Policy from below: Chinese international students’ language ideologies in English-medium instruction (EMI) programs in Malaysia

Emerging as an international education hub in Southeast Asia, Malaysia has become a distinctive research context for English-medium instruction (EMI) studies. While numerous studies have highlighted a lack of explicit EMI policies in Malaysia, little attention has been paid to the implementation of EMI from end-users’ perspectives. Employing a bottom-up approach, this study explored Chinese international students’ language ideologies in terms of the norm and the sole/mixed use of English in Malaysia’s EMI programs. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with nine participants from diverse disciplinary backgrounds at a prestigious university. As for the norm of English, while participants held an ideological belief in native varieties as the standard form, they displayed a pragmatic shift towards English as a lingua franca (ELF) by highlighting the significance of intelligibility. Regarding the use of English, although the sole use of English ensured equitable classroom participation, Chinese international students viewed Chinese as a crucial facilitator in knowledge acquisition. As for Malay, despite institutional requirements, it occupied only a peripheral role as a formality in practice. Exploring these language ideologies helps us understand students’ agency in developing bottom-up language practices to justify and safeguard their interests when negotiating ambiguous top-down EMI policies.