English-Medium Instruction for the B&R students: A Blessing for the Internationalization of China’s Higher Education?

Abstract

Internationalization of higher education has grown into a global tendency in recent years, with English playing an ever-increasingly important role in it. In their effort to internationalize, more and more universities in non-Anglophone countries throughout the world are employing English-medium instruction (EMI) for subject teaching, while Chinese universities on the whole are still lagging behind. The current large-scale enrolment of the B&R students might provide a valuable opportunity and driving force for Chinese universities to jump on the EMI bandwagon and thus help promote the internationalization of China’s higher education, but the crux of the matter for Chinese universities is to seize this opportunity and take serious actions. This paper makes an in-depth discussion about these issues and then puts forward a number of corresponding countermeasures. Keywords—Internationalization of higher education; Englishmedium instruction (EMI); B&R students; Chinese university