"No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?": The identity development of Chinese students in the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) program of a Japanese college

Abstract

English-Medium Instruction (EMI), supported by the Japanese government in undergraduate and graduate programs, has accelerated the dominance of English over Japanese among foreign students in Japanese colleges. The present study explored the identity development of Chinese students in an EMI undergraduate program in relation to students' longitudinal career development. Two Chinese EMI students' successive narratives over their four years of college life were transcribed and visualized in a Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM) diagram to identify their developmental trajectories and transitional events. To capture the transforming process of their identity, Dialogical Self Theory (DST) was employed. The findings illustrate how fluency in the Japanese language may help determine student identity as well as their career options after graduation.