similarly, Kim, Kim & Kweon (2018) identify teachers’ perceptions of EMI in Korea in two senses: on the one hand, teachers know EMI has been used as an index for the internationalisation of universities and, on the other, EMI is a primary cause of “… dramatic increases in their teaching load which interfered with other scholarly activities including international publication” (Kim, Kim & Kweon, 2018, p. 113). So, it seems the EMI approach has been used by universities to internationalise education but not a lot of attention has been paid to teachers’ training needs and the increase in workload. Kim, Kim & Kweon (2018, p. 121) also recommend translanguaging for lower proficiency students and that “… teacher preparation includes L2 teacher training for EMI and the design of English curricula for the development of L2 communicative and interactional competences across different academic disciplines”. Dordevic & Blagojevic (2019) identified some drawbacks in the implementation of EMI in Serbian universities. Mainly, in their study senior lecturers are not aware of the importance of the changes to be implemented in the teaching methodology for EMI and non-native English speakers are also reluctant to the use of English in their classes. The study by Margic & Vodopija-Krstanovic (2018) focuses on the need for teachers to have language proficiency, enabling them to pay attention to both the language and the content, considering in their training that a very strong emphasis on errors may impact negatively on teachers’ self-esteem. The authors suggest the need to “… design and organise programmes at different levels that allow for sufficient exposure to the language and guided language hours to adequately develop prospective EMI teachers’ skills” (Margic & Vodopija-Krstanovic, 2018, p. 39). Some authors (Li & Ruan, 2015) also focus on some of the problems that may be faced by EMI teachers, such as the divergence between the English educational context and the educational context of students involved in EMI subjects, a crucial aspect to motivate learners and to adapt EMI teaching to their cultural needs. Furthermore, Dafouz & Camacho-Miñano (2016) refer to national differences such as language policies and teaching traditions that should be considered when implementing the EMI approach in higher education. Another important issue pointed out by Kuchah (2018, Porta Linguarum Nº 37, January 2022 180 p. 37) when describing the implementation of EMI as part of the ‘Education for All’ policy in Cameroon is that “… the language of instruction presents a barrier to parental involvement in education for children whose parents are not educated in the language of their schooling”. Developing academic literacy becomes of paramount importance in EMI programmes for training teachers as stated by Belhiah & Elhami(2015) and Dearden(2015). Nevertheless, Macaro, Jiménez-Muñoz & Lasagabaster (2019, p. 105) highlight that in some countries “… teachers did not particularly envisage a need for a qualification that confirmed an ability to deliver their subject through English”. This means that some content teachers may not consider that EMI entails both curricular and methodological changes in subject planning. This fact may entail that not enough attention is paid to the training of the communicative competence that may be essential to motivate students and teach EMI subjects proficiently. In spite of the increasing number of studies devoted to the implementation, teaching experiences, advantages and disadvantages of EMI, limited research (Carrió-Pastor, 2019; Lin, 2020) has been conducted on the need to teach persuasive strategies to EMI teachers that facilitate to engage learners in discussions or to guide them throughout the whole EMI class sessions. 3. METAdISCoURSE Many studies have highlighted the importance of pragmatics and that communicating in a language is something more than just grammar and vocabulary (Kasper, 2001;AlcónSoler, 2005;Nikula, 2005;Jianda, 2006; Carrió-Pastor & Mestre-Mestre, 2013; Carrió-Pastor & Casas-Gómez, 2015; Carrió-Pastor & Martín-Marchante, 2016). The different aspects contemplated by teachers to make students acquire proficiency in a foreign language are crucial. Teachers should be aware that students copy their teachers and so all the aspects related to teaching should be incorporated into the planning of classes. The pragmatic implications of a foreign language should be practised during EMI classes to help students improve their language proficiency. This paper focuses on the use of metadiscourse devices, that is, the elements that allow speakers to guide, provide coherence and cohesion, convince, mitigate, engage or boost in a given genre. Metadiscourse has been a popular topic of research, mainly led by Hyland (2005). It “refers to linguistic resources that have interactional and organizational functions” (Thomson, 2020, p. 26) and the devices that have metadiscursive functions are mainly divided into textual metadiscourse, that is, the elements that organise and provide cohesion to speech acts, and interactional, i.e. the elements that convince, engage and maintain social relationships with readers. Most research about metadiscourse has been devoted to the academic genre, but some researchers have also investigated language learning and teaching considering metadiscourse devices (Polat, 2011; Li & Wharton, 2012; Lin, 2020; Thompson, 2020). But no much research dedicated to the study of metadiscourse devices used by EMI teachers has been found (Denvera et al., 2016; Broggin i& Murphy, 2017).It should be noted that María Luisa Carrió-Pastor Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use... 181 no studies have focused on the need to include metadiscourse devices in teacher training in higher education and, consequently, on the training of metadiscourse devices to EMI teachers. In this light, this paper aims to deepen in the study of persuasive strategies, specifically the metadiscourse devices used by EMI teachers. 4. CoRpUS ANd METhod The corpus of this study is composed of one hundred teaching units that were presented at the end of the online university course leading to a qualification for teaching in English offered by Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). This qualification is equivalent to 220 online hours and 380 hours working at home. The aim of this qualification is to prepare teachers to deliver their content subjects in English. The teaching units compiled were delivered by higher education lecturers during the academic years 2017-18, 2018-19 and 201920. It was necessary to compile the corpus from different courses as most of the students enrolled on this course designed their teaching units for primary or secondary education, so the teaching units of those teachers working at the university as part-time lecturers were selected for this study, as they were the real EMI teachers. These lecturers implemented EMI and not Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach at university level, teaching their subject in English in different degrees at Universitat Politècnica de València making no reference to language acquisition as CLIL does. Additionally, these EMI teachers were enrolled in language classes to be trained on grammar proficiency. The corpus was selected from those content teachers who obtained the qualification after passing all the subjects and planning and presenting a teaching unit. In the course, there is one specific subject that focuses on the training of pragmatics: “Pragmatic discursive aspects of language”, which is equivalent to 20 teaching hours. The teaching units are composed of several sections and are sent to the evaluation boards, each consisting of two teachers from the course, that decide if content teachers are capable of using English as a medium of instruction in their classes. The sections of the teaching units are the following: • Context and students (age of learners, current level of English, prior knowledge required), • year of study, • timing (number of lessons and their duration), • aims of the unit (the general teaching aims of the unit, knowledge, skills and understanding), • teaching objectives (regarding the 4Cs, that is, content, cognition, culture and communication), • methodology (planning of subject, scaffolding, tasks, higher order or lower order thinking skills, etc.), • learning outcomes (skills acquired), • sequence of teaching and learning activities, • assessment (evaluation, rubrics, etc.), Porta Linguarum Nº 37, January 2022 182 • list of resources (materials and equipment used), • checklist. As can be seen, the pragmatic content of the teaching unit could be included in the teaching objectives and in the learning outcomes, but no explicit mention is made of pragmatic competence. But this is not always the case in the EMI certificates offered by different organisations. This qualification is offered by many Spanish higher education institutions. Cambridge English also offers a Certificate in EMI skills, which is a 40-hour online learning course. As announced on their EMI certificate webpage: Support your internationalisation objectives and improve student experience by ensuring your faculty are confident working in English. The Certificate in EMI Skills is for university professors, lecturers, tutors and researchers whose first language is not English, but who use English to teach students, present academic papers and interact with colleagues. The online course modules include video demonstrations of University of Cambridge lectures, seminars and tutorials. With the Certificate in EMI Skills, participants can show that they: • can use English as the medium of instruction with greater effectiveness • are able to use a wider range of strategies to engage students • can take part more confidently in professional activities in the medium of English. • (Available at https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/teaching-qualifications /institutions/certificate-in-emi-skills/ [Accessed 06/10/2020]) In the case of the Cambridge EMI certificate, in some of the different modules of the online course, metadiscourse devices are included and taken into account although they are not mentioned explicitly. For example, in the module ‘Language for lectures’, the sections included in the content entail the use of textual markers (Different lecture styles; Introducing a lecture; Signposting and cohesion in lectures; Concluding a lecture) as well as in the module ‘Language for tutorials and supervision’, in the section ‘Advising students on strengths and weaknesses’, the use of boosters, attitude markers and hedges are explained. Furthermore, in the module ‘Language for online communication’ some metadiscourse devices are part of the syllabus. In this sense, the Cambridge EMI certificate emphasises the use of persuasion in EMI classes. The corpus compiled here is thus composed of one hundred teaching units designed by one hundred university lecturers that followed a course aimed at training them in the teaching of content in English. The total word count of the teaching units is 495,487 words, the average length being 4,954 words per teaching unit. As explained above, the teaching units were divided into sections which helped content teachers to guide readers by specifying different aspects to be considered depending on the content. All the teachers were Spaniards who used English as a foreign language. The method applied in this study was divided into different stages. Thus, the first step was to collect the final projects written during three academic years by EMI university lecturers who were enrolled on an online course at Universitat Politècnica de València. The second step was to identify and classify the frequencies of textual and interactional devices María Luisa Carrió-Pastor Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use... 183 and their subcategories, analysing their functions in the teaching unit. For the classification of metadiscourse devices, the taxonomy proposed explained in the Introduction section (Hyland, 2005; Mur-Dueñas, 2011) was initially taken into account but finally the proposal by Thomson (2020, p. 31) was adopted considering the corpus compiled for this study. The author adapts previous taxonomies (Hyland, 2005; Ädel, 2006, 2017) paying attention to the resources that serve interactional and organisational (textual) functions, that is, two main metadiscursive functions that are fundamental in the pragmatic organisation of discourse: signposting (textual devices) and stance (interactional devices). Table 1 shows the different subcategories taken into account in the category of textual or signposting devices: Table 1. Textual or signposting categories and subcategories Category subCategory DeviCes Transitions Additive Contrastive Inferential Furthermore, moreover, similarly, also… However, similarly, in contrast, but, yet, rather… Thus, in order to, therefore, consequently, then… Code glosses Exemplification Reformulation For example, for instance, illustrates, can be seen… In other words, that is, i.e., means… Frame markers Sequencers Topicalisers Discourse labels First, second, finally, to begin with, next… With regard to, concerning, turning to, in terms of… Thus far, in sum, in brief, briefly… Endophoric markers Announcers Anaphoric Cataphoric Aim to, will, seek to… As noted earlier, in this paper, above, previously… See Table X, the next section, in Fig. X… Table 2 shows the different subcategories of stance or interactional devices considered in this study and adapted from Thomson (2020). Evidential devices are considered to be textual or signposts by some researchers (Hyland, 2005; Mur-Dueñas, 2011), but here they are considered to be persuasive, “drawing readers’ attention to external sources that support writers’ views” (Thomson, 2020, p. 31), and are classified as stance or interactional markers. Table 2. Interactional or stance categories and subcategories Category subCategory DeviCes Hedges Downtoners Rounders Plausibility shields First person Quite, relatively, few, almost, certain, little, only… Roughly, around, about, roughly, some, general… Potential, tend, may, might, perhaps, possible… I/we believe, guess, opinion, think… Boosters Amplifiers Universals Plausibility Extremely, very, much, major, perfect, significantly… All, everybody, never, completely, greatest… Clear, indeed, sure, certainly, clearly, definitely… Porta Linguarum Nº 37, January 2022 184 Engagement markers Questions Reader reference Directives Personal asides Direct questions, tag questions, rhetorical questions You, we, our, us, let’s… Look at, consider, write, remember, think about it… By the way, Evidentials Personal Impersonal According to X, as X argued, explains, describes… Previous, past research, previously… Self-mentions Personal references I, my, we, our… Attitude markers Negative Positive Emotional Inappropriate, disappointed, unusual… Agree, appropriate, correctly, significant, honest… Dramatic, shocking, !, prefer, surprised, dramatically… The occurrences that functioned as metadiscourse devices were identified automatically with the tool METOOL, fruit of the research project supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Reference FFI2016-77941-P). This tool identifies metadiscourse devices and the annotator can check, after being directed to the text, if the device functions as a metadiscourse marker or not. In this way, after checking the functions and tagging the devices automatically identified by the tool, the occurrences were counted. In the third stage, examples were compiled and some functions of the devices were discussed. Later, the least and most frequently used metadiscourse devices were studied. Once completed, I proposed the metadiscourse devices to be included in training courses to help EMI teachers improve their communicative competence. Finally, conclusions that could be useful for EMI trainers and trainees were drawn. 5. RESUlTS ANd dISCUSSIoN This section shows the results from this exploratory study, including examples of signposting and stance subcategories from the corpus to illustrate how each subcategory was used by EMI teachers. A total of 2,121 textual or signposting markers and a total of 1,624 interactional or stance devices were found after the analysis of the teaching units. Altogether, 3,745 markers were identified in the corpus of one hundred teaching units. Firstly, I display the occurrences in the two main categories (textual and interactional), the ten categories and the twenty-eight subcategories. Secondly, I show some examples of the different categories identified and finally I compare the different occurrences found in the categories and subcategories. Table 3 below shows the occurrences of textual or signposting markers found in the corpus. The first column shows the four subcategories included, the second column shows the subcategories studied and the third column shows the occurrences found in the analysis. María Luisa Carrió-Pastor Training teachers of English as a medium of instruction: The use... 185 Table 3. Textual or signposting categories and subcategories Category subCategory oCCurrenCes Transitions Additive Contrastive Inferential 424 271 210 Total: 905 Code glosses Exemplification Reformulation 198 78 Total: 276 Frame markers Sequencers Topicalisers Discourse labels 324 123 75 Announcers 83 Total: 605 Endophoric markers Anaphoric Cataphoric 128 207 Total: 335 The mean of signposting markers per 100 words of the corpus is 2.33. As Table 3 shows, transitions were the most frequently used metadiscourse category, additive being the most frequent subcategory. The EMI teachers thus used these devices to guide readers through the teaching unit, aware that this is one of the most important aspects to cohere language. The devices ‘and’, ‘also’ and ‘but’ were the most frequently used, as also noted in the study by Thomson (2020, p. 33). Example (1) shows a sentence with different transition markers: (1) “Finally, the task will be divided into different parts so that students can face them easily while they can also have a better understanding.” [Biology] Code glosses were mainly used to provide examples, although some markers that explained concepts were also useful to make the teaching more comprehensible. It should be noted that the purpose of a teaching unit is to be basically pedagogical, thus it should include examples and explanations of new concepts, but in the corpus analysed this was the least frequently used category. Example (2) displays the way code glosses were used in the teaching units: Porta Linguarum Nº 37, January 2022 192 of academic discipline? Journal of Pragmatics 36, 1807–1825.https://doi.org/10.1016/j. pragma.2004.05.004 Doiz, A., Lasagabaster, D.& Sierra, J. M. (Eds.)(2012). English-medium instruction at universities: global challenges. Multilingual Matters. Dordevic, J. P. &Blagojevic, S. N. 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