Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023 : Teaching with Technology in English-Medium Instruction Universities in Multilingual China 9783031328107, 9783031328114

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Multilingual Education Yearbook

John Corbett Edith M. Y. Yan Jackie Yeoh Juyoung Lee   Editors

Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023 Teaching with Technology in English-Medium Instruction Universities in Multilingual China

Multilingual Education Yearbook Series Editor Indika Liyanage, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China Advisory Editors Bob Adamson, Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong Suresh Canagarajah, Department of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Andy Kirkpatrick, Department of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia Parlo Singh, Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, Mt. Gravatt Campus, Mount Gravatt, QLD, Australia

The Multilingual Education Yearbook publishes high-quality empirical research on education in multilingual societies. It publishes research findings that in addition to providing descriptions of language learning, development and use in language contact and multilingual contexts, will shape language education policy and practices in multilingual societies. The Multilingual Education Yearbook is highly relevant to researchers in language and education, language education professionals, and policy makers, covering topics such as: * The effects of multilingual education and literacy education on the maintenance and development of multilingualism. * The effects of the introduction of English as a curriculum subject and/or medium of instruction upon multilingual and literacy education. * The respective role(s) of vernaculars and ‘local’ languages, national languages and English in education, especially where the languages are of different language families, and scripts are different or languages lack an orthography. * The role in multilingual education of other major languages such as Arabic, French, Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish. * The effects of multilingual and/or English language education on school drop out and retention rates. * The effects of the ‘internationalization’ of universities worldwide, potential privileging of the English language and of knowledge published in English. * Bilingual/multilingual acquisition of non-cognate and ‘different-script’ languages. * Takeholder attitudes toward notions of multilingualism and related notions of linguistic proficiency, standards, models and varieties. * Critical evaluations of language policy and its implementation.

John Corbett  •  Edith M. Y. Yan Jackie Yeoh • Juyoung Lee Editors

Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023 Teaching with Technology in English-­Medium Instruction Universities in Multilingual China

Editors John Corbett Department of Languages and Cultures BNU-HKBU United International College Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

Edith M. Y. Yan Department of Languages and Cultures BNU-HKBU United International College Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

Jackie Yeoh Department of Languages and Cultures BNU-HKBU United International College Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

Juyoung Lee Department of Languages and Cultures BNU-HKB United International College Zhuhai, Guangdong, China

ISSN 2522-5421     ISSN 2522-543X (electronic) Multilingual Education Yearbook ISBN 978-3-031-32810-7    ISBN 978-3-031-32811-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32811-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The editors acknowledge with gratitude the generous contributions of those who have made this collection possible, particularly all the students who consented to be part of the case studies, and our colleagues, who offered unstinting support. Special thanks go to Andy Jiahao Liu, who, with unfailing efficiency, oversaw the administration of the volume, contacted authors, and kept us all on track. We benefited enormously from the guidance and advice afforded us by Professor Indika Liyanage, whose encouragement has been crucial at all stages of the project. Our families, as usual, suffered our absences and distraction with patience, good humour, and grace; our greatest debt is to them.

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Contents

Technology and English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education Institutions in Multilingual China������������������������������    1 Edith M. Y. Yan, Jackie Yeoh, Juyoung Lee, and John Corbett Simplifying Texts for Easier Comprehension in an Introductory Computer Science Course: An Evaluation of Rewordify������������������������������    9 Alice Shu-Ju Lee, Janet Beth Randall, and Miguel Gomes da Costa Junior Using Technology for English-Medium Instruction: The Use of Livestreaming in the Marketing Classroom������������������������������   23 Angela Kit Fong Ma Technological Approaches to Student Participation while Studying the History of Psychology in an EMI Institution��������������������������   49 Malila C. A. Prado and Thomas J. Huggins Implementing Collaborative Technology to Facilitate Undergraduate TESOL Trainees’ Collaborative Writing in an EMI Institution������������������������������������������������������������������������   71 Juyoung Lee Using Online Peer Assessment Activities to Foster Student-Centred Learning in Two Undergraduate EMI Courses��������������   95 Edith M. Y. Yan Improving Listening and Autonomous Learning Among Multilingual Students with a Digital Learning Tool: An EMI Teacher-Training Course in TESOL ����������������������������������������������  123 Jackie Yeoh

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The Implementation of Technology in Supporting English-Medium Instruction in Multilingual University Settings: A Case Study of Economics ������������������������������������������������������������  141 Fiona Xiaofei Tang, Tianhao Zhi, and Xuenan Huo Applying Software-Engineering Thinking to Teaching in EMI Sino-Foreign Higher Education��������������������������������������������������������  159 Matthew Pike, Boon-Giin Lee, and Dave Towey  Using Digital Pedagogy to Redefine Design Education��������������������������������  171 Amarpreet Gill, Derek Irwin, Dave Towey, and Yanhui Zhang Using a Moodle-Based Digital Escape Room to Train Competent EMI Lecturers and Instructors in a Multilingual Environment ����������������  191 Na Li and Xiaojun Zhang ‘On the Same Page’ with Perusall – Using a Social e-Reader to Engage Chinese Undergraduates with Literature in English������������������  213 Thomas Kaufmann Technology, Hybrid Identities, and the Art and Craft of Song-Writing in English������������������������������������������������������������������������������  231 Fernando Martin Pastor and John Corbett Prospects for the Integration of Technology in English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education��������������������������������������������������������������������  249 Edith M. Y. Yan, Jackie Yeoh, Juyoung Lee, and John Corbett

About the Authors and Editors

John  Corbett is a Professor of English and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, BNU-HKBU United International College, China. He has published widely on intercultural language education, corpus linguistics, stylistics, and the languages and literatures of Scotland.  

Miguel Gomes da Costa Junior is currently a Senior Instructor at the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau. His research interests include information and communications technology in education and active learning methodologies. He is an advisor for the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement.  

Amarpreet  Gill is currently a Design Studio Tutor, and Ph.D. candidate, at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His primary area of interest is in technology-enhanced education and its practical implementation in Design and Engineering education. He is a Fellow of the HEA, and a member of IEEE, IED, and IET.  

Thomas J. Huggins has a background in teaching and researching applied psychology in New Zealand, Mexico, and China. Much of his work has focused on disaster management, and on decision-making for challenging scenarios. Dr. Huggins is currently the Director of Psychology at the University of Monterrey in Mexico.  

Xuenan  Huo is currently a PhD student in Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong. Her main research interests lie in the interdisciplinary area of education and information systems. She is interested in AI in education, Edu-metaverse, and virtual classrooms.  

Derek Irwin is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience (Humanities and Social Sciences), and Director of the Language and Pedagogy Laboratory at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He researches in the field of systemic functional linguistics and is a fellow of the HEA.  

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About the Authors and Editors

Thomas  Kaufmann has worked full-time in Sino-American partnership programmes since 2016 both onsite and online. Currently, he teaches English Composition classes at Wenzhou-Kean University and scaffolds learning with digital tools like Perusall.  

Alice  Shu-Ju  Lee is a Senior Instructor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, where she teaches English for Academic Purposes. Alice earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Composition and TESOL). Her research interests include writing identities and educational technology.  

Boon  Giin  Lee is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). His main research interests lie in humancomputer interactions, educational technology, and their intersections. He is a Fellow of the HEA and a senior member of the IEEE.  

Juyoung Lee is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature Studies at BNU-HKBU United International College. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics and TESOL from the University of Texas at Arlington, USA. Her research interests include second language acquisition, technology use in higher education, computerassisted language learning, and ESL/EFL teacher education.  

Na Li is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Studies, Academy of Future Education,  Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Her main research interests lie in digital education (e.g., AI, XR, game-based learning), institutional change and cultural differences in higher education, and their intersections.  

Angela  Kit  Fong  Ma is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Management, BNU-HKBU United International College. Her main research interests lie in the areas of Technology and Education, Marketing Management, Business Research, and Management.  

Fernando  Martin  Pastor is an Assistant Professor at the School of Culture and Creativity, BNU-­HKBU United International College. He was formerly a Fulbright Fellow in Music and studied at the University of Washington, University of California, and Tanglewood. He also received the AHRB fellowship and studied at King's College London and at the IRCAM Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has published articles on Stravinsky and Minimalism.  

Matthew Pike is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). His main research interests include humancomputer interaction, human factors, and technology-enhanced education. He is a Fellow of the HEA and a member of the IEEE.  

About the Authors and Editors

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Malila  C.  A.  Prado is an Assistant Professor of English at BNU-HKBU United International College, a Sino-foreign university in China. She has been involved with language teaching for over 20 years. She holds a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Department of Modern Languages, University of São Paulo in Brazil.  

Janet  Beth  Randall is a Virtual English Educator working currently on an academic writing project with the University of Brasilia. She taught previously in Macau, Japan, and the USA Her research interests include the pedagogical and real-world applications of corpus tools and curriculum development.  

Fiona Xiaofei Tang is a Lecturer in Communication Skills and Unit Coordinator in the Programme of Commerce at Curtin University, Australia. She obtained her Ph.D. in Linguistics and won a visiting research fellowship from the Australian National University. Her research publications focus on technology-enhanced language teaching, textbook evaluation, professional development for teachers, and TESOL.  

Dave  Towey is a full Professor and Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience (Science and Engineering) at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). His research interests include technology-enhanced education and software testing. He is a Fellow of the HEA, a senior member of the IEEE, and a member of the ACM.  

Edith  M.  Y.  Yan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures, BNU-­HKBU United International College. She has over 16 years of experience teaching content subjects at EMI universities in Zhuhai and Hong Kong. Her research explores teaching with technology, teacher professional development, and first language use in language teaching.  

Jackie Yeoh is an Assistant Professor at BNU-HKBU United International College, China. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her areas of research interest include English for Specific Purposes, pragmatics, workplace discourse, materials designs, and teaching with technology in TESOL training.  

Xiaojun Zhang is currently the Executive Dean of the Academy of Future Education and Acting Dean of the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Hub in the Entrepreneur College (Taicang) at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. His main research interests lie in institutional change, the role of leadership in institutional change, and internationalisation in the higher education context.  

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About the Authors and Editors

Yanhui Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). Her research involves understanding how the integration of technology fosters robust language learning in curriculum and instruction, and how such an understanding is enhanced by emerging interdisciplinary approaches and advanced data analysis tools.  

Tianhao Zhi is an Assistant Professor of Financial Mathematics at BNU-HKBU United International College. He received his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. His main research interests lie in behavioural finance, the valuation of intellectual property assets, and green finance.  

Technology and English-Medium Instruction in Higher Education Institutions in Multilingual China Edith M. Y. Yan, Jackie Yeoh, Juyoung Lee, and John Corbett

Abstract  This chapter introduces and contextualises twelve case studies, collected in the volume Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023: Teaching with Technology in English-Medium Instruction Universities in Multilingual China (Corbett et  al., 2023). The case studies describe and discuss the use of technology to support EMI in universities in China and Macao. The chapter explains the educational context, namely, higher education in multilingual China, the growth of Sino-foreign educational institutions in China, and the development of an EMI institution, the University of Macau, in Macao. The introduction previews emerging themes with respect to technological and curricular innovations in these contexts. Keywords  English-medium instruction (EMI) · Chinese higher education · Educational technology

1 Introduction This volume presents a number of pedagogical case studies that address the diverse roles that technology plays in supporting English-medium Instruction (EMI) programmes at Higher Education institutions in China. The case studies are predominantly from Sino-foreign universities in Mainland China, plus one study from the University of Macau. All the institutions concerned have English as their stated working language, though faculty and students come from different language backgrounds. The volume is timely for a number of reasons. The universities discussed here are not only part of a blossoming of higher education in China, they also contribute to the global surge in the delivery, in non-anglophone regions, of tertiary education through the medium of English. The issues raised here, though they have E. M. Y. Yan · J. Yeoh · J. Lee · J. Corbett (*) Department of Languages and Cultures, BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Corbett et al. (eds.), Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023, Multilingual Education Yearbook, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32811-4_1

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local inflections, will resonate with university instructors worldwide. Moreover, as we write, the university sector globally, like other forms of education provision, is recovering from the shock of reconfiguring its modes of delivery following the restrictions in social gathering caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is wellattested that the protective measures taken to reduce infection amongst the global population at the height of the crisis led to an accelerated adoption of technology, often by instructors who hitherto had only used it infrequently. Students and instructors were compelled to rethink their uses of technology to sustain the delivery of university programmes during the pandemic. Now, as lockdowns and social distancing measures pass into history, university managers, faculty and learners can begin to reflect on the novel uses of technology that have emerged, their affordances and limitations, and the ways in which different forms of technology can support the learning of disciplinary content and skills in EMI settings. The legacy of the pandemic years is in part evident in a greater awareness amongst students and faculty of the existence of diverse forms of technological support and how to use it. As we go to press, the sudden, disruptive impact of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT is also being felt across academia, globally. Generative AI promises, or threatens, to change the nature of teaching and learning in EMI institutions worldwide, in ways only vaguely understood in these early days. What can be said, with certainty, is that technology is now an integral part of teaching and learning in higher education. This volume seeks to contribute to our critical understanding of the application of technology to support EMI courses, and the consequent dissemination of good practice.

2 Higher Education in Multilingual China The institutions that provide the case studies here are largely part of a boom in Higher Education in China that has taken place since the 1950s (Gu et al., 2018; Zhong et al., 2019). A series of national policy initiatives has seen a proliferation of universities with aspirations to being considered world-class institutions of higher learning. Zhong et al. (2019, p.10, 13–14) calculate that there are 2631 universities and vocational colleges in China, the result of two major phases of construction: 1979–1985 and 1999-present. Consequently, student enrolment in the tertiary education sector grew from 2.3 million in 1978 to 37.8 million in 2017. The majority of universities is publicly-funded, with a smaller commercial sector. Among the smaller private institutions (which amounted to 19% of the sector in 2017, according to MOE, 2018), are joint EMI ventures between mainland Chinese and overseas universities, described more fully below. In China, the linguistic ecosystem is complex. As Liyanage and Walker (2019, p.7) observe There are 275 indigenous languages in use in China (Simons & Fennig, 2018). China’s national and official language, Mandarin (Putonghua), is the designated MOI in education, but functions for many, and far from all, as a lingua franca. More than 50 ethnic minorities

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are recognized, as are the languages they use, most linguistically distinct from Mandarin. Some, such as Tibetan, Korean and Mongolian, are designated official languages in autonomous regions.

In EMI institutions in China, then, there are effectively two lingua francas, English being the medium of instruction (MOI) while Mandarin/Putonghua is commonly used outside the classroom by students and Chinese faculty who may or may not have it as their first or best language. Moreover, international staff recruited by the Chinese EMIs may or may not have English as their first and best language. For example, the four editors of this volume, who work in an EMI institution in Zhuhai, in Guangdong Province, have as their first and best languages English, Cantonese, Malay, and Korean, respectively. In plurilingual settings, then, there are numerous challenges in delivering courses and programmes in what may be the second or third language in the repertoire of instructor and students. Technology can offer support in addressing these challenges.

3 The Rise of Global EMI The introduction of EMI institutions and programmes in Chinese Higher Education follows a global trend that has been much discussed. Macaro et al. (2018) give a systematic review of research into EMI in Higher Education worldwide, affirming its vigorous growth, noting that it has been driven by top-down policy, and identifying numerous gaps in the research. These include, notably, insufficient research into the minimum level of English necessary for students to benefit from EMI programmes, the impact of EMI on their acquisition of disciplinary content and skills, and the nature and extent of any gain in English proficiency that attends English-medium instruction in a disciplinary area. In the absence of hard data on these issues, course designers and instructors are faced with the challenges of delivering EMI courses to mixed levels of students, unsure of how much they will comprehend, and whether their grasp of disciplinary material and skills will be adversely affected. There is also a political element to this issue in that setting a linguistic tariff for participation in EMI programmes denies students with a low level of proficiency access to education. In educational contexts where a minimum linguistic threshold is not politically acceptable, EMI instructors may be faced with delivering material to some students at near beginners’ level. There has also been, in both research and practice, some ambiguity about the nature of EMI itself. In some accounts, there is a grey area between ‘English-­ medium Instruction’ (EMI) and ‘Content and Language Integrated Learning’ (CLIL). As the field has matured, EMI has come to represent (as it largely represents in this book) the delivery of courses mainly through the medium of English to non-­ anglophone students, without specific attention being paid by instructors to the students’ acquisition of English. In other words, during an EMI course, no explicit attention is necessarily paid to the teaching or assessment of English language content or skills. The pedagogical focus is directed solely toward acquiring subject

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specific content and skills through the medium of English. CLIL, on the other hand, as the name suggests, integrates subject-specific knowledge and skills with the direct teaching and assessment of English competence. As most university courses are taught by subject specialists rather than language instructors, we have selected for this volume case studies that maintain a dominant focus on subject skills and knowledge, describing courses in which there is no imperative for instructors to teach or assess English skills per se. While many of the instructors involved do voice concern that students should learn the technical vocabulary of the discipline, this concern would equally extend to students whose first and best language is English. While the focus of the case studies is how to support disciplinary learning through English, it is clear from the content of the chapters that a sharp  distinction between EMI and CLIL is difficult to maintain. This is particularly evident in cases where English or a closely related subject is the subject discipline. For example, in several of our case studies, the discipline being studied by students is TESOL, Literature and Creative Writing, and Song-writing. None of these classes is technically ‘English’ in the sense of, say, ‘English for Academic Purposes’; however, all of them necessarily involve a greater, or more explicit, attention to the development of English competence than, for example, Applied Psychology, Financial Mathematics, or Design Engineering, also covered here. These case studies are included because their intended outcomes extend well beyond the enhancement of English competence. The case studies presented in this volume, then, are rooted in institutions in China and Macau that have been established as part of a global wave of EMI provision in universities and colleges, a movement that is driven largely by top-­ down internationalisation policies that have created challenges for instructors and students. The nature and extent of these learning challenges have yet to be fully assessed. In the meantime, instructors have turned to technology to support the delivery of EMI courses, in some cases changing the very nature, or at least redirecting the emphasis of what is meant by university education.

4 EMI Institutions in China and Macao The first joint venture between overseas and mainland institutions was the University of Nottingham Ningbo, founded in 2004. The following year saw the establishment of United International College (UIC) in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, a liberal arts college whose parent institutions were Beijing Normal University and Hong Kong Baptist University. Further institutions followed, including Tsinghua-UC Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen, Duke Kunshan University, NYU Shanghai, Wenzhou-Kean University Shanghai, Jiao Tong University-University of Michigan, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The most recent Sino-foreign tertiary institution, Shenzhen MSU BIT University, a collaboration between Moscow State University and Beijing Institute of Technology, was founded in 2017

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(for an overview, see Lu, 2018). Around half of these institutions are represented by the case studies included here. A further case study involves the University of Macau, which has a different history. Beginning life as a private institution in 1981, towards the end of the Portuguese colonial period, the University of East Asia became a public institution in 1988, and was renamed the University of Macau in 1991, in anticipation of the 1999 handover of Macao to China. English is its working language and stated MOI, but its linguistic situation is complex: the students are largely Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking, while Portuguese remains an official heritage language (Moody, 2021). Like the University of Macau, eight of the nine Sino-foreign institutions have adopted English as their main medium of instruction, in part because they attract a large proportion of international staff, for whom English functions as a lingua franca. The exception is Shenzhen MSU BIT University, where English, Mandarin and Russian are all institutional MOIs. The establishment of all the Sino-foreign institutions can be understood as part of an ‘internationalisation at home’ agenda; as Lu (2018) observes: By providing classes in English, and by exposing students to foreign textbooks, curriculum, and teachers, cooperative universities are able to bring foreign university classrooms onto Chinese campuses. These institutions produce global citizens that are more internationally aware, and add critical talent to contribute to local economic and business growth. Sino-­ foreign cooperative universities are also a great transition hub connecting local Chinese students to a more expansive study abroad experience.

Nevertheless, there are instructional challenges in ‘bringing foreign university classrooms onto Chinese campuses’ that are different from those faced by students and instructors in anglophone countries that have a high proportion of overseas students, often, indeed, from China  (Zou et  al., 2022). In anglophone settings, overseas students who are learning subject content and skills in their L2 will normally enjoy support and reinforcement from the general linguistic environment. In non-anglophone settings, the only exposure to the MOI might be in class and in optional language support classes, for example classes in English for Academic Purposes. In the latter setting, course designers and instructors have been using technology to make the ‘foreign’ university classroom more accessible to students.

5 Technology and EMI/Emerging Themes The case studies in the present volume represent snapshots of initiatives and interventions that aim to address student needs and concerns in EMI courses in China. They fall into three main thematic groups: (i) those that focus on a technological resource that is designed to support a specific language skill, (ii) those that explore the use of broader learning management systems to encourage engagement with the content area in the medium of English (and perhaps other languages); and (iii) those that reflect on the ways in which technological interventions are changing the ways that learning is conceived and achieved in the academy.

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The first grouping can be considered ‘technicist’ solutions to EMI problems. These include resources and apps designed to ease the burdens associated with reading and listening to course material in a second language. Thus, Alice Lee, Randall and da Costa evaluate the effectiveness of an app that automatically rephrases and simplifies the lexis of course readings, in this case in Computer Science, by replacing ‘difficult’ vocabulary with more ‘everyday’ vocabulary. As the acquisition of discipline-specific lexis is normally part of the set of outcomes expected in any course, the course instructor can set the app to retain any ‘difficult but necessary’ vocabulary that is present in course readings. Other language skills are targeted by Ma, and by Prado and Huggins. Ma focuses on the use of livestreaming in business and marketing classes, to give practice in listening and speaking skills, e.g. via ‘live’ focus group interviews. In this case, technology brings into the classroom a research technique from marketing that also involves a means of enriching oral English competence. Prado and Huggins consider ways in which EMI instructors in Applied Psychology can draw upon technological resources to afford students opportunities to demonstrate engagement through alternatives to immediate verbal display. Live polls and asynchronous discussions are two means by which instructors can ascertain the engagement levels of students in EMI settings without expecting them to articulate concepts orally. If the ‘technicist’ solutions involve easing the burden of reading, listening and speaking, more extensive uses of learning management systems (LMSs) address student writing and feedback, listening and group collaboration. Juyoung Lee considers a widely used technological facility, Microsoft Teams, and its use in supporting group collaboration in TESOL training. Yan focuses on perhaps an underused feature of the popular ‘Moodle’ LMS to prompt written online peer feedback on assignments. As well as developing English disciplinary writing skills in a controlled manner, the online peer review process helps EMI students internalise the necessary vocabulary for the content area, again, in this case, TESOL training. Yeoh also looks at the use of a Moodle LMS in an innovative fashion to present students with materials, once again in TESOL training, with which to practise their disciplinary listening skills. Tang, Zhi and Huo provide an overview of how students in an EMI course in Economics respond to Moodle as a learning resource that supports their learning across a range of skills, while supplementing the instructor’s materials with further resources that they find online, independently. If the individual apps and more general LMSs provide scaffolding for learning subject material and skills through English in relatively traditional ways (i.e. via lectures, group seminars, reading, peer discussion, feedback), the next set of articles adresses technology as a way of rethinking the format of university learning. Thus, Pike, Boon-Giin Lee and Towey present ‘Software Engineering thinking’ as a conceptual mode for redesigning student feedback protocols, and Gill, Irwin, Towey, and Zhang offer microlearning and gamification as innovative styles of course delivery that engage more deeply with the affordances of technology than do the typical uses of LMSs. Microlearning advocates the breaking of complex tasks down into smaller units that can then be combined. Gamification conceives of learning as a pleasurable goal-oriented activity. LMSs are flexible technological resources that

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can be used in a number of ways: minimally, they offer the opportunity to supplement traditional chalk-and-talk lectures and group seminars by allowing instructors to post course materials online and set up synchronous or asynchronous online discussion forums. LMSs also offer instructors and students novel ways of interacting, as in the online peer assessments described by Yan in this volume. More radically still, Li and Zhang combine the affordances of an LMS with microlearning and gamification. Using Moodle, they designed a faculty course in professional development as a game that required learners to achieve specified learning outcomes, in order to ‘escape’ from one online environment within Moodle to a higher level. The different levels of the game demand different degrees of mastery of content and skills. The understanding of Bloom’s taxonomy of levels of intellectual behaviour (Forehand, 2005) is transformed into a digital game of snakes and ladders. It might be argued that this subset of chapters presents old wine in new, digitally-­ enhanced, bottles. The model of micro-learning proposed by Software Engineering, and the goal-directed nature of gamified learning echo some of the dated precepts of behavioural learning, in their atomising of learning into discrete outcomes that can then be recombined. These procedures possibly work better with some subject disciplines than others. However, in EMI contexts, considerable support may be offered to students by the instructors’ detailed specification of discrete learning outcomes which then become the focus of dedicated, technology-mediated, learning activities and assessments. The final set of chapters, by Kaufmann, and Pastor and Corbett, extends the discussion of technology and EMI beyond general or specific ‘technicist’ solutions to the delivery of language support, and the reconceptualising of tertiary level courses within the frameworks of microlearning and gamification. Kaufman suggests that digital e-readers can transform the nature of literary reading by turning it from an individual activity into a social endeavour in which the manifold contributions of solitary readers are easily tracked and shared and discussed. Pastor and Corbett reflect on the ways in which a liberal arts course in song-writing enables participants to extend their identities, mediated by technology, to become members of a global community of performers and consumers of popular music. Both chapters address the kind of creative course that characterises Humanities or General Education programmes in liberal arts institutions: literature, creative writing and song-writing. Neither discipline lends itself easily to microlearning or gamification. However, as each chapter demonstrates, technology has become a crucial factor in the way that students negotiate their very identities within these disciplines. Courses in the creative use of English enable students in an EMI institution, by virtue of technology, to address a global audience of individuals who read or listen to cultural artefacts, be they stories, poems or songs, through websites, blogs and social media. By participating in technology-mediated, global discourse communities of anglophone cultural practitioners, students extend and enhance their identities in ways that can also become the topic of reflexive class discussions. This volume, then, offers a series of snapshots of current practices in EMI institutions in China. We hope the case studies presented here resonate with the experiences of fellow EMI instructors and educational researchers worldwide, and that they stimulate further research.

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References Forehand, M. (2005). Bloom’s taxonomy: Original and revised. Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology, 8, 41–44. Gu, J., Li, X., & Wang, L. (2018). Higher education in China. Springer. Liyanage, I., & Walker, T. (2019). Medium of instruction and multilingual contexts: Unravelling the questions and unpacking the challenges. In I. Liyanage & T. Walker (Eds.), Multilingual education yearbook 2019: Media of instruction & multilingual settings (pp. 1–24). Springer. Lu, X. (2018, August 14). Transnational education: Sino-foreign cooperative universities in China. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from World Education News + Reviews: https://wenr.wes. org/2018/08/sino-­foreign-­cooperative-­universities Macaro, E., Curle, S., Pun, J., An, J., & Dearden, J. (2018). A systematic review of English medium instruction in higher education. Language Teaching, 51(1), 36–76. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0261444817000350 Ministry of Education of China (MoE). (2018). National statistical bulletin on the development of education in 2017. Retrieved from http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_zzjg/moe_347/201708/ t20170828_312562.html Moody, A. (2021). Macau’s languages in society and education. Springer Nature. Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2018). Ethnologue: Languages of the World: China. Retrieved February 26, 2023, from https://www.ethnologue.com/country/CN/ Corbett, J., Yan, E., Yeoh, J., & Lee, J. (Eds.). (2023). Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023: Teaching with Technology in English-Medium Instruction Universities in Multilingual China. Springer Nature. Zhong, Z., Liu, L., Coates, H., & Kuh, G. (2019). What the U.S. (and rest of the world) should know about higher education in China. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 51(3), 8–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2019.1606571 Zou, B., Wang, X., & Yu, C. (2022). The impact of Sino-foreign cooperative universities in China on Chinese postgraduate students’ learning performances in the United Kingdom and United States. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1012614

Simplifying Texts for Easier Comprehension in an Introductory Computer Science Course: An Evaluation of Rewordify Alice Shu-Ju Lee, Janet Beth Randall, and Miguel Gomes da Costa Junior

Abstract  The ability to read and understand course materials undergirds success in university, and yet many second language (L2) students working with English as a medium of instruction (EMI) require support in developing reading skills. Content instructors at EMI institutions can attempt to bridge this gap by selecting simpler reading materials or simplifying original text. To modify original text, content EMI instructors can consider using a tool such as Rewordify. This study reports the impact of students’ use of Rewordify to simplify a reading passage. The study invited 68 tertiary L2 students majoring in Computer Science at an EMI university in Macau to participate. Participants were randomly split into two groups, and the control group read an original passage from an introductory Computer Science textbook while the experimental group read a simplified version of the same text. Results of their reading comprehension scores indicate that, though small, there is variation between the scores obtained by the control group as compared to the experimental group. The authors provide possible explanations for the results obtained, evaluate the overall effectiveness of Rewordify, and recommend other tools that EMI content instructors can employ to close the gap between L2 students’ lexical knowledge and the vocabulary needed to understand subject-specific content. Keywords  Second language vocabulary · Reading · Rewordify · Content and language integrated learning (CLIL)

A. S.-J. Lee (*) Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, Macau, China e-mail: [email protected] J. B. Randall University of Brasilia, Brasília, Brazil M. G. da Costa Junior Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macau, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Corbett et al. (eds.), Multilingual Education Yearbook 2023, Multilingual Education Yearbook, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32811-4_2

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1 Introduction Reading is a necessary skill for general university success, and this skill is vital for English as a second or foreign language (L2) users studying in English medium instruction (EMI) universities. The challenge faced by such students is multi-tiered, and these tiers are intertwined. On the one hand, they need to navigate the forms and functions of the language items in a text. Additionally, they need to know the technical vocabulary necessary to comprehend the content. These vocabulary items often have multiple and different definitions, depending on the subject matter, and that variation adds to the comprehension challenge. Reading is a skill commonly taught to students in English language support courses at EMI universities. However, many of these support courses target general reading comprehension rather than content-based reading comprehension. Reading sub-skills commonly covered include reading for main ideas/details, skimming, scanning, and surveying (Gillett, 2022). In terms of vocabulary, language instructors may teach affixes and suffixes to build word families, and focus on the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), but it is extremely difficult for English language instructors to tailor their lessons to focus on subject-specific vocabulary. For instance, a study conducted by Sutarsyah et  al. (1994) in the area of Economics indicated that there is in fact little crossover between the vocabulary learned in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses and the vocabulary students actually need in their Economics courses. Arnó-Macià et al. (2020), studying Engineering students in EMI universities in Spain and Austria, concluded that students taking English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, rather than general EAP, benefited from these courses, which boosted both confidence and awareness, enabling them to communicate in a specialised academic discourse community. In other words, unless students are taking an ESP course in their area of study, they are unlikely to learn the vocabulary they need to understand the content in their major. The reality is that even in EMI universities that offer ESP courses, it is seldom an institutional requirement that students must complete these courses before joining their major content courses. Therefore, students often arrive in major/content classes with a wide range of language proficiencies and subject-specific vocabulary items that form the knowledge base of the major. In the field of Computer Science, for instance, content course comprehension relies on content vocabulary comprehension. Working with students who were first language users of English, Wileman et al. (1981) demonstrated that the ability to read and understand course content knowledge (and hence understand domain-­ specific vocabulary) was one of eight factors that influence a student’s chances of success in that course. The challenge in reading and understanding course materials is even greater for L2 users. Akkakoson (2013) showed that language learners need to use specific reading strategies to decode what they read, and more proficient learners are better able to use these strategies. Hartshorn et  al. (2017) further revealed that, for Computer Science majors, the demand on student ability to read

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increases as students progress from year 1 to year 4 of their study. Thus, the need for L2 Computer Science students to acquire content vocabulary is critical, and yet, it appears they have few institutional resources other than general EAP or ESP courses. Reading and vocabulary experts have sought to address this gap in students’ knowledge of relevant vocabulary by simplifying discipline-specific texts to determine if doing so helps improve student comprehension. Thus far, results have been mixed, with Ulijn and Strother (1990) finding no difference in student ability to understand original and syntactically simplified Computer Science texts whereas Safari and Mohaghegh Montazeri (2017) showed that lexically and syntactically simplified texts produced higher comprehension among L2 English learners. The lexical and syntactical simplification process is fraught with challenges for the content instructor as well. The instructor needs to be able to simplify the original text without losing its original meaning, which requires specialist and linguistic knowledge and is time-consuming (Browder et al., 2006). With technology that can systematically find and replace less frequently appearing vocabulary with more common words or phrases, this study asks the following research questions: (1) how well can Computer Science students understand a sample passage from their introductory course textbook, and (2) will revising difficult vocabulary in the sample passage increase students’ perceived level of understanding as measured by (a) higher scores on comprehension test questions and (b) perception survey questions?

2 Pilot Study Context At the University of Macau, which uses English as a medium of instruction, first year Computer Science majors are required to take a course called Introduction to Computer Science (ICS101). The course provides an overview of Computer Science fundamentals and the role this subject plays in society. At the end of the course, students are expected to be able to define and describe important Computer Science concepts and analyse their applications in the real world. The course typically enrols 100 students, and Computer Science majors occupy approximately two-thirds of the enrolment while non-Computer Science majors make up the rest. Most of the students who take ICS101 are L2 English users. Students are required to take an English language placement test that allocates them to one of three levels, or they can test out of English language courses with an IELTS score of 6.5 or TOEFLiBT score of 79 (University of Macau Registry, 2023). Language accommodations are not made for content courses, which means that all students, regardless of language proficiency, take the same courses. In ICS101, students’ English proficiency ranges widely from A1 (beginner) to C1 (advanced, suitable to undertake university studies in English), according to the Common European Framework

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of Reference (Council of Europe, 2018). These students primarily speak Cantonese or Mandarin as their first and best language. The content instructor speaks Portuguese as his best language and uses English as the medium of instruction. He can speak limited conversational Cantonese but not Mandarin. As the stakeholders share no other language in common, English is the main instructional language used. In terms of teaching, the course primarily adapts Mazur’s (1999) peer instruction pedagogy, as used in Physics. This form of peer instruction has had demonstrated success in engagement and content learning in other disciplines, including Life Science (Knight & Brame, 2018) and Computer Science (Porter et al., 2016). The pedagogy has been used to explore opportunities to improve L2 student language skills (da Costa & Carvalho, 2021). Class lessons involve pre-class reading or video material preparation, in-class quizzes using clickers with instantaneous feedback, lectures, complementary post-class videos, small group projects, and individual homework. Course assessments include class activities and individual homework (20%), group project (20%), midterm examination (20%), and final examination (40%). In addition to the active learning methods used in the course, students are asked to read approximately 20 pages per week from their introductory Computer Science textbook. The instructor assigns specific sections of the chapter to be read before covering them during lectures. Then students are encouraged to read the remaining sections of the chapter after lecture.

3 Text Simplification Tool: Rewordify Rewordify.com is a free online reading comprehension tool launched in 2013 and under continual development since. Users copy a text they want to simplify, paste it into the website, and click the button “Rewordify text.” Users may choose the level of vocabulary they would like to have “rewordified” as well. The website uses proprietary technology to replace less frequent vocabulary with more frequent, contextually-dependent synonyms or phrases, displaying them as highlighted in the text. As an example, when input, and set to the easiest level, the foregoing sentence in this chapter was displayed as: “The website uses private (or unique) technology to replace less frequent vocabulary with more frequent, big-picture relatedly-­ dependent (words that mean the same thing) or phrases, displaying them as highlighted in the text.” By clicking on the highlighted phrase, the user may see the original term. This tool is available without registration and data is not stored in the site. A number of tertiary English language instructors have documented their use of Rewordify to simplify reading passages and reported mixed results. For example, Kol and Schcolnik (2021) report that while students found Rewordify helpful for a reading comprehension quiz, when given the option of using a bilingual tool (Reverso) as opposed to a monolingual tool (Rewordify), students preferred using the former to read translations in their first language. In Aşık et al. (2018), student

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teachers tended not to use Rewordify in their practice lessons because they found the tool to be too specifically focused on vocabulary as compared to other digital tools available, but reported some positive impressions as to the usefulness of Rewordify as an independent learning tool. Morales et al. (2019), on the other hand, found that their A2 (beginner) students improved their reading comprehension level through the use of Rewordify in class. Thus far, there has not been any documented research using Rewordify in EMI content courses that have L2 students as their major user group.

4 Methodology From the ICS101 course, this pilot study recruited a total of 68 participants, 35 in the control group and 33  in the experimental group. Grouping was randomly assigned. Both the experimental and control groups read two passages from their introductory Computer Science textbook with comprehension questions followed by survey questions. The first passage and set of five comprehension questions was on the topic of “agents” and unadapted for both groups. This passage served as a baseline measure. The reading was one paragraph of 163 words and had a Flesch readability score of 29.1. Both groups also answered the same set of survey questions regarding their perceptions of the text. Then the control group received another unadapted textbook passage—6 paragraphs with a total of 448 words and a Flesch readability of 28.6 on the topic of “algorithms” from the introductory Computer Science textbook—and answered eight comprehension questions, followed by the same survey questions as for the baseline paragraph. The experimental group received the algorithms passage, “rewordified.” Using Rewordify, the researchers input the original text and set the passage to the “easiest” level. Rewordify replaced 28 difficult words with easier words—“easier” is defined as more frequently appearing words in written English. The course content instructor inspected the rewordified passage so as to retain any subject-specific concept terms (e.g. algorithm) that Computer Science students are required to know, maintaining 24 of the changes that Rewordify made to the original passage with a word count of 467 and Flesch readability of 28.8. The experimental group read the rewordified passage and answered the same comprehension and survey questions that appeared in the control group text. The control group data was compared with the experimental group data to explore differences.

5 Results of the Pilot Study This section reports the results of the pilot study. Table 1 compares the control (C) and experimental (E) groups’ language level, based on the self-reported English language courses they enrolled in, which are aligned with CEFR levels A1-C1.

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Table 1  Comparison of English language abilities N 35 (C) 33 (E)

English 4 2

A1-A2 (beginning) 15 19

Table 2  Baseline paragraph comprehension scores

B1-B2 (intermediate) 9 7

N Mean SD df p(F