Iraqi context

Internationalization and globalization have gained popularity during the past 20 years in a variety of educational settings. English-Medium Instruction (EMI) has been one of the primary strategies for addressing these developments. Iraqi secondary schools appear to be falling behind in the face of these worldwide trends. Secondary schools are using Arabic as their practically universal language of teaching. Still, only a few numbers of studies have investigated the possible use of EMI and instructors' perspectives regarding its usage. This study adopted a mixed-methods approach to examine the current state of EMI in the Iraqi setting, providing more insight into the rising application of EMI. To learn more about the attitudes of 150 teachers concerning EMI, pertinent questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to gather the required data. The quantitative results demonstrated that educators' opinions of EMI were overwhelmingly favorable. Most instructors supported both bilingual education and EMI, despite being aware of the detrimental effects of EMI on common official languages and the opposition to its implementation. The participants' views about and preferences for EMI were significantly influenced by their educational background, English ability, and their academic degree. The qualitative analysis's findings showed that although EMI classes provided participants with many benefits, they also faced significant difficulties, the primary reason of which was their poor English ability. The findings also indicated that most of participants blamed administrators for the difficulties in the EMI courses..

Translanguaging' has been promoted as a prominent term in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) studies. It describes how learners of a new language effectively utilize their entire range of languages to convey meaning and communicate. Additionally, it serves as an educational strategy to harness these language repertoires as valuable resources for learning. In the last twenty years, multiple empirical investigations have been carried out to investigate pedagogical translingual strategy in language learning classes across the world. However, there is limited knowledge on this occurrence in English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in the educational context of Iraq, where TEFL policies prohibit using students' first language and perceive them as a hindrance to language acquisition. By examining the views of English language teachers regarding pedagogical translanguaging, this study seeks to close this gap. Additionally, it investigates the extent to which these perspectives are manifested in their instructions. A total of 120 English language instructors at an Iraqi university willingly took part in this research. The findings highlight a significant disparity between the attitudes that teachers claim to have and the teaching methods that they use, based on the survey. The results also illuminated the barriers that prevented the participants from using translanguaging in their instruction.