Enhancing equity in South Korean EMI higher education through translanguaging

Abstract

This paper argues that to foster more equity in a South Korean Higher Education English Medium Instruction (EMI) learning environment, future policies should embrace a translanguaging medium of instruction. First, the paper provides an overview of current South Korean EMI challenges and then by drawing on data of a larger study presents examples of translanguaging practices used to offset these challenges. The study explored ten South Korean University students’ perceptions of how translanguaging affects access to subject content in their EMI experiences. The findings point to the presence of affordances in the L1 or L2 system in certain EMI situations, which may constrain students’ learning. This is because a translanguaging competence is not an overt part of current EMI policy which may prevent students from capitalising on opportunities. This paper further argues that translanguaging should be viewed as a viable, equitable, socially just medium of instruction to overcome these constraints. Recommendations are made for how students can be given the opportunity to be involved in critiquing and changing the social structures in which they learn, to co-imagine a socially just translanguaging future. The paper concludes by further arguing that the native speaker monolingual ideology needs to be challenged in EMI policy.