Use of English Medium Instruction in Higher Education in Nonnative English-Speaking Countries: Based on EMI Programmes at Government Universities of Japan and Sri Lanka

Abstract

English as an international language has become the most important Language Medium of Education (LME) to disseminate knowledge, especially among Nonnative English-Speaking Countries (NESC) in the higher education sector, to create a Global Market for Education around the world, with the development of sciences and information technologies. These countries are forced to introduce a new higher education policy to shift the Native Language Medium Instruction (NLMI) policy to use English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education fields. The aim of this research is to review the nature of EMI in higher education policies introduced by Japan and Sri Lanka as NESCs with regard to this issue. The research problem is why NESCs shift the education medium to EMI. The data was gathered through observations, discussions, official documents and statistics servers. After independence, Sri Lanka shifted the EMI to the native languages as the LME in 1956 except for the medical college. Three decades later, government universities rapidly introduced the EMI degree programme again, to the science faculty based on the 13th amendment to the constitution, whereas the other faculties too are bigging to sift their NLMI to EMI, aiming to the local and international job market. Japan has been using NLMI in government universities at the beginning. In 1980, the government introduced an EMI degree programme for students from developing countries who studied in Japanese. Again in 2001 and 2008, the Ministry of Education issued a policy to introduce EMI in order to connect Japan with the rest of the world to share knowledge in different fields of education. As a result, the number of EMI degree programmes has rapidly increased. The findings of the research reveal that developing NESCs plan to produce graduators for the job market and the developed NESCs plan to share their knowledge locally and internationally. However, EMI is currently still in a marginal stage in the faculties of social sciences and humanities in both countries.