Bringing Specialised Language into Focus in English-Medium Instruction

The current trend for internationalisation in Europeanuniversities, which includes the implementation of English-taughtcourses and degree programmes (British Council & Studyportals,2024; Marginson & van der Wende, 2007; Wilkinson, 2017), isresulting in an increase in numbers of students who need advancedand specialised English language competences to meet the demandsof studying academic content in a foreign language. This paperexplores the main linguistic challenges that some students face inEnglish-Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts, particularly their limitedcommand of specialised English and lack of familiarity with subject-specific vocabulary (Ackerley, 2017; Al Zumor, 2019; McKinley &Rose, 2022). It also suggests how a corpus of subject-specific textsprovided by lecturers can be used to develop specialised languagelearning materials in the form of subject-specific terminology andphraseology exercises, thereby providing the opportunity to turnstudents’ language development from an accidental by-product to aplanned and tangible objective of an EMI language support syllabus.The approach was investigated through the creation of subject-specific corpus-informed activities designed for a group ofundergraduate students enrolled in an English-taught degreeprogramme at a northern Italian university (Brian, 2020). Theexercises were informed by a careful investigation of a corpus ofmodule materials and were delivered via an interactive onlinelearning platform.