English Medium Instruction in Higher Education: Does It Promote Cultural Correction or Cultural Continuity?

This study investigates English medium instruction (EMI) in an institution of higher education in Seoul, Korea to see whether this course creates cultural correction (reproduction of inequitable relations of power in EMI settings) or cultural continuity (opportunities for transporting students into a third space and enabling them to explore cultural diversity and to create new knowledge for themselves). A single site where EMI is carried out, a class on fairy tales and child education taught by a native English speaking professor, was chosen because it was hypothesized that the professor would display some of her unconscious dominant cultural orientation. The results of the study show that there more cases of cultural correction than there were of cultural continuity. Cases of cultural correction included lack of knowledge about the local context, fixing Korean classroom discourse as if it were American classroom discourse, and reproducing orientalism in the local educational setting. Cases of cultural continuity included using comparison to consider the cultural reality of the milieu, creating new knowledge for the local milieu, and learning as a dynamic ongoing process. Implications of this research are discussed including the important realization that EMI should be managed by subject specialists who are trained in language education and have knowledge of the students' needs and discourse in the L1 and in the local context.