English-Medium Instruction in Engineering Education Practices, Challenges, and Suggestions

Responding to the internationalization, the purpose of the English education in China has shifted from learning English for tests to using English as a medium. A series of policy has been established to promote English-Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education. In the engineering education, the basic and main function is to transmit academic knowledge. But because of the students' lack of adequate English proficiency, and the teachers' lack of experience of teaching in English, using EMI on engineering academic courses might make it a little hard for the teachers to cover all the contents in depth. This paper is to provide a small-scale practical case of EMI in engineering education. An academic course "Computer Networking" was taught to a 69-student class bilingually, and to another 72-student class in English. By comparing the students' performances, feedbacks and the teaching processes, the main challenges of EMI in engineering education were discussed, and the possible solutions were suggested.