Student support and teacher education in EAP and EMI: Two sides of the same coin?

In the ever-growing literature on English Medium Instruction (EMI), there is a dearth of information on the actual practices employed in language and literacy support for students as well as on practices in teacher education. In the available conceptual papers, there exists a noticeable absence of references to the domain of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), although this domain offers a rich set of theories and practices relating to student support and teacher education. The mutual lack of acknowledgement between EMI and EAP scholars may be underpinned by Macaro’s (2018) definition which makes a geographical distinction between EMI and EAP settings. This distinction may have led to the impression that EMI is a new phenomenon for which different pedagogic approaches need to be developed. In this paper, I first discuss Macaro’s definition and a recent defence of it (Rose et al 2021), before clarifying the fundamental principles of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and EAP, as these are sometimes misunderstood in EMI publications. I then discuss some of the EMI and EAP literature on student support and teacher education with the aim to show that the two domains share similar concerns and challenges and can therefore be seen as two sides of the same coin. Finally, I will argue that genre theory and genre pedagogy offer a useful framework for student support and teacher education that both EMI and EAP practitioners can draw on.