English Medium Instruction Lectures: A Gender Perspective on Comprehension Challenges

Gender has often been overlooked in tertiary English medium instruction (EMI) research. To address this gap, the present study investigates whether gender plays a role in EMI lecture comprehension challenges. The study included 37 participants (21 female and 16 male) who attended EMI lectures in a variety of subjects. Participants used a foot pedal to “time-stamp” comprehension challenges in real time during lectures. After the lectures, students joined stimulated recall interviews guided by the time stamps, where they re-watched time-stamped portions of lecture videos and explained reasons for non-comprehension. Results showed that gender did not play a statistically significant role in relation to a majority of the comprehension challenges, with the exception of top-down >> content-related, where females were more likely to report issues such as lack of prior content knowledge than males. Based on the findings, commentary about the role of gender in EMI and in relation to various language skills is provided.