Tag: school

By the age of 14, I decided that with the help of my parents I wanted to continue my academic education at the International School of Neuss, Germany. It represented a new challenge in my life but an interesting one because even as a young teenager I was very eager to discover new way of teaching that would help me in my youth goal to one day work and live in the United States of America. Full of ambitions, I took English language tutoring, which I needed as the subjects in the International School were completely taught in English. However, switching to an American educational system meant for me to repeat a year, as discussed with the school principle and my parents because I lacked in mathematical skills, that were far more advanced than in the German state school I attended. In the first two months at the new school, I immediately felt the difficulties of being taught in a foreign language as I often misunderstood the teachers and could only manage to do the homework with huge effort. This situation changed because of the excellent way of teaching English to mainly German students, and after one year I found myself on a fluent C1 level. From there on, I would not have any difficulties with the English language and at home even watched movies and read books in English, all the time. Therefore it was no question to me, whether I should attend a Univerity with english as the Lingua Franca.

What seemed surprising to me was, that it only took me a short amount of time to assimilate to my new environment, especially because I used to be very shy in my childhood. As already mentioned, I developed English skills in record time and was able to undergo detailed academic research and related work in English. Even more surprising was that I did not even think in German anymore. The English language was everywhere and had such an impact in my life, that I did not even act ‘German’ at all. I became so different from the people that lived in my small town, who were truly ‘German’, I had many international friends in school and when we went out together, talking English, I could see how people passing by viewed me as a kind of stranger because even though there are many minority languages spoken in my town, mostly by Muslim immigrants, English was still seen as something extraordinarily weird. This was in fact not surprising, but rather shocking.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that I would change if I could be in charge of deciding on EMI, I can only speak for my own experience at school and university though. At University I would like to see more English tutoring to help non-native English speakers to catch up faster to a professional level. There seem to be a lot of drop-outs who feel that their English capabilities were not sufficient and who found no help. This is indeed sad, as every student should have equal chances to undergo the studies and graduate. Therefore the University should invest more time and perhaps funding in English language courses that can also be offered to students who could otherwise not afford to pay for extracurricular courses. Moreover, tutors should be offered training programms which prepare them to deal better with the amount of international students and teaches them skills and tricks to communicate in a more native way, which can prevent a lot of misunderstandings among tutors and students. Tutors are seen as a kind of role-model and someone who is a true professional at what he or she teaches. It would be nice if he or she could then communicate his teachings in a way that is understandable to all. Of course this is not to generalize all staff at the University, but would be very beneficial for those who lack these skills.

Whatever the crtics might say about it, English Medium Instruction is in my eyes still one of the most effective ways to teach and educate a new generation of humans that need to adapt to an ever more globalizing world. The direction that it is taking us is forward into a future in which all societies need to be able to communicate and understand each other.