Exploring and Assessing Effectiveness of English Medium Instruction Courses: The Students’ Perspectives

This paper investigates students’ perceptions of the English medium instruction courses at Southern Taiwan University of Science & Technology (STUST) in terms of their learning motivation, learning anxiety, and learning achievement. 157 students, including 93 local and 64 foreign students, participated in the study by completing a self-assessment questionnaire on EMI course taking experiences. A quantitative method was employed to analyze data, performing statistical procedures of descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, and Pearson correlation using SPSS 17.0. The major findings of the study are as follows: (1) most participants were motivated to take EMI courses to strengthen English ability and professional knowledge, (2) most participants agreed with the helpfulness of EMI courses, (3) interactions with students of other nationalities motivated learning, (4) major anxiety experienced by local students stemmed from self-perceived low English proficiency, (5) there exists significant reverse association between learning anxiety and achievement or motivation, and (6) there exists significant differences between local and international students in measures of motivation, anxiety, and achievement.