Displays of Co-Constructed Content Knowledge Using Translanguaging In Emi University Classrooms

Abstract

In recent years, the use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been prevalent in higher education institutions in non-Anglophone contexts due to globalization and internationalization. This enables the researchers to investigate EMI universities through different research foci. Although a few researchers closely examined EMI classroom interactions in face-to-face environments, the multifaceted interactional organization of content knowledge co-construction process remains an under-researched phenomenon in the EMI settings. With this in mind, this dissertation focuses on how participants (lecturers and undergraduate students) collaboratively construct content knowledge through translanguaging across multiple phases of video-mediated classroom episodes. The dataset of the study includes 18 hours of video and screen recordings of the classroom interaction in three online and one face-to-face EMI classrooms at a state EMI university in Türkiye. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis as the research methodology, this dissertation shows how translanguaging plays a significant role in collaborative content knowledge construction processes and facilitates the participants’ displays of content knowledge through various classroom interaction practices across for interconnected phases of the online classroom episodes including the lecturer talk in the whole-class video-mediated classroom, pre-task, task engagement in small groups in the breakout rooms of the videoconferencing tool, and finally sharing outputs in the main room. The findings of the dissertation provide implications for a fuller understanding of the interactional organization of EMI classroom interactions in and beyond online teaching and learning environments and mainly with reference to content knowledge co-construction process across the multiple phases of the EMI setting at hand.