Research
New Faculty Collaborative Publication: Disciplinary Knowledge-Building in EMI Classroom Interaction: A Multi-Framework Approach – Dr. Mark Antony de Boer & Dr. Natalia Evnitskaya
Dr. Mark Antony de Boer, Assistant Professor in AIU’s English for Academic Purposes Program, along with Dr. Natalia Evnitskaya of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Spain, have published an article in Classroom Discourse.
Abstract and Link
Disciplinary Knowledge-Building in EMI Classroom Interaction: A Multi-Framework Approach
This study examines disciplinary knowledge-building in classroom interaction in a 3rd-year English-medium instruction (EMI) chemistry classroom in a Japanese university. It uses a multi-framework analytical approach, which integrates the construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs), a multimodal conversation analytic approach to classroom interaction, and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimension of Semantics, more specifically the concepts of unpacking/repacking, semantic gravity, and semantic density. The fine-grained analysis demonstrates that knowledge-building is accomplished through the coordinated interplay of CDF sequences, multimodal resources (talk, gestures, inscriptions on the whiteboard), and the processes of knowledge unpacking, all of which enact dynamic shifts in semantic gravity and semantic density. The study contributes methodologically to EMI research by demonstrating the value of the multi-framework approach to knowledge-building in classroom interaction. It also contributes theoretically to LCT by providing a revisualised representation of the notion of the semantic plane and by further reconceptualising unpacking as a multidirectional process across levels of abstraction. It further offers more dynamic models of semantic movement as multiple, non-linear pathways, each of which might contain local repacking moves. The study concludes with a series of implications for EMI practice and teacher education.
Keywords : English as a Medium of Instruction, Cognitive Discourse Functions, multimodality, Legitimation Code Theory dimension of Semantics, unpacking, conversation analysis
This research in part was done while Dr. Evnitskaya was on AIU campus for a Research Stay in Fall 2024.