Keywords

1 Introduction

This chapter is situated in the context of transformation of universities around the world under the impact of higher education (HE) internationalisation. Notable forms of university activities emerging over the last three decades include global student mobility on a large scale, expansion of branch campuses and partnerships, extensive provision of joint degrees, and the use of English as a language for teaching and research (Altbach & De Wit, 2018).

Over the years, Vietnamese HE is predominantly seen as a recipient of international education and a source of international students in Western HE systems, particularly in Anglo-American countries (Tran et al., 2014). With an aim to lift the position of Vietnamese HE in the international education market, the government of Vietnam has undertaken numerous strategies for revam** the HE system. After many large reforms, though criticised to gain only modest success, Vietnamese HE is now becoming a more active partner in international education (Tran & Marginson, 2019). Vietnamese universities have been putting much emphasis on its internationalisation agenda so as to renovate the curriculum to catch up with the regional and international quality benchmarks and to boost their global ranking (The Government of Vietnam, 2012; Tran & Marginson, 2019). Amongst various efforts to internationalise the HE system, the introduction of English-medium-instruction (EMI) programs is a symbolic initiative of internationalisation in Vietnam (Duong & Chua, 2016; Nguyen, 2018).

EMI programs, as the name suggests, are characterised by the use of English as the language for teaching and learning. EMI is generally praised for benefits of English language proficiency improvement on top of content knowledge acquisition, intercultural understanding and mindedness, and increased career and educational opportunities (Galloway et al., 2017). While the first EMI programs in Vietnam were introduced in the early 1990s mainly for postgraduate level, the delivery of EMI programs has expanded to undergraduate level since the 2000s (Nguyen et al., 2017). One can argue that EMI has gained its significance thanks to the accordance and integration of Vietnam’s language policies with its internationalisation strategies. The EMI programs in Vietnam have been significantly promoted by the government through the National Foreign Language Program 2020 (The Government of Vietnam, 2008) and the National Strategy for Educational Development 2011–2020 (The Government of Vietnam, 2012) in an effort to enhance graduates’ English language proficiency via content-based teaching to both augment the country’s human capacity and catch up with the world’s education systems.

Research on EMI implementation in Vietnam centres on the opportunities and tensions with regard to language policy and EMI management issues (Duong & Chua, 2016; Nguyen et al., 2017; Vu & Burns, 2014). Some studies also look at the linkage between internationalised programs (wherein English is the medium of instruction) and students’ employability. For example, N. Tran et al. (2019) and N. Tran and Vo (2019) examine EMI programs in Aquaculture and Biotechnology and found that these programs positively contribute to the development of employability skills for students despite the remaining issues in the implementation of such programs, e.g. funding cuts and student recruitment difficulties. However, literature on this topic remains patchy and is yet to fully reflect the landscape of teaching and learning practices across different kinds of EMI programs. Especially, the impact of EMI teaching and learning on students’ employability is by far blurry captured. Against this backdrop, our study aims at providing the missing link between EMI implementation and the development of attributes that are conducive to student employability.

This chapter looks at two EMI programs in Business and Economics disciplines at a Vietnamese university, including one Advanced ProgramFootnote 1 in partnership with an American institution and a Joint Program partnering with a Japanese institution. We aim to portray the reality of implementing EMI, in two main aspects: the practices and challenges in the use of EMI from the teaching and learning perspectives; and the potential impact of EMI on the formation of capitals for employability amongst Vietnamese students. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of literature about EMI worldwide and in Vietnam. We then provide a demonstrative case study of EMI implementation at a Vietnamese university. In this case study, we analyse the opportunities and challenges in the teaching and learning of EMI, the strategies teachers and students adopted, and their contribution to students’ employability.

2 English-Medium-Instruction in the Global Context of Higher Education

The internationalisation of HE on the global scale has placed an increasing importance on not only English language education but also education through English. As Galloway et al. (2017) remark, the deployment of English to teach academic subjects in countries where the first language of the majority of the population is not English, i.e. EMI, has become a “pandemic” (Chapple, 2015, p. 1) whereby even universities in non-Anglophone contexts are now prioritising EMI courses and programs in non-language study majors. Around the world, there were approximately 8,000 university courses delivered in English in non-Anglophone countries as of 2016 (Michell, 2016). With the predominant initial growth in Europe, EMI in Asia has spread impressively with hundreds of EMI programs offered across different countries. By 2016, EMI had been introduced in 420 universities in South Korea, over 100 in Malaysia, 80 in Bangladesh, over 70 in Indonesia, over 30 in Japan, over 70 in Vietnam, and 30 in China (see Hamid & Kirkpatrick, 2016). There appears to be a fast-moving shift in non-Anglophone countries worldwide, from English being an object of instruction to English being the medium of instruction.

Ideologically, countries have numerous rationales for the movement of EMI at HE. Drivers include (i) institutions’ international profile development, (ii) income generation, (iii) academics and students mobility, (iv) graduate employability enhancement, (v) English proficiency improvement for national human capital, (vi) movement into communicative language teaching and content-based approaches, (vii) position of English as a neutral language in multilingual contexts, and (viii) capacity building through provision of high-quality education (Galloway et al., 2017; Wilkinson, 2013). Wilkinson (2008) generalises the drivers into five groups, namely practical, survival, financial, idealist, and educational. Particularly in Asia–Pacific, the gain in popularity of EMI is closely associated with the rise in the “geopolitical status” of English as a lingua franca, as well as the expansion of HE sector and large-scale internationalisation agenda amongst countries in the region (Walkinshaw et al., 2017, p. 1).

Despite such ethos, the provision of education in English has been critically problematised. Studies found that teaching content in English puts the quality of education at risk when teachers’ and students’ English proficiency is insufficient for teaching and learning (Chapple, 2015; de Wit, 2013). EMI implementation poses difficulties for students in understanding the discipline knowledge and in interacting with teachers, which, in some cases, causes student drop-out or resistance to EMI (Galloway et al., 2017). Similarly, the lack of EMI teachers who are both qualified and willing to teach in English has a negative impact on the success of EMI (Dearden, 2014). Seen as synonymous with Westernisation, EMI causes “loss of domain” of first language (Wilkinson, 2013, p. 11) and decreasing focus on other foreign languages (de Wit, 2013). Galloway et al. (2017) are also cautious of inequalities in access to EMI programs and social division as the result of EMI programs. EMI naturally leads to favouritism to teaching staff with overseas experience and more opportunities for students from higher socio-economic backgrounds since they are more likely to have higher English language proficiency (Shamim, 2011). This existing social inequality can be deepened by the emergence of an elite English-speaking class graduating from EMI programs, demarcated from the “masses” who take regular programs in the home language (Hamid & Jahan, 2015, p. 95). With regard to management, pressure on staff training, challenges in domestic and foreign staff recruitment, and changes in faculty culture amid the integration of Western style are also reported (Galloway et al., 2017).

3 English-Medium-Instruction in Vietnamese Universities

In Vietnam, EMI has been regarded as a tool to achieve internationalisation goals (Tran & Nguyen, 2018), with at-home internationalised programs providing a platform for use of EMI in the HE system. Across Vietnamese universities, EMI was first observed in a small number of postgraduate joint training programs in the 1990s as a response to the emergence of “Englishisation of university programs” trend amongst non-English-dominant countries (Tran & Nguyen, 2018, p. 97). EMI has then expanded its reach due to the enthusiastic promotion of the Vietnamese government through a number of national policies and projects (The Government of Vietnam, 2008, 2012). Currently, EMI has been adopted in a variety of internationally oriented programs in collaboration with overseas partners from Australia, the UK, the United States, and some English-as-an-lingua-franca European countries (Nguyen et al., 2017). In addition to the Joint Programs (JPs) and Advanced Programs (APs) whose curricula were entirely or partially imported from some of the top 200 universities in the world, the locally born High Quality Programs have also been developed by Vietnamese HEIs with reference to foreign curricula in an effort to internationalise the local forces.

The rapid spread of EMI proves to bring significant opportunities to universities and students themselves. Government funding, academic mobility, curriculum borrowing of recognised systems in the world, and an increase in international student enrolments are amongst various institutional gains associated with EMI implementation (Tran & Nguyen, 2018). EMI grants students access to the internationally accredited knowledge and contents through locally based education, and thus being of great interest to the Vietnamese middle-class who increasingly demand international education (Tran & Marginson, 2018). Other benefits of EMI for students include cognitive advantages, more exposure to English, and increased employment opportunities (Le, 2018; Phuong & Nguyen, 2019).

However, there is an increasing concern about the potential issues perpetuated by the switch to EMI in Vietnam. For one, EMI seems to be a label for a more expensive and higher quality program with brighter students and more qualified teachers than mainstream programs delivered in Vietnamese. This causes inequity and inequality in access and attitude towards EMI versus VMI (Vietnamese-medium-instruction) programs (Dang & Moskovsky, 2019). Despite being a “marker of distinction” (Tran & Nguyen, 2018, p. 91) in HE, EMI programs in Vietnam are reported to face the challenges of long-term quality and sustainability (Tran et al., 2018). Since the EMI programs’ tuition fees are significantly higher, around three to five times, than the regular VMI programs, which is not affordable for the mass of students, some HEIs have to lower their entry English requirements to weather a steady reduction in enrolments over the years (Tran et al., 2018). Such compromise on entry standards for the operation’s sake, in many cases, results in amplified challenges for teachers and students downstream. At the classroom level, L. Tran and H. Nguyen (2018) report that EMI creates challenges in the delivery and acquisition of disciplinary knowledge, which is best understood in students’ first language (Kirkpatrick, 2011). English proficiency is claimed to be a major difficulty for students due to inappropriate English entry examination during student recruitment process (Tran & Nguyen, 2018) or students’ multi-level language proficiency (Vu & Burns, 2014). Many teachers are puzzled at both their own English competence and EMI-focused pedagogy (Nguyen et al., 2017). Meanwhile, the lack of professional development relevant to English language and pedagogy intensifies challenges experienced by the teaching staff of EMI programs (Nguyen, 2018). Vu and Burns (2014) also report that inadequate supplies of reference materials and technologies are additional obstacles for the implementation of EMI programs.

4 Case Study

The study investigates the effectiveness of the EMI implementation in two undergraduate programs at a well-established Vietnamese university (VU). In recent years, VU has proactively responded to the Vietnamese government’s mandate to adopt EMI by establishing strong cooperative partnerships with foreign HEIs to introduce various EMI programs at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. VU leadership has effectively recognised and acted upon the opportunity to address the domestic escalating demand for internationalised programs leading to internationally recognised degrees, to achieve competitive advantage, to fulfil branding purposes to attract students, and to pursue the government’s economic and political aims (Tran & Marginson, 2018; Nguyen, 2018).

The major data source was from interviews with 10 Vietnamese academics (six females and four males) and 22 EMI students aged between 20 and 22 years old (12 females and 10 males) of VU. In selecting the academic participants, primary priority was given the opportunity to learn (Stake, 2000) and thus considerations of teachers’ availability and enthusiasm to offer rich information. The academic participants had been teaching across EMI programs for different numbers of years (from 2 to 7 years), specialising in International Economics, International Business, Accounting, Marketing, and Business Administration. Four of them were in both management and teaching positions while the other six only held teaching responsibilities. The student participants were recruited using the convenience sampling strategy and snowball sampling suggested by Patton (2015).

Of 22 student participants, 12 were from an Advanced Program (AP)—commonly regarded as a signature internationalisation initiative of the Vietnamese government—and 10 were from a Joint program in partnership with Japan (JJP)—an institutional internationalisation initiative. The study majors of students in AP and JJP programs were International Economics and International Business. The interviews with academics and students were conducted in Vietnamese, the first language of both the researchers and participants. Relevant interview extracts were translated into English during the data coding process for analysis and discussion afterwards. To protect the participants’ identity, pseudonyms were assigned to each of the participants without implication about their gender.

The interview data were coded using NVIVO 10 to identify emergent themes surrounding the use of EMI in the classrooms and its impact on teaching and learning. We first conducted line-by-line analysis to derive codes related to the practices and challenges in implementing EMI. We then compared each of these codes with all the other codes across the dataset to establish categories, including tensions between EMI policy and practice, academics’ challenges and pedagogical approaches, and students’ difficulties and overcoming strategies. In short, the data analysis was inductive, aiming to identify meaningful themes through a thorough process of engagement with the interview excerpts, constant comparison of data (Creswell, 2012), and careful interpretation of themes with reference to existing EMI literature.

5 EMI Implementation at VU: The Pitfalls

5.1 Step** Outside the Comfort Zone: Vietnamese Academics’ Language Challenges

In a non-English-dominant national context, the use of EMI is an integrated approach that uses English in the teaching and learning of non-language subjects to simultaneously develop both students’ language competency and disciplinary knowledge. As such, in order for EMI to exert its rightful impact, there need to be teachers who have disciplinary expertise and English language knowledge as well as EMI pedagogy.

Interview data with VU academics and students reveal that there remained the long-reported shortage of such well-rounded staff (Vu & Burns, 2014). According to VU’s regulations, academics teaching in EMI programs must have obtained postgraduate degrees overseas. VU’s management board envisioned that the English proficiency the academics acquired overseas would transfer smoothly into their EMI teaching. However, this was proven to be too optimistic. While the academic participants reported no considerable difficulties in getting a solid understanding of the disciplinary content they were to teach in the EMI programs, the use of EMI created major issues regardless of which EMI program they were teaching.

I believe I have a firm grasp of disciplinary knowledge because I used to be a chief accountant for eight years. Now I am teaching exactly that subject…But it is [easy] when I teach in Vietnamese. When teaching in English, I feel like struggling. (Mai, academic, Accounting)

According to Luxon and Peelo (2009), language in teaching and learning situations has a direct influence on pedagogy. This viewpoint holds true for EMI academics at VU since for some academics, EMI appeared to be “a source of anxiety” (Luxon & Peelo, 2009, p. 654), especially when they were novices in EMI teaching. Such nervousness and worry first came from the tension between having to disseminate the required amount of disciplinary content within the allotted time frame and the (in)ability to speak English fluently and concisely. Foreign language barriers perpetuating verbose and unconcise expressions could lead to a content rush as reported by a student:

Some lecturers taught very carefully, but the first one or two slides took them almost 40 minutes. That was about the end of the lesson, so they had to rush through the slides as quickly as they could. (Tú, student, AP)

Second, academics’ perception of students’ language proficiency, to some extent, could influence the “expert power” (French & Raven, 1959) of academics in a subtractive manner:

Some EMI students have very strong English competence…much stronger than their lecturers who did not receive early exposure to native English. Or there are foreign students in the class. This leads some lecturers to think that “if I can’t understand them well, it is better not to ask”. Therefore, their lectures are merely one-way communication. (Thắng, academic, Marketing)

According to this academic, the current generation of students enjoys more opportunities to learn English through abundant books and resources, cable television, and the internet. AP students in particular had to pass an institutional English exam which included an interview in English. As a result, although these students might not be competent in academic English and have rich technical vocabulary, they are likely to be competent in oral communication. Besides, many academics belong to the Vietnamese generation who studied Russian as the foreign language at school due to the supportive impact of the former Soviet Union during and beyond the Vietnam War (Pham, 2014). This, to some extent, hindered their English proficiency, particularly in terms of pronunciation. As a result, many EMI teachers who had successfully proven their rich disciplinary knowledge and effective pedagogical skills when teaching in Vietnamese were now faced with new challenges. Common issues included pronunciation, context-specific vocabulary, and expressions. While a couple of interviewed students preferred Vietnamese lecturers to some non-native foreign lecturers, e.g. those of Japanese or Indian origins visiting from partner HEIs, because of the more familiar intonation and ways of expression, the majority of the student participants considered their Vietnamese lectures’ English proficiency a major issue of concern. For example:

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of lecturers who have both good [disciplinary] knowledge and English proficiency. Our lecturers are all the top ones in the Departments with solid expertise in their field. However, the majority of them do not have sufficient English, which made it difficult for us to concentrate and comprehend the knowledge. (Tuấn, student, AP)

This finding echoes a body of research, e.g. Doiz et al. (2011), L. Tran and H. Nguyen (2018), that find the use of EMI inhibits teaching and learning in class. Phan (2019) reports that as lecturers stumbled in the encoding process, i.e. conveying content to students, students sometimes found comprehension hard, uncertain, and inaccurate. The author argues that the deviation in the decoding process, i.e. students’ unpacking of concepts, might be problematic once students’ interpretation is too far from the accurate meaning of a concept, thus interfering with the comprehension of subsequent content. Although such issue was not strongly reported by the participants at VU, the data did reveal that language barrier, coupled with the long-standing Vietnamese educational culture that suppresses students from asking questions on the spot (Tran, Marginson et al., 2014), caused comprehension uncertainty and thus potentially hindering the development of students’ human capital. While being aware of the possible snowball effect of misunderstanding, the student participants tended to delay asking questions, if at all, until after the lecture out of fear of wasting other students’ class time. Some of them refrained from asking and chose to self-study and/or learn from their peers instead.

We didn’t usually ask the lecturers… We asked each other. I myself usually asked the good students in my class, or we consolidated all the questions then one student would email the lecturers. We didn’t have the habit of going to see lecturers in their office either. (Chi, student, AP)

Thus, the challenges posed by EMI helped students become more autonomous, resourceful, self-reliant and, at the same time, being supportive team players. These personal attributes are all important elements of employability capital (Tomlinson, 2017; Tran et al., 2019).

The data showed that the adoption of EMI posed negative impacts on classroom dynamics, i.e. teacher-student interaction or communication, since it created a psychological barrier between people of the same nationality and native language. As one academic revealed,

I myself do not have difficulties because I am confident in my English. But I know quite a few lecturers who thought it was weird and unnatural to use English among Vietnamese people. (Thắng, academic, Marketing)

Since “there is hardly any small-talk between lecturers and students” (Thắng, academic, Marketing), the affective aspect of pedagogy was detrimentally impacted. This affective challenge is supported by Wilkinson (2005) who states that difficulties in using English for communication purposes prevent lecturers from using humour, telling anecdotes, making digression, and giving spontaneous examples.

Since high-calibre lecturers like those recruited in the EMI programs could be reliable referees (Tran et al., 2019) or career mentors for students, the constrained relationship between the academics and students due to language and psychological barriers could deprive students of access to such a source of wisdom and support for post-study employment.

5.2 EMI with Visiting Foreign Lecturers: Unfamiliar Accents and Academic Practices

The data from interviews with students revealed that EMI-related issues involved both Vietnamese and visiting foreign academics, not only at the superficial level of language of communication but also at a deeper level of pedagogies. In terms of communicative language, students’ experience with non-native foreignFootnote 2 lecturers’ spoken English was not always positive. While emphasising that the lecturers were knowledgeable and dedicated, the student participants reported that non-native foreign lecturers’ accents and expressions created comprehension challenges and to some extent influenced their focus and learning motivation in a negative way.

Japanese lecturers…sometimes could not express themselves clearly in English. And we students could not express ourselves clearly as well. Even though we could still comprehend the lesson, the lecturers were not able to create an interest in us to learn. (Đạt, student, JJP)

According to a participant, Vietnamese students might be more familiar with British or American English, thus finding other accents such as Japanese English or Flemish English sometimes hardly intelligible. Although the lecturers strove to speak slowly and reduced the use of unnecessary technical terms or colloquial language, which assisted students’ comprehension, the language barriers, coupled with different background and contextual knowledge, appeared to hamper classroom rapport.

Sometimes when we [students] explained, we tried to give examples but they [lecturers] did not know. Our vocabulary is not rich enough to elaborate those things [examples]. (Thu, student, AP)

Being a challenge for students, the exposure to different variants of English during their study would contribute to students’ work readiness in terms of ability to work cross-linguistically. As English has become a lingua franca and there are varieties of Englishes being currently used for communication amongst multilingual speakers from different cultures (Akkakoson, 2019; Prabjandee, 2020), it is insufficient to only understand standardised English (e.g. British and American English). Although the unfamiliar accents of foreign lecturers caused comprehension difficulties, it was, in a way, a “blessing in disguise” where students can be well-prepared for today’s English landscape and world of work.

With the involvement of foreign academics, English-native and non-native alike, EMI brought along different academic conventions and expectations which are another source of challenge for students and required much adaptation from their part. Despite recent changes in Vietnamese society towards modernisation, traditional transmission pedagogy shaped by the Confucian philosophy still dominates Vietnamese education (Tran et al., 2014) whereby students are expected to be obedient, passive recipients of knowledge rather than proactive participators in the classrooms. The long-standing habit of passive learning caused a mismatch between foreign lecturers’ expectation and practices and Vietnamese students’ behaviours as reported by the EMI student participants in this study.

Foreign lecturers required students’ participation…They wanted us to ask questions, which was challenging for us. (Duy, student, AP)

We have got so used to passive learning. Some of my friends are from Amsterdam high schoolFootnote 3 or international schools, so they are a bit different. Regional students like us all study [passively] like that. Therefore, the way foreign lecturers teach is the biggest barrier to me. (Hải, student, JJP)

According to the students, the different academic conventions associated with the foreign language, particularly in writing, required much adaption from their part. While Vietnamese students tended to beat around the bush and sometimes use vague languages, American lecturers valued concrete ideas and conciseness (Thu, student, AP). Also, different pedagogies entailed different approaches to knowledge content.

I think foreign lecturers usually focus on the nature of the problems, why are they the way they are, where are they from…They [lecturers] focus on discussing and explaining phenomena. This is very different from our learning habit over the entire 12 years of schooling. (Chi, student, AP)

Again, while being a source of challenges, exposure to different ways of thinking and doing would potentially contribute to the development of personal adaptability, with which graduates are likely to have a higher chance of employment and advance their career (Tran et al., 2019).

6 Mindful of Students’ Learning Needs: Pedagogical Strategies in EMI Classrooms

Besides a sufficient level of English proficiency, what requires of an EMI teacher is the ability to find alternative ways of disseminating academic content to students for whom English was also a foreign language. As some academic participants in the study remarked, EMI teaching was not simply a matter of translating course material and slides from Vietnamese to English. The adoption of EMI goes far beyond a switch in language of communication to call for alternative and/or additional pedagogical skills that are not necessarily familiar to all EMI teachers.

Learning in a foreign language could be challenging even for English competent students since understanding terminologies, abstract concepts, and theories requires more advanced language ability (Jon & Kim, 2011). As an academic observed, about 20% of the students still faced language barriers. Being mindful of the language challenges, many of the academic participants exerted considerable amount of effort to provide assistance to students’ learning of disciplinary content. A number of strategies were employed, including supporting students’ English needs, spending extra time on obscure contents, demonstrating theory with practice tasks, and guided home-reading to support content learning.

One way is having extra-tutorials to help students with English knowledge and skills. Another way is re-explaining in Vietnamese if students do not understand. This can be done in the breaks or briefly during class-time. (Liên, academic, International Business)

…giving them practice tasks. I usually told my students ‘the more you practice, the better you understand’. When students do a lot of practice tasks, they get to understand difficult content. (Mai, academic, Accounting)

With every home-reading I assigned them, I gave them guidelines and instructions on how to read and what they should take away from those readings. (Giao, academic, International Economics)

These lecturers’ pedagogy was guided by the learners’ needs. Giao, for example, being mindful of her students’ English proficiency, was able to support them in develo** disciplinary reading skills and simultaneously delving into specialist topics. Another academic chose to “take the role of a listener” and gave students discussion questions through which he could figure out how students understood the home-reading materials as well as where they needed additional support.

… I try to listen to see how they understand the topics; my approach to teaching is listening more than speaking…I only explain the new content or what students misunderstand. Basically, I only relate what they believe with the theory and the theory with reality. (Thắng, academic, Marketing)

While some academics, as mentioned earlier, resorted to one-way lecturing to ensure complete delivery of the content that was deemed important, others, like Thắng, insisted on their role as instructors rather than knowledge transmitters and on the cruciality of interaction for students’ understanding. In many cases, classroom activities were purposefully “customised” to suit students’ language competence.

I use the same syllabus for all programs [both VMI and EMI programs] because I do not want knowledge gaps between programs. However, it [learning activities] needs a bit of customising. For VMI students, I focus on in-class debates and presentations because they use the native language. However, I require EMI students to do more case study analysis and projects. (Minh, academic, International Economics)

As this academic elaborated, apart from the fact that representative cases written in English (which cannot be used for VMI classes without translation) are relatively more available, case study analysis and projects are lengthier activities that allow EMI students to work at their personal pace and English competence level and to have more time to arrange their ideas into words.

By employing the above strategies to assist students with lower English proficiency, the academics simultaneously demonstrated dual identities, one of subject-matter teachers and one of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. They would need to take into consideration how the language of instruction could hinder comprehension so as to flexibly modify the input and interaction in class. As Liên mentioned in the interview excerpt above, she adapted her instructional techniques through code-switching (English and Vietnamese) to assure students’ comprehension. Liên’s rationale for the switch of language was the clear objective she set for teaching, i.e. disciplinary knowledge being prioritised over students’ language development. According to her, enhancing students’ English proficiency might be an implicit intention of the university's executives when introducing EMI but was not explicitly stated in policies, and thus not the priority of subject-matter academics.

The technique of employing L1 (mother language) to explain difficult concepts in English is not uncommon in EMI contexts. Galloway et al. (2017) even consider using the students’ mother tongue in EMI classrooms as useful pedagogical tools. In practice, the technique received split opinions from the students. On the one hand, the student participants acknowledged the shared native language as an advantage that Vietnamese academics could resort to when facing comprehension difficulties. On the other hand, they considered it as “a loss of EMI programs’ spirit” (Quân, student, AP) and insisted on the cruciality of using English entirely in EMI classrooms.

If this is an EMI program, EMI must be taken utmost seriously so that when students graduate, they can meet the global standards, at least in terms of English. (Quang, student, JJP)

Despite the controversy around the use of L1 in EMI classrooms, the above pedagogical strategies appeared to effectively support, scaffold and enhance students’ learning, and thus contributing to the development of students’ human capitals. These scaffolding strategies require considerations regarding contextual factors (e.g. student population, types of program, policies), student factors (e.g. English proficiency, prior experience), language factors (e.g. linguistic knowledge), and educational goals (e.g. language or subject-matter priority) (Huang, 2011). Pawan (2008) considers scaffolding an important component of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. This holds true even more for EMI teachers who need more than generic pedagogy, i.e. pedagogy without language barriers coming into play.

7 EMI Implementation at VU: The Silver Linings

Despite the aforementioned pitfalls, the study identified some success stories told from the students’ perspective. In terms of English competency, many students acknowledged that learning in English day-in and day-out contributed to the elevation of both their receptive and productive skills. For example:

The positive impact [of EMI] is that I am now very comfortable with English materials. And communicating with foreigners has become much easier. (Thu, student, AP)

My English has improved very much. In the first year I could only read and listen in English; my speaking and writing were quite weak. But after four years, my reading, speaking and writing have been lifted to another level… Also, I no longer find thinking in English hard. (Chi, student, AP)

The “beyond-expectation improvement” (Tú, student, AP) was attributed to various EMI-related aspects of their study programs, including the presence of foreign lecturers, the extensive exposure to English in class, reading a great number of English materials, and most importantly, the critical role of English in comprehending curricular content. Being placed in the cumbersome circumstances where they were compelled to improve their English to cope, the students reported to strive hard in their own time to overcome the EMI-related difficulties. Their purposeful strategies included reading English newspapers, watching English movies with English subtitles, or joining a student-run organisation providing free city tours for English-speaking travellers. These co** strategies were found to enrich the students’ English over their course of study. While this EMI’s success story came with the caveat being that students’ personal agency greatly came into play, it was the extensive immersion in English throughout the EMI programs that, directly or indirectly, paved the way for students’ development of English competency. In the heightened agenda of international integration in Vietnam, English proficiency proves to be an essential graduate capital. As Doan and Hamid (2019) have found through the analysis of job advertisements, a high level of English proficiency is in growing demand in the Vietnamese labour market in recent years, being a prescribed attribute sought after by employers despite the variation of demands across job sectors.

In terms of disciplinary knowledge, the student participants subscribed to the idea that once they had overcome the comprehension issues, they could understand the technical terms more accurately in English than their Vietnamese equivalents that are, more often than not, obscure or ambiguous. Having both Vietnamese and foreign lecturers was considered a tremendous advantage:

Learning with the Vietnamese lecturers, I feel very relatable. The knowledge they provided can be well applied in the context of my country. (Thu, student, AP).

The foreign lecturers’ knowledge is extensive… so extensive that they can make students very interested… I was once taught by a Belgian lecturer... His knowledge is immense; he knows all the economies in the world… I think the foreign lecturers could analyse case studies at a high standard. (Bình, student, AP)

The academics teaching in the EMI programs under study are high-profile experts in their fields. A study by N. Tran et al. (2019) on the contribution of advanced programs to the development of students’ employability finds that the up-to-date knowledge, skills, and authentic experience the lecturers brought into the programs greatly contributed to the students’ occupationally specialised knowledge. This resonates with the experience of the EMI students at VU. As the student participants recalled, they had gained valuable disciplinary knowledge and comparative insights on Vietnam and other economies throughout their course from both Vietnamese and foreign lecturers. For example:

The foreign lecturers have been to many countries in the world... They have rich reservoir of knowledge and hence interesting lectures…. They usually incorporated many interesting cases from different countries, different cultures and different types of business… And the Vietnamese lecturers, many of them had their degrees from overseas. If they studied in the UK before, they would compare Vietnam and the UK. (Duy, student, AP)

The students’ remarks on their lecturers’ willingness to share their authentic experience echoed what researchers have found about the correlation between overseas study and quality of teaching and career advancement. Teacher returning from overseas tend to have a greater understanding of their host countries’ academic norms, read more in foreign languages, and have a greater willingness to circulate their knowledge (see Cushner, 2007). In other words, EMI has granted students access to high-calibre sources of specialist knowledge as well as international, intercultural exposures, which is a privilege that their VMI counterparts do not necessarily have.

Becker (1993) and Tomlinson (2017) define occupationally specialised knowledge and skills acquired through the pursuit of formal education as human capital. As such, students in EMI programs have more chances to enrich their human capital from multicultural perspectives which is one of the core graduate capitals needed for future employment. Nonetheless, it is important to note that possessing disciplinary knowledge alone does not ensure graduate employability. As Barrie (2006) identifies, abilities to apply or translate disciplinary knowledge, and skills that complement disciplinary knowledge cannot be missing in graduate attribute clusters.

8 Conclusion and Implication

Examining the EMI provision in two undergraduate programs at a Vietnamese university, this chapter revealed a range of practices and challenges at the teaching and learning level that impacted EMI students’ employability in both positive and negative ways. Regarded as a lever to achieve institutional and national development goals with educational quality enhancement being a prime focus to meet the demands of the labour market, the introduction of EMI in reality represents a real challenge for academics even in the disciplinary area that has very much been their own backyard. The change in instruction language deprived many academics of clear articulation of expertise and took them out of their comfort zone, which resulted in transmission issues, content rush, lack of in-class interaction, and in some cases lowered teaching quality. For students, the main sources of difficulties involved comprehending spoken English by non-native English-speaking academics, from VU and partner institutions alike, and navigating the foreign instructors’ EMI pedagogies which are somewhat contrastive to their long-standing habit of being passive recipients of knowledge. Consequently, the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge and the student–teacher relationships were challenged and inhibited, thus constraining the development of human capital and social capital that could otherwise be further capitalised on in EMI programs.

From the perspective of teaching, the impact of EMI was clearly evident in that it required pedagogical alterations and brought about opportunities for academics to be mindful of their students and to be creative in their ways of teaching. A proportion of Vietnamese academics were capable of appropriating classroom pedagogies such as flexible code-switching, scaffolding through provision of additional guided reading, extending support beyond class time, and “customised” learning activities according to students’ English capacity and needs. In so doing, the academics demonstrated dual identities as a subject teacher and an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher, which was found to constructively assist students’ learning and their human capital development. That being said, navigating the EMI space was very much subject to individual academic’s agency, and thus risking consistent learning experience and teaching quality across the classes and subjects. Also, even though some academics were willing to sacrifice their own time, i.e. after class or during breaks, to support their students, the question remains how much support is efficient within the constraints of their other commitments, the students’ and their own English capacity as well as students’ expectations and needs.

A prerequisite for EMI to have a rightful impact, perhaps, is sufficient space for academic autonomy. For example, putting aside the controversies around whether the EMI policy should be strictly adhered to, the academics’ code-switching strategy appeared to be practical and effective in addressing the distinctive comprehension issue, accommodating students with insufficient English, and resolving the tension between achieving the expected disciplinary learning outcomes and the reality of EMI teaching. This was achievable thanks to the freedom VU academics were provided to be flexible in their teaching. One may effectively argue that the frequent use of first language would potentially risk students’ language development and blur out the purpose of the National Language Project 2020 of develo** students’ ELP through the implementation of EMI (The Government Of Vietnam, 2008). However, with a shortage of linguistically competent subject-matter teachers, there is no guarantee that such developmental goal will be achievable even when the English-only rule is strictly applied, which was evident in the above-reported comprehension issues. From the academics’ and students’ EMI experiences reported thus far, it is arguably unviable to create English-only silos within the larger non-English institutional/national context without sufficient linguistic, pedagogical, and cultural support for both teachers and students.

From the perspective of learning, EMI brought along opportunities of knowledge enrichment, in foreign language and professional knowledge alike, and more precise understanding of terminologies, all of which are of great values in enhancing EMI students’ competitiveness and their potential to secure employment opportunities. These gains were accompanied by students’ development of comparative understandings about Vietnam and other countries with regard to economic and cultural aspects, as well as adaptability in response to different ways of thinking and doing. Such knowledge and skills are critical elements of intercultural competence that more and more employers seek after nowadays (Rawal & Deardorff, 2021). If a purpose of universities is to prepare students for the uneven playing field of the labour market, EMI graduates are indeed armed with advantages in foreign language and international, intercultural knowledge to secure quality jobs and advance their career in the country or abroad. The EMI-related problems, though quite acute and intense in the early years, were mitigated over time from the first to the final year with students’ constant efforts and investment in their study. Their substantial effort in designing their learning pathway, or need-response agency (Tran & Vu, 2017), in conjunction with academics’ agency may contribute to the development of personal dispositions such as resilience and proactiveness that are essential to their employability and future professional success.

The findings have implications for institutional policy and practice. J. Tran (2012) indicates that enhancing graduate employability is considered as an important mission as well as a desire of the Vietnamese HE system, particularly in the era of industrialisation and modernisation of the country. Given such aspiration, the development of graduate capabilities and attributes through internationalisation of the curriculum requires more attention and investment in improving the quality, effectiveness, and sustainability of EMI programs. The need for adequate institutional investment in change was strongly evidenced through the difficulties and tensions experienced by academics and students in our study. As mentioned earlier, what distinguishes EMI teaching and VMI teaching is the requirement for alternative and/or additional pedagogical skills. The study findings showed that such pedagogies involved a multitude of linguistic, conceptual, and academic scaffolding skills that tackle the distinctive issues arising from the change of instruction language. The certain level of anxiety and stress that some academics reported indicates that EMI academics are not necessarily equipped with the integrated knowledge and pedagogy that enable them to confidently and effectively navigate the EMI space. As Phan et al. (2018) argue, academics’ and students’ agency cannot be fully capitalised on without active institutional agency.

As found in this study, an encapsulated community of EMI students speaking only English, an expected ideal environment for English language development, was unlikely constructed within a non-English institutional/national context without sufficient instructional support for both teachers and students in all linguistic, pedagogical/academic, and cultural aspects. Professional development initiatives with regards to English proficiency and EMI pedagogies, therefore, would be much needed. By this, we would like to take the arguments in the literature about the need for language and pedagogical support for EMI teachers (Nguyen et al., 2017) further to include learning skills and academic support for students. Formal university- or faculty-led professional development sessions, along with professional learning community of both Vietnamese and foreign teachers to share best EMI practices would significantly ease the tension facing EMI teaching staff. Recognition schemes would ideally incentivise and reward EMI champions who work overtime providing personal support to students. At the same time, students would be better prepared for their course if they were given orientations early in the course about learning skills, academic conventions, and expectations on learning outcomes. Institutions could also provide academic English courses for needing students to meet course requirements, which, in turn, relieves the burden for class teachers. As the impact of EMI is at personal, professional, and institutional levels, the success of EMI is very much dependent on the commitment of different stakeholders from both the policy/management level and the grassroots level of teaching and learning.