English-medium instruction (EMI) courses that are expected to raise students’ English proficiency, content knowledge, and intercultural awareness have become more common in Japanese higher education institutions (HEIs) (Galloway et al., 2017). With the implementation of 10-year post-pandemic policies that are intended to increase the number of international students studying at Japanese universities and Japanese students going abroad, EMI courses are necessary to accommodate international students who may not have acquired Japanese language skills to study at Japanese HEIs and to prepare Japanese students with intercultural communication skills and English proficiency skills for studying abroad (Goh et al., 2024). The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experience of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers (N = 4) at a private university in the Kansai region of Japan who have been teaching an EMI course on Japanese culture and university students (N = 19) who have taken the course on their home culture. The critical multicultural learning objectives of the course were based on three levels of learning about culture: cultural knowledge, cultural self-awareness (intracultural learning), and cultural competence (intercultural learning). The findings were framed, analyzed, and interpreted within critical multiculturalism, which aims to transform EFL learners into critical cultural beings with multiple intercultural identities that are grounded in their home culture (Zhang & Lütge, 2023). The students said that having access to resources in English about their culture provided a different perspective of observing their home culture. The students who were planning on studying abroad noted that knowing about Japanese culture in English would help them to explain their culture to people overseas when they discussed issues concerning the target and international cultures. The teachers in this study realized that teaching EMI courses on Japanese culture encouraged students to become researchers and representatives of Japanese culture as an insider and outsider.
Marian WANG (Tue,) studied this question.