REGULAR ARTICLE

Accommodation Strategies Employed by Non-nativeEnglish-Mediated Instruction (EMI) Teachers

Yi-Rung Tsai · Wenli Tsou

© De La Salle University 2014

Abstract The goal of this study was to explore English

instructors’ application of accommodation strategies under

English-Mediated Instruction (EMI) in English as a lingua

franca context of higher education in Taiwan. English

instructors’ verbal discourses with regard to various types

of strategies during instruction were documented and

examined. The presented results were triangulated in terms

of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Data were gath-

ered from a university in southern Taiwan, which included

approximately 627 min of audio-recordings of five courses

by five non-native teachers in its IMBA program. The

collected data were analyzed through the use of frequency,

pragmatic functions, display of lexicon and syntax, and the

most common clusters. Corpora and interviews were cho-

sen to be the primary analytic tools. Six effective accom-

modation strategies were identified via quantitative

analysis, including introducing, defining, listing, eliciting,

giving examples, and emphasizing. The selection of the

accommodation strategies was influenced by the following

situations: (1) level of content difficulty, (2) students’

language proficiency, (3) student feedback, and (4) finding

appropriate language. Finally, top-ten language clusters

frequently produced by the EMI instructors were found to

serve the purposes of eliciting and defining concepts.

Possible pedagogical implications are also discussed in the

last section.

Keywords English-mediated instruction ·

English as a Lingua Franca · Accommodation strategies ·

Language cluster · Higher education

Introduction

Starting in 2001, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in

Taiwan began to place great emphasis on English-mediated

instruction (henceforth, EMI) courses in tertiary education

(MOE 2001) to promote globalization and raise the inter-

national competitiveness of local universities. The govern-

ment also encouraged universities to recruit international

students so that higher education in Taiwan would become

more internationalized. Subsequently, an increasing number

of international students at both undergraduate and graduate

levels have been attracted to pursue degrees in Taiwan. For

instance, the research site, a national university in southern

Taiwan, has undergone a transformation in the number of

international students. A sharp increase in the total number of

foreign students applying to this university occurred in the

2010–2011 academic year, with 129 undergraduate and 698

graduate students, respectively. Most students came to Tai-

wan in pursuit of academic degrees, with the most popular

majors being in the engineering, management, and business-

related fields. As a result, to cope with this increase in foreign

students, EMI courses have gradually expanded in both

undergraduate and graduate programs at this university.

Since international students come from various cultural

backgrounds, the methods used by instructors to accom-

modate the languages of international students in academia

are crucial. Furthermore, teachers need to adapt themselves

to diverse English varieties produced by international stu-

dents for the purpose of reaching intelligibility and main-

taining discussion. Thus, investigating and discovering the

most efficient accommodation strategies for non-native

EMI instructors serve as the primary motivation of this

research.

With more attention is being given to English as a lingua

franca (henceforth, ELF) around the world, many related

Y.-R. Tsai · W. Tsou (&)

National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

e-mail: wtsou@mail.ncku.edu.tw

123

Asia-Pacific Edu Res

DOI 10.1007/s40299-014-0192-3

studies have been conducted which focus primarily on ELF

users in international business contexts (e.g., Nickerson,

2005) or academic settings (e.g., Mauranen 2009, 2010a).

Nevertheless, accommodation strategies specifically used

by non-native English instructors are still under-resear-

ched, which constitutes another motivation for this study.

Moreover, variations regarding the linguistic features of

ELF accommodation strategies used by non-native EMI

teachers have not been thoroughly investigated in previous

studies. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate

what types of accommodation strategies are frequently

used by non-native EMI instructors in an ELF environment

and the specific features of these strategies. The specific

research questions addressed in the present study are as

follows:

1. What are the accommodation strategies employed by

non-native EMI instructors in ELF classrooms and the

reasons for their selections?

2. What are the common language clusters used by non-

native EMI instructors in ELF classrooms?

The present study offers several contributions to the

related fields. First, there is currently a lack of significant

ELF research in Taiwan and elsewhere in East Asia. Most

related studies have been conducted in Europe (e.g., House

2002; Jenkins 2000; Mauranen 2006, 2010a, 2010b;

Seidlhofer 2001). For studies related to China, they concern

how Chinglish or Chinese English is connected to global

Englishes (e.g., He and Li 2009; Kirkpatrick and Zhichang

2002; Qiong 2004) rather than analyzing accommodation

strategies between Chinese speakers and other ELF users.

Second, although many studies investigated meaning-

negotiation strategies, the way speech events employing

accommodation strategies unfold in Asian academic set-

tings was scarcely discussed. Moreover, since the popula-

tion in the Expanding Circle that uses English as a lingua

franca is overwhelmingly larger than that from the Inner

and Outer circles (Kubota and Ward 2000), there is strong

validation that accommodation strategies are significant for

all interlocutors, especially for those who regard English as

a foreign or second language.

Related Studies

Perspectives of English as a Lingua Franca

English as a lingua franca (ELF) studies have been hotly

debated from a wide range of perspectives in relation to

phonology, lexis, lexical grammar, pronunciation, and

pragmatic issues. In ELF contexts, the use of English as a

language of communication between speakers whose

native languages are different can easily cause communi-

cation problems in both written and spoken aspects. In the

phonological area, pronunciation research by Jenkins

(2000) explored two interrelated phenomena, including

intelligibility problems based on pronunciation produced

by ELF users and the application of phonological accom-

modation. In addition, research on lexis or syntax has

shown how speakers customarily interact with English

native and non-native speakers, applying the linguistic

resources systematically in regular ways. Research at this

level has focused on linguistic features of lexicons and

syntactic patterns with corpus-based studies using large-

scale corpora such as the Vienna-Oxford International

Corpus of English (VOICE), and the corpus of English as a

Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) (Mauranen

2003), as well as other smaller ELF-based projects. The

findings with corpus-based studies thus far have given rise

to a certain degree of conspicuous linguistic features that

occur in the lingua franca interactions.

The field of pragmatics is also an issue that has gained

wide discussions in ELF studies. These studies indicate that

people from different countries and cultural backgrounds

make operational adjustments while communicating with

their interlocutors. Communicative behaviors change when

dealing with adaptations in terms of cooperation and con-

vergence to that of their interlocutors in order to facilitate

communication. For instance, Cogo (2009) suggested that

ELF speakers may use repetition and code-switching stra-

tegically to signal alliance, and with the aim of gaining

identification as members of the community. Furthermore,

Jenkins (2000) investigated ELF phonology regarding how

to achieve intelligibility in ELF pronunciation, arguing that

“speakers need to develop the ability to adjust their pro-

nunciation according to the communicative situation in

which they find themselves” (2000, p. 166).

Discourse studies in higher education settings were also

emphasized in the pragmatic area of ELF. For example,

based on her ELFA corpus, Mauranen (2007) showed that a

variety of adaptive strategies hold a significant place in

ELF academic conversations. In addition, Dafouz Milne

and Sanchez Garcıa (2013) analyzed EMI discourses across

disciplines and suggested that there seem to be more

commonalities than differences in the use of questions

across disciplines and that lecturers can benefit from their

own discourse analysis in order to facilitate students’

content and language learning. Finally, realizing the

importance of ELF for EMI in tertiary education, Smit

(2010) recommended a conceptual framework of ELF as

classroom language that combines sociolinguistic, socio-

cultural, and discursive components.

Although the above studies account for speech in dif-

ferent ELF contexts (e.g., business meetings or academia),

they have mainly focused on interaction in multi-linguistic

communities, and did not focus on examining the discourse

types and patterns of ELF instructors in tertiary education.

Y.-R. Tsai, W. Tsou

123

Thus, from a pragmatic point of view, types of ELF

teachers’ accommodating strategies and their unique lex-

ico-grammatical features are important foci of the present

study.

Accommodation Strategies in ELF

The term—accommodation, defined by Giles (1973) and

developed by Giles and Clair (1979), refers to a means of

communication converging with that of interlocutors.

Speakers need tomutuallymeet other speakers to identify the

common ground consciously or unconsciously. ELF

researchers (Bjorkman 2011; Cogo 2009; Guido 2012;

Mauranen 2007, 2009, 2010a, 2010b) have found that ELF

users make efficient use of accommodation strategies to

speakers who share different first languages. For example,

Mauranen (2009) found that approximation and explicitness

are two essential characteristics involved in accommodation

strategies typically applied by ELF speakers. In addition,

Cogo (2010) indicates that in order to maintain conversation

and avoid breakdowns, ELF speakers apply complex

accommodation strategies to support mutual understanding,

including creation of support, cooperation with interlocutors,

and demonstration of good relationships with members in a

certain discourse community. Bjorkman (2010) also sug-

gested that in academic ELF settings, the speaker’s pragmatic

ability is more significant than his/her English proficiency.

FromKnapp’s (2011) perspective, there exists a combination

of local and institution-specific pragmatic rules at the core of

academic contexts at the international universities. Reaching

intelligibility is determined by efficient pragmatic strategies,

which is important for lecturers who need to function well in

ELF settings. However, most of these studies are conducted

in Europe and the crucial elements involved in the use of EMI

lectures’ accommodating strategies with respect to types,

linguistic patterns, clusters, and contexts—where specifically

applied—have not been investigated.

Language Clusters and Classroom Discourses

Clusters have played a significant role and functioned

beneficially as an analytic tool in the discourse of news

articles (Baker et al. 2008) and classroom discourse ana-

lysis both in spoken and written language (Csomay 2013;

Hyland 2008; Nesi and Basturkmen 2006). For example,

Hyland (2008) indicated that clusters were central to not

only academic discourse but also the discrimination of

different genres. It also implied that forms, structures, and

functions of clusters provided advantages for instructional

practices in advanced writing contexts. Research in relation

to clusters in spoken academic discourse has also gained

greater attention. Nesi and Basturkmen (2006) studied the

role of cohesive clusters and found that commonly applied

clusters were proven to signal discourse relations in uni-

versity academic contexts. Moreover, Csomay (2013)

applied corpus-based methods to document the distribu-

tional linguistic components of clusters and indicated that

not only were clusters frequently used at the start of

instructional phases, but also they functioned efficiently in

structures of spoken language.

Leech and Svartvik (1975) introduced fourteen types of

signaling cues, which are commonly and frequently used in

lectures for the purpose of structuring subject matters.

These patterns function in various ways specifically to give

hints or stimulation (e.g., cues for referring to visuals) to

students in an EMI academic environment. Another study

conducted by Yorkey (1982) also suggested eight types of

signaling clusters based on their different functions and

claimed that these content indices are usually significant

for enhancing comprehension of academic lectures.

In sum, clusters applied in lectures, student presentations,

and whole class discussions were proven to be efficient for

mutual intelligibility in an ELF academic setting (Mauranen

2010a). Thus, due to the rapid increase in the number of EMI

courses in Asia, the significant relation between clusters and

effective academic lecture needs to be investigated and the

result should be comparedwith the existingEuropean studies

to help the researchers gain a whole picture of effective and

efficient ELF EMI teaching and learning.

Methodology

The Research Site

The primary research site is the International Master of

Business Administration (IMBA) classrooms of a univer-

sity in southern Taiwan. Since a large number of students

come from various countries, the IMBA classrooms com-

prise an academic setting naturally conforming to an ELF

environment.

To avoid possible differences in the genres or functions of

the lectures, five comparable business-related courses con-

ducted by five professors, respectively, were selected to be

observed. They were “Leadership Theory and Practice,”

“Production and Operations Management,” “Human

Resource and Management,” “Investment,” and “Financial

Management.” All courses were elective ones, had three

credits, and were 3 h in length. Each 3-h lecture was usually

divided into two periods, with a 10- to 15-min break in the

middle. During class time, teachers gave lectures by means

of PowerPoints or English textbooks. Typically, the teach-

ers’ monolog was presented first, and students’ responses

then followed as a discussion of the specific topic ensued. At

the beginning of the classes, professors usually reviewed

topics mentioned in the previous class as an introduction

guiding to further discussions. As teachers encouraged

Accommodation Strategies by Non-native EMI Teachers

123

students to volunteer and share their ideas and answers, the

lecture style became mostly interactive rather than mere

monologs. Although the lectures were comparable in their

disciplines and fields of study, the differences in terms of the

genres and functions of the lectures (e.g., some were argu-

ments and some were explanations) might still exist.

With the consent from the teachers and students, all the

utterances were audio-recorded for analytic purpose of the

study. One research assistant was allowed to sit at the back of

each classroom to observe and record the lecture and the

interactions.

Participants

These five professors were selected because of their con-

sistent high teaching performances. Teachers B, C, and E

were honored with distinguished teachers at the university.

Teachers A and D often received very high marks in their

teaching evaluation and were highly recommended by their

students. Teacher D has near-native English proficiency

since she studied abroad at a very young age. Table 1 offers

more details about the teachers.

Participating students were from 24 different countries.

To enter the program, English proficiency tests are required

for all applicants whose native language is not English. The

requirement for different proficiency tests should be above

the level of TOEFL iBT 80, TOEIC 480, or IELTS 6.5.

There were a total of 163 graduate students including both

native (19) and non-native English speakers (144), with

ages ranging from 21 to over 40. Regarding the various

nationalities, native English-speaking students were from

the UK, USA, and Canada while non-native English-

speaking students came from 15 different countries,

including Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thai-

land, Indonesia, Chile, Iran, Mongolia, Russia, Mexico,

Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, and Egypt.

Instruments

Classroom observations and interviews about the authentic

uses of accommodation strategies by the teachers in ELF

EMI environment were cardinal approaches for the current

research. During each classroom observation, field notes

were made to remind the research assistants of the teaching

steps and content during transcriptions. All the observers

were English major graduate students trained in advance

for recording and transcribing techniques. Model tran-

scriptions were given at the beginning of this work and

rules for transcribing were provided and followed.

The five IMBA courses were observed from the 5th of

May to 16th of June in 2011. Each 3-h course was recorded

three times. Among the 45 h of recording, only complete

lecture cycles including students’ responses were selected

to be analyzed. Consequently, the selected transcription

was 120 min for each instructor, 10 h in total.

A 30-min individual interview was performed afterward

with all the five instructors. The interview questions were

divided into two parts. The first section was designed with

respect to the teachers’ application of various strategies while

instructing or discussing with students. The interview ques-

tions of this section were designed based on individual per-

centages of the strategies produced by each instructor.

Additionally, questions were asked with reference to what

circumstances triggered teachers to apply certain accommo-

dation strategies. The individual percentage of the strategies

applied and transcripts of the lectureswere presented to eachof

the lecturers as references during the interviews. The second

section of the interview had general questions regarding the

application of accommodation strategies in reaching intelli-

gibility and solutions used when a conversation broke down.

Analytical Framework

Due to their efficient functions, CorpusTool (O’Donnell

2008) and WordSmith 5.0 (Scott 2011) were used in the

current study. CorpusTool is software designed specifically

for annotating linguistic features, classifying data, and ana-

lyzing tokens and frequencies to input data. The tagged

segments could be chosen ranging from a few words to

longer sentences by virtue of the corpus. On the other hand,

WordSmith Tools 5.0 is used to generate results ofWordList,

KeyWords, and Concord, which are the three main functions

designed for lexical analysis. To obtain reliability for the

annotation, two research assistants examined the data and

categorized the types of accommodation strategies. Ulti-

mately, the inter-rater reliability of tagging distinct types of

accommodation strategies was 98.1 %.

Corpus Results and Discussion

Frequently Used Accommodation Strategiesand Their Linguistic Features

The transcripts gathered from the five EMI teachers were

tagged into different types of accommodation strategies.

Table 1 Backgrounds of the teachers

Teachers Gender Country

(where PhD

was earned)

Teaching

experience

Teacher A Male Taiwan 3 years

Teacher B Male Japan 3 years

Teacher C Male UK 13 years

Teacher D Female France 4 years

Teacher E Male USA 11 years

Y.-R. Tsai, W. Tsou

123

Modified based on the classifications of Leech and Svartvik

(1975) as well as Yorkey (1982), the most frequently used

strategies in teachers’ monologs and interactions with

students were marked and calculated by CorpusTool. Six

main types of accommodation strategy shown in Table 2

were identified. These six strategies were also related to the

features and functions of the often applied discourse

strategies found in previous studies (Bjorkman 2011;

Knapp 2011; Mauranen 2009).

The total count of strategies applied by all the teachers

in the EMI ELF classroom was 1,582. The percentage of

strategy used by each teacher is shown in Table 3.

As presented in Table 3, eliciting (57.07 %) and

emphasizing (37.88 %) strategies were most frequently

employed by these teachers. With respect to the portion of

each strategy, the eliciting strategy was the most com-

monly used among all strategies, comprising 903 units out

of 1,582. The second most used strategy was the empha-

sizing strategy (599 units out of 1,582). In Table 3, salient

results show that all five teachers applied strategies to a

certain extent. Teachers A, B, and C applied emphasizing

strategy (37.88 %), eliciting (27.24 %), and listing strategy

(48.00 %) as the most frequent one, in contrast to Teachers

D and E who used introducing strategy (32.38 %) as their

primary strategy during lecturing. Reasons for the different

applications of these strategies will be discussed in the

interview result section.

To obtain a complete picture of these two most applied

strategies, WordSmith tool was employed to further

investigate the linguistic features of lexicons and syntactic

structures. The finding indicated that the linguistic com-

ponents of the eliciting strategy were related to the

arrangement of sentential structures and concordance of

words. These features are shown in Table 4.

The sentential level included instances of tenses and wh-

interrogative (e.g., wh- and how-). Specifically, the use of

synonyms in a wh-interrogative clause and the combination

of the wh-interrogative, adjectives, and verbs were the

main features found in lexical level. The related excerpts of

the eliciting strategy are presented in Table 5.

Referring to the results shown in Table 5, it seems that

the tense and sentence structures of wh-interrogative were

not the grammar to be focused on ((a) What is Acer tryingto do in 1998? and (b) Originally they are produce what?).

Table 2 Types of accommodation strategy by the EMI instructors

Types Functions Examples

Introducing Used at the beginning of a lecture or introducing a new concept,

for the purpose of triggering background knowledge and

indicating the structure of ideas that will be taught later

Would like to say something about; so let’s take look of; let’s

take a very careful attention on; we will just go directly to

discuss; ask you to move to; let’s start with…

Defining Words that function by giving explanations with specific

meanings, a concept, or a corresponding term

X, which is; That means…; that is; X is a kind of…; X is the so

called is Y; X means that

Listing Used for listing or numbering separate ideas, in sequential

order. The purpose is to connect each point in order

The first one is; First of all; the other one is; the second point;

the second step is; Last

Eliciting Used to give guidance for further thinking and provide questions

to help students find solutions, for the purpose of figuring out

certain concepts

What was X?; What is X, (students’ names)?; X called what?;

What does it mean?; What do you expect?; What choice you

want to…?; What do you think about X?; What was X of Y?

Giving

examples

Used for supporting concepts in order to make a connection to

previously discussed concepts

I will give you an example; for example, like X; such as X; likeX, right?; for example, if…

Emphasizing Used to highlight important ideas or concepts and drawing

students’ attention to significant points

Emphasize on what? Very, very focus on X; the core X;especially, remember that…; X is very important; ok, make

sure that…

Table 3 The distribution of strategies

Total strategy = 1,582 Total A B C D E

% for each teacher 24.40 20.29 18.58 13.15 16.12

Introducing 6.64 6.67 7.62 20.95 32.38 32.38

Defining 5.37 3.35 17.65 17.65 29.41 31.76

Listing 4.74 8.00 1.33 48.00 16.00 26.67

Eliciting 57.07 32.00 27.24 17.39 7.35 15.84

Giving examples 6.64 5.71 20.00 27.62 28.57 18.10

Emphasizing 37.88 37.88 15.15 17.68 19.70 9.60

Accommodation Strategies by Non-native EMI Teachers

123

In these cases, the teachers chose to use features commonly

used in spoken discourse such as applying the present tense

instead of past to represent something that happened

before. Regardless of whether the patterns were the result

of teachers’ negligence or adjustment of language due to

learners’ English proficiency, it seems that these linguistic

variations did not result in misunderstanding.

The linguistic features of the emphasizing strategy are

presented in Table 6.

Keyword application was the most common means of

conveying important concepts in this study. A distinct

lexicon followed by a noun was a salient feature in

emphasizing strategy. The most frequent pattern regarding

the keyword application was a combination of one word

with the meaning of emphasis in semantics and a noun. The

noun was usually something that needed to be emphasized

in the lecture. Herein, linguistically, important + noun

(34.7 %) was the most common pattern applied by the five

teachers. It seems that “important” was the word more

accessibly applied than other keywords (e.g., key, core, and

highlight) in the current study. Moreover, focus on + noun

(9.69 %), especially (8.16 %), and remember (8.67 %) were

the next most frequently used patterns in the category of

keyword application. This result suggests that there were

variations in the use of lexicons for the emphasizing

strategy.

Furthermore, repetition and synonym were two other

linguistic features found in the emphasizing strategy. It

seems that repeating lexicons or sentences was of benefit

for audiences while they were listening to lectures or

engaging in a conversation with teachers. Specifically,

using synonyms seemed to be a linguistic feature found in

both eliciting and emphasizing strategies. The teachers of

the current study had a tendency of using synonyms when

asking questions or focusing on some issues during a dis-

cussion. Although the percentage of using synonyms was

not large enough to be the main features in the two strat-

egies, it could be viewed as a useful way for eliciting and

emphasizing.

Common Language Clusters Used by Taiwanese Teachers

To examine the commonly used language clusters of the

classroom discourse, the verbal data recorded were catego-

rized into two groups: utterances of interacting with students

and teachers’ monologs. Through the analyses ofWordSmith,

ten most frequently used clusters were found for each group

and eight of them overlapped (Table 7). The most frequent

three-word clusters for both groups are What (s) is the, this isthe, and that’s the. When further examined, the research found

that these frequently used clusters were mostly related to the

functions of eliciting and defining concepts.

It is interesting to compare this finding with that of the

previous studies. Mauranen (2010a) conducted a similar

study with the data in a corpus called ELF in Academic

Settings (ELFA) including lectures, discussions, and pre-

sentations by teachers and students and found five lexical

bundles (I don’t know, I think that, one of the, a lot of, and youhave to) frequently employed by ELF users in Europe. Of

Table 4 Linguistic features of the eliciting strategy

%

Sentential level

Ignoring the tense 0.22

A verb + wh-interrogative 0.11

wh-Interrogative (in terminal places of a sentence) 6.19

Lexical level

Use synonyms in wh-interrogative clause 0.22

wh-Interrogative + an adjective + verb 0.11

Table 5 Excerpts for linguistic features of the eliciting strategy

Examples

Sentential level

Ignoring the tense (a) What is Acer trying to do in 1998?

(b) Originally they are produce what?

A verb + wh-interrogative (c) Decide whether it should move to China. Move what?

wh-Interrogative (in terminal places of a sentence) (d) We are talking about a lot of strategies, but strategy on what?

(e) Survey for what?

(f) Directly to the customer through what?

(g) Ford was trying to imitate some DELL’s what?

(h) Originally they are produce what?

Lexical level

Use synonyms in a wh-interrogative clause (i) What kind of strategy, what kind of core competency is they had?

(j) in this situation, how do you deal with this situation, this case, this event?

wh-Interrogative + an adjective + verb (k) what kind of relationships when very important will build in your products?

Y.-R. Tsai, W. Tsou

123

the five, only the cluster One of the appears in the current

study. Moreover, clusters you want to (27 times) in the

current study and you have to in Mauranen’s seem to share

similar functions, containing meanings of suggestions or

assumptions in communication with interlocutors. Conse-

quently, the comparison of the two studies suggests that the

five Taiwanese EMI teachers had a tendency to apply lexical

bundles with interrogatory meaning much more often than

the ELF users in European academia. This finding extended

the previous work on language clusters by showing the

characteristic of Taiwanese EMI lectures in using more

interrogative clusters for eliciting and defining concepts.

Interview Results and Discussion

Investigating the functions and situations behind accom-

modation strategies was the aim of the interviews. Dis-

cussions based on the results of the interviews can provide

insights into the strategy application of the teachers and be

further used for triangulating the quantitative findings of

the study. The circumstances that related to the five

teachers’ decisions on applying different accommodation

strategies were as follows: content difficulty, students’

language proficiency, student feedback, and appropriate

English in expression.

Content Difficulty

Content difficulty was one of the conditions that led to

different strategy applications. Four teachers revealed that

content difficulty did influence the choices of their accom-

modation strategy. Teacher A believed that changing ways

of asking questions from the easiest to the most difficult was

an efficient strategy when dealing with different levels of

subject matters. Teachers A, B, and C pointed out that if the

content consisted of an abstract concept, giving examples

and eliciting strategy were the two main patterns used both

in the discussion and teacher monolog.

Students’ Language Proficiency

Students’ linguistic competence was another critical situ-

ation where teachers employed the use of accommodation

strategies. The eliciting strategy was commonly used with

both high and low language proficiency students. None-

theless, the expressive ways were different when treating

the two types of students.

All the five teachers indicated that the eliciting strategy

was frequently used for students with high English profi-

ciency since they had sufficient language ability to express

opinions explicitly. However, owing to some of the stu-

dents’ lack of logical thinking, teachers needed to keep

asking questions from the easiest to the most difficult ones

for the purpose of helping them organize ideas consistently.

Additionally, the language itself, for instance selection of

lexicons and syntax, did not need to be modified for those

students with advanced language level.

Nevertheless, more language assistance was needed for

students of lower language ability. The assistance included

using repeating words and sentential structures, para-

phrasing, speaking slowly, seeking help from other stu-

dents, eliciting different points of view to a question, and

capturing keywords. Repeating with keywords was used to

emphasize important concepts. Similarly, paraphrasing

with simple language performed the same function as

repeating. These instructors also used eliciting strategy

Table 6 Linguistic features of the emphasizing strategy

%

Key-word application

Important + noun 34.7

Focus on (+noun) 9.69

Remember 8.67

Especially 8.16

Highlight + noun 1.02

Core + noun 1.02

Key + noun 1.02

Emphasize that…/on… 1.02

Not only…but also… 1.02

The point 1.02

Attention on + noun 0.51

Indeed 0.51

Make sure that… 0.51

So this is the reason… 0.51

Let me say it again 0.51

Repetition

Lexicon 7.14

Sentence 19.90

Synonyms 2.04

Table 7 Frequent clusters of accommodation strategy found in this

study

Monolog Frequency Interaction Frequency

1 What is the 56 What is the 59

2 This is the 43 This is the 54

3 What’s the 34 Of the company 41

4 That’s the 33 That’s the 38

5 You know the 30 Look at the 36

6 Look at the 30 What’s the 36

7 The first one 27 The cost of 34

8 You know the 27 You know the 33

9 Cost of capital 26 We have the 31

10 One of the 25 One of the 31

Accommodation Strategies by Non-native EMI Teachers

123

such as asking questions from different viewpoints to help

associate known concepts to new perspectives with stu-

dents of lower language proficiency.

When There was no Feedback from Students

When encountering situations with no feedback from stu-

dents, Teacher C indicated that letting it pass for the first

time was sometimes used for students who were frequently

not well prepared before class. Additionally, all the teachers

revealed that assigning homework was a useful means of

helping students review and engage in further thinking at

home. Group discussion was also commonly held for stu-

dents to receive help from more advanced peers. Teachers C

and D added that they used multiple-choice or Yes/No

questions instead of open-ended questions when students

had confused facial expressions. Moreover, giving hints

about questions was another effective approach. Teachers C,

D, and E all agreed that synonyms were considerably

advantageous to elicit student feedback. Finally, if there was

still no appropriate answer from learners after applying the

above strategies, teachers would skip the issue or question

and defer it to the next class. In a following course, the

teachers could use introducing, defining, eliciting, and giv-

ing examples strategy as the primary approaches again to

encourage student participation. In sum, the suggested

strategies to use when no student feedback was provided

could be giving examples, eliciting with different expres-

sions, paraphrasing with simple words or sentences,

repeating, eliciting using simple to difficult questions, and

inviting other students to respond.

When There were no Appropriate English Wordsto Use in Explanation

When the teachers could not immediately produce the

appropriate English words to express certain ideas, eliciting

strategy was the most favorable approach. For instance, the

teachers usually invited students’ explanations using the

following expressions “It’s hard to say…, could you/any-

one explain it for me?” “How to say… (Chinese) in Eng-

lish?” and “What do I mean? In Chinese, we call this as….”

Teacher A mentioned that these questions could help him

buy some thinking time. Additionally, following the elic-

iting strategy the teachers would paraphrase student

explanations and provide supporting explanations.

Conclusion

\The present study aimed to contribute the findings of

authentic expressions and functions used by ELF speakers in

a Taiwanese academic setting. Regarding accommodation

strategies primarily employed by Taiwanese teachers in

EMI courses, six types of strategy were demonstrated in

terms of corpus analysis. The eliciting strategy was the

most applied strategy and the emphasizing strategy was the

second most frequent one. Concerning the circumstances

for strategy application, the result indicated four types of

situation: content difficulty, students’ language proficiency,

feedback from students, and the appropriate English words

to use. The main approaches for dealing with these prob-

lems in communication were again eliciting and empha-

sizing strategies. Additionally, these five Taiwanese EMI

instructors not only adopted accommodation strategies in

their EMI courses but also believed that they gained

positive feedback from the students because of such

applications.

Furthermore, based on the analyses of the corpus data

collected by this study, the top-ten language clusters fre-

quently produced by the five EMI teachers in an ELF

context include what is the, this is the, what’s the, that’s the,you know the, look at the, the first one, you know the, cost ofcapital, and one of the. These three-word bundles produced

by the five EMI instructors were related to the functions of

eliciting and defining concepts. This result was also com-

pared with that of the European data of previous study, and

the finding suggested that the five Taiwanese EMI teachers

had a tendency to apply lexical bundles with interrogatory

meaning much more often than the ELF users in European

academia.

In sum, this study explored and analyzed the accom-

modation strategies applied by EMI instructors in ELF

classrooms. The results complement findings from earlier

studies on the tendency and types of accommodation

strategies applied by ELF users. The findings shed new

light on the improvement of effectiveness and efficiency in

classroom discourses for both teacher instruction in EMI

courses and for those who are preparing for teaching

international students in ELF contexts.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

Although the results are beneficial to EMI instructors to a

certain extent, it is important to acknowledge some limi-

tations. First, since this is not a large-scale investigation,

the results about the types and patterns of accommodation

strategy may not be able to represent all non-native EMI

instructors, and can be interpreted only as reporting the

tendencies of the observed Taiwanese instructors’ oral

usage of strategies in the chosen context. Additionally, the

result based on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative

study might be influenced by each teacher’s divergent

personal teaching style, rationale, and usage of English.

Furthermore, only analyzing the teachers’ linguistic fea-

tures and not compiling learners’ oral output may cause

Y.-R. Tsai, W. Tsou

123

failure to capture the complete pictures of classroom

interactions. Since interlocutors’ spoken language may be

adjusted based on the produced responses, analyzing stu-

dent quantitative data or conducting interviews with them

may be necessary in order to explore other possible vari-

ables of usage in ELF EMI settings.

To provide possible solutions for the limitations of the

current research, three suggestions for future studies are

suggested. First, future studies can focus on accommoda-

tion strategies applied by both teachers and students from

the same EMI courses. Therefore, conducting interviews

with both ELF students and EMI teachers would be nec-

essary. Second, more analysis of linguistic features can be

added in the analysis of accommodation strategy; for

example, pronunciation, lexicons, syntactic structures, and

body language. Longer duration of the classroom obser-

vations could also be recorded for the purpose of collecting

large quantities of data for more profound linguistic anal-

yses. Finally, future studies could aim to compile a

teachers’ guidebook about efficient accommodation strat-

egies that can be applied according to different types of

situations or student feedback. The guidebook could serve

as a reference, contributing to student teachers, current

EMI teachers, and international students.

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