The multicultural and multilingual composition of the student body in the average EMI degree programme cause difficulties for students. Even when such difficulties are not present, students going outside of the teacher-student relationship for help can be the first step in the process of becoming less dependent on the classroom teacher and more autonomous. Furthermore, the more an institution charges, the more value for money they need to offer to students in order to satisfy them. The OECD (2016) reported that full-time undergraduate students in Japan were second only to the USA in terms of the average tuition paid. This being the case, we could expect that students in Japan would be provided with extensive support services to help them succeed in their studies.
The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview of the kinds of support offered to students outside of the teacher-student relationship in the context of EMI full degree programmes in Japan. The research question for the current study is: What kinds of systematic support are offered to students in Japanese EMI degree programmes to help them succeed in the English-medium environment?
A questionnaire was developed, in order to illuminate the details of the student support offerings, and sent to faculty members at all 23 EMI degree programmes in Japan. Seventeen participants completed the entire questionnaire (a response rate of 74%). The results suggest that there are 19 or 20 EMI degree programmes in Japan and that Japanese domestic students constitute between one third and a half of all enrolled students. Between 60% and 90% of the EMI degree programmes in Japan offer some kind of support to help students succeed academically: Slightly more than half offer writing support, while only around 20% offer reading support. Furthermore, the older a programme is, the more likely the institution is to offer student support. This is also true of reading support services. The context and questionnaire will be introduced, and results and implications of the research will be explained in detail in this presentation.
OECD (2016). Education at a glance 2016: OECD indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing.
