Syllabus design for an English medium instruction course: Expectations and reality

Abstract

© 2019, International Multidisciplinary Scientific Geoconference. All rights received. There has been a sweeping increase in a number of universities in the Russian Federation that are moving to implement courses and programs through English medium instructions (EMI). In other words, English is being used to deliver and teach content in the sciences, math, history, business, and engineering both in public and private education at all stages – primary, secondary, and tertiary one. With the aim to promote international exchange, raise the quality and prestige of educational establishments, and provide a well-qualified bilingual workforce for improving the country’s economy EMI has become an exponentially developing trend in higher education all over the globe. The authors of the current research set a focus account of EMI status at Kazan Federal University, Institute of Management, Economics and Finance, basically the attitude of the teacher staff towards this academic phenomenon, their fears and expectations, and designing a tailor-made course with the view to enhance EMI methodology awareness as well as English language proficiency of academia. The authors adopted a mixed method design where we have included the data placed on the official university websites analysis as well as the data from the questionnaire. The results of the survey were analyzed using the descriptive statistics methods. The paper concludes with the proposed syllabus design for an advanced training course “English for teaching proficiency”. Thus, despite plenty of challenges, pitfalls, outcomes and expectations we do emphasize the crucial character of the course and its introduction at a graduate level.