REFRAMING ENGLISH PROFICIENCY IN MULTILINGUAL CONTEXTS: A THEORETICAL REVIEW

ENGLISH

In English-medium instruction (EMI) policies, English proficiency has now become a focus in most countries, particularly as a precondition to academic achievement. Nevertheless, this prevailing school of thought fails to reflect the multilingualism classroom realities, in which language competence interrelates with motivation, self-efficacy, disciplinary literacy, and sociocultural influencing variables. This review redefines English proficiency in the multilingual setting by the integration of theoretical and empirical evidence of sixteen chosen articles on EMI in higher education. Based on the approaches of linguistic competence, human capital theory as well as the agency of learning, the review critically evaluates the role of English proficiency as a problem that is on a dynamic and multidimensional nature and therefore influenced by not only the practices of instruction but also the agency of learner. The literature review indicates that there is always tension between policy and classroom level with regard to the expectations and practices in which the success in EMI is mediated by summing up a number of factors that include self-efficacy, first language support, motivation, as well as socioeconomic background. Thematic synthesis and comparative summary table are employed to find converging and diverging results across the contexts, especially the East and Southeast Asian contexts. The review ends by determining the major limitations of current studies on EMI and recommending future research directions that would emphasize on translanguaging, contextualized probing assessment and longitudinal research design. Altogether, this review contributes to a more refined theoretical comprehension of the English proficiency in higher education in multiple languages.

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