Graduate Students` Perceptions of English Medium Instruction in terms of their Learning Motivation, Anxiety, and Achievement

Abstract

With today’s globalization, high education institutions are internationalizing their education systems by implementing English Medium Instruction (EMI) programs. In Kazakhstan, 42 universities offer partial and full EMI programs and this number is growing (Irsaliyev et al., 2017). However, since the English language is neither a first nor a local, but a foreign language for graduate students in Kazakhstan, studying content in this language is challenging. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate their perceptions and feelings about studying content subjects in an EMI environment, since in the Kazakhstani context, perceptions of EMI have only been explored from the perspectives of undergraduate and not graduate students. Consequently, this study aims to investigate graduate students` perceptions of EMI in terms of their learning motivation, anxiety and achievement, and adopts a mixed method approach with a case study design employing a survey and semi-structured interviews as main data collection instruments. Graduate students from an international university in Kazakhstan were recruited as research participants with 250 of them participating in the survey and six in the interview. The findings demonstrate that graduate students are motivated to study in EMI programs, perceiving their benefits related to increasing knowledge, accessing academic information, acquiring academic language skills, and integrating into the international society of researchers. Nonetheless, the participants were apprehensive due to worries about their communicative fluency, receiving negative evaluations from peers and teachers, and test anxiety. The results also display a high level of student development in their personality, academic language, research, and analytical skills, and use of scholarly opportunities. These respondents’ motivation, anxiety, and achievements are all correlated. Understanding graduate students` perceptions of EMI could enable policymakers, program administrators, and teaching staff to better improve EMI programs in Kazakhstan.