From teaching English to enabling learning through English
Jonny Western, Head of Program, New Initiatives & May Barbree, Academic Manager, Learning & Teaching School of English and University Pathways, RMIT Vietnam
Repositioning ELT expertise to support learning through English
As English takes on a more central role in education in Vietnam, an important transition is taking place. English is shifting from a subject that students learn to the language through which they are expected to learn other things.
For English language teaching (ELT) professionals, this raises an important question: What is the role of ELT expertise when students are learning through English rather than simply learning English?
This question becomes particularly important as Vietnam expands the role of English across its education system. The policy direction creates a need not only to develop English proficiency, but also to prepare educators to teach effectively through English.
One response might be to assume that English-medium instruction (EMI) readiness is primarily a question of language proficiency. Stronger English should produce more capable EMI teachers and more successful EMI learners. But proficiency is only part of the picture.
EMI readiness is more than English proficiency
Consider two educators:
One has C1 English proficiency but relies largely on traditional lectures, makes limited use of visuals, rarely checks students’ understanding and uses linguistically complex assessments.
Another has B2 English proficiency but structures explanations carefully, uses visuals regularly, stages activities, checks understanding frequently, creates purposeful opportunities for peer interaction and designs assessments that are linguistically accessible.
Which is better prepared to teach effectively through English?
The comparison is deliberately simplified, but it illustrates a wider point: language proficiency alone does not constitute EMI readiness.
Readiness also depends on pedagogical capability, disciplinary expertise and the institutional conditions supporting educators. This is where ELT expertise has considerable value.
ELT is not simply a field concerned with knowledge of English. It is a profession grounded in the practical problem of how to make learning possible through a language that learners do not yet completely control. Below, we’ll expand on three of many possible examples where English language teaching expertise can have a positive impact on a subject-specific teaching context.
1. Make disciplinary meaning accessible
Teaching complex content through English creates two simultaneous demands for learners: they need to process the disciplinary concept and the language through which it is being communicated. Poorly managed, these demands can compete with each other.
ELT practice offers a range of familiar responses: grading language without removing essential terminology, structuring explanations through chunking and sequencing, using signposting, combining spoken explanations with visual or written support, and managing cognitive load. The principle is to remove unnecessary linguistic difficulty while preserving disciplinary meaning, not to “make the English easier”
For example, a dense scientific explanation might be technically accurate but difficult for multilingual learners to process in real time:
The greenhouse effect refers to the phenomenon of incoming shortwave solar radiation being transmitted through the atmosphere...
An EMI lecturer does not necessarily need to remove specialist concepts such as solar radiation or atmosphere. Instead, the explanation can be restructured:
First, solar radiation enters Earth’s atmosphere. Some energy is reflected back towards space. Some is absorbed by the Earth and released again as heat. Greenhouse gases trap part of this outgoing heat, causing warming near the Earth’s surface.
The disciplinary content remains, but it is made more accessible via shorter syntactic units, clearer sequencing, stronger signposting and closer alignment between language and visual representation. These are routine considerations in language education. Application in EMI environments requires that they become part of disciplinary pedagogy.
2. Make understanding visible
A second contribution from ELT is the emphasis on finding evidence of what students actually understand.
A science teacher may finish an explanation by asking:
Does everyone understand?
The problem is that this produces almost no useful evidence.
Language educators have long used elicitation, targeted questioning, concept-checking questions, and instruction-checking questions to make learning more visible. The underlying principle is that students need opportunities to retrieve, generate, predict, apply or explain ideas rather than simply receive information.
Following an explanation of the greenhouse effect, for example, a teacher teaching science in English might ask:
After the Earth absorbs energy, does it emit energy again?
Do greenhouse gases reduce or increase the amount of energy escaping to space?
If less energy escapes, does the Earth tend to become warmer or cooler?
These questions are simple linguistically, but they target critical elements of the concept that allow for visibility of exactly which parts of the learning have and haven’t been successful.
More importantly, checking understanding only has value when the evidence influences what happens next. If responses reveal a misconception, the educator may need to re-explain, provide a different example, change the representation or give students further processing time.
The objective is therefore not simply questioning, it is responsive, intentional teaching based on evidence of learning.
3. Use English to support active learning
EMI can easily become interpreted as a relatively narrow requirement: the lecturer speaks English, the slides are in English, and therefore the course is English-medium. But if students primarily listen to somebody else speaking English, English may technically be the medium of instruction without necessarily becoming a medium of learning. ELT offers another useful principle here: language becomes meaningful when learners use it purposefully.
In disciplinary learning, that might involve students:
comparing competing interpretations
solving a problem
explaining a process
combining different pieces of information
predicting an outcome
justifying a decision
These activities require learners to use English as part of the process of constructing disciplinary understanding. They may also require scaffolding. Key terminology, sentence stems, guiding questions, model responses, or preparation time can reduce unnecessary linguistic difficulty while preserving the intellectual demand of the task. The goal is not to turn subject-specific lessons into English lessons, but rather to design conditions in which students can participate meaningfully in disciplinary learning through English.
Beyond classroom techniques
It would be equally limiting, however, to interpret ELT's contribution to EMI as simply giving lecturers a collection of teaching techniques.
Once English becomes a medium of learning, language becomes a design consideration across the educational system, not simply a student proficiency issue.
At the classroom level, ELT expertise can support accessible explanation, scaffolding, purposeful interaction, and checking understanding.
At the curriculum level, it can help identify the linguistic demands embedded within learning outcomes and tasks, distinguish essential disciplinary language from unnecessary complexity, and build language support into the curriculum rather than adding it afterwards.
Assessment raises particularly important questions. When students complete disciplinary assessment through English, what exactly are we measuring? ELT expertise can help educators distinguish between weak disciplinary understanding and difficulty expressing that understanding in English, consider the implications for construct validity, clarify when language should influence marks and identify avoidable linguistic barriers in assessment instructions.
Professional learning is another part of the picture. Sustainable EMI development is unlikely to come from expecting individual lecturers to work everything out themselves. Language-aware pedagogy, observation and feedback, coaching, co-design, communities of practice and practical institutional guidance can all contribute to developing capability over time.
Repositioning ELT expertise
None of these practices belong exclusively to ELT. Good disciplinary educators already use many of them. But ELT brings established expertise in teaching and supporting learning where language itself can create an additional barrier between students and the intended learning. That expertise can therefore have a wider role in EMI environments.
English language educators can increasingly operate not only as language providers, but also as:
learning specialists, supporting educators to make complex content accessible
curriculum and assessment partners, identifying where language affects access to and demonstration of learning
professional-learning specialists, helping educators develop language-aware pedagogy
institutional enablers, contributing to the systems and practices required for effective EMI implementation
This does not reduce the importance of language proficiency. Students and educators still need sufficient English to participate effectively in English-medium environments. It does suggest that increasing proficiency alone will not produce EMI readiness. A student can have relatively strong English and still find it difficult to learn complex material through that language. Likewise, a lecturer can possess both strong English and deep disciplinary expertise while still requiring support to make that expertise accessible to multilingual learners.
As English is shifting from being a subject to becoming a medium of learning in Vietnam, there is an opportunity for ELT to play a different role in education. We'll move from asking, 'How do we teach English effectively? towards 'How do we enable effective learning through English?', allowing ELT expertise to add new value in the next stage of English-medium education in Vietnam.
Jonny Western is the Head of Program, New Initiatives in the School of English & University Pathways at RMIT University Vietnam. He holds an MA in Educational Technology and has more than 15 years’ experience in English language teaching, academic leadership, and program development. His current work focuses on leading new academic initiatives through responsive program design, cross-functional collaboration, and quality enhancement. He is particularly interested in the pedagogically sound application of educational technology and AI, professional learning ecosystems, team development, and EMI sector engagement.
May Barbree is the Academic Manager, Learning & Teaching in the School of English & University Pathways at RMIT University Vietnam. She holds a Master of Education and is Cambridge DELTA qualified. With more than 15 years’ experience in English language teaching, teacher development, and academic management, she has worked across university and language education contexts in four countries. Her current work focuses on professional learning, teacher training strategy, and building sustainable models for practice-based scholarship. She is particularly interested in how teacher professional learning can support quality enhancement, institutional capability, and sector engagement in ELT and EMI contexts.