MULTILINGUAL QUESTIONING PRACTICES IN EMI UNIVERSITIES
INSIGHTS FROM THE TURKISH CONTEXT
Abstract
The rise of English-medium Instruction (EMI) has been evident in many countries. This study investigates questioning practices in classroom interaction at an EMI foundation university. The data gathered from classroom observations (i.e., in electrical and electronics engineering and computer engineering courses), stimulated recall (SR) sessions with two content instructors, and semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students revealed how interaction unfolds in a multilingual English- medium instruction (EMI) classroom setting in higher education (HE). The classroom data were transcribed using Conversation Analysis (CA), focusing on multimodality (Jefferson, 2004; Mondada, 2018). The SR sessions and semi-structured interviews were transcribed and coded employing Strauss and Corbin’s (1990, p. 61) coding scheme in MAXQDA (MAX Qualitative Data Analysis). Based on questioning practices in classroom observations, the relationship among the question types of three categories, namely, form (i.e., closed and open-ended), content (i.e., facts, reason-explanation, opinion), and purpose (i.e., referential, display, rhetorical), was presented with visual and statistical data (Dalton- Puffer, 2006; Vivekmetakorn; Thamma, 2015). The findings revealed differences between the questioning practices of lecturers whose first languages differed. Both lecturers displayed translanguaging practices during classroom observations to facilitate meaning- making and create content knowledge, using instructional strategies. Student-initiated questions and undergraduate students’ insights about the EMI setting were also analyzed. The study’s findings reveal that translanguaging served not only as a linguistic resource but also as a pedagogical strategy, enabling clarification of complex engineering concepts and supporting student engagement. These findings have implications for a deeper understanding of face-to-face EMI classroom interaction, with a particular focus on the translanguaging and questioning practices of instructors and undergraduate engineering students.
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