English Medium Instruction for Electrical Engineering Education: A Focus on Physical Computing

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the English Medium Instruction (EMI) model on elementary school students' engineering learning and English proficiency and to examine their EMI learning experiences. Accordingly, a true experimental design with a pretest and posttest was adopted. Thirty elementary school students participating in a winter camp were recruited and randomly assigned to two experimental groups: EMI and semi-EMI. The students in the EMI group received engineering instruction delivered in English; those in the semi-EMI group received only English-based engineering learning materials, but the lectures were in Chinese. The quantitative results revealed that the students' acquisition of engineering (programming and electrical engineering) content knowledge and their English proficiency were significantly improved under the EMI model. In addition, the qualitative results indicated that positive learning attitudes might enable students to excel in EMI learning scenarios.