Impact of EMI policy on the academic result of BRAC university freshers: students’ and teachers’ perception

Abstract

This paper was an attempt to find out the impact of EMI policy on the academic resultof BRAC University freshers on the basis of the teachers and student’s perception.According to Islam (2013), English Medium Instruction (EMI) has been established as a big educational issue at university tertiary level in Bangladesh as well as many parts of the world (p.127). After passing 12 years in Bengali medium schools and colleges, when the students get admitted into private universities, they are immerged into English language oriented contexts.This may lead the freshers towards gaining poor grades in their academic results. Hence, this paper is to find out whether there is an association between the poor examination results and EMI policy according to the teachers’ and students’ perspective. However, the research findings show that, majority of the freshers from BRAC University are facing problem to upgrade their academic result because of using EMI policy strictly in the classroom as well as in the examination. In addition, some teachers believe, due to EMI policy students face some problems initially, but there is no other way than accepting English as a medium of instruction to make the students able to cope up with the globalized world. However, at the same time, majority of the teacher says, a bilingual medium of instruction (using native language and English hand in hand) actually helps the students to study with interest and to have a good grasp over the content.