Research
Faculty Conference Presentation: Exploring Cognitive Discourse Functions and Semantic Waves across Japanese EMI Classrooms – Dr. Mark Antony de Boer
On May 8th, Dr. Mark Antony de Boer, Assistant Professor in AIU’s English for Academic Purposes Program, presented at the 2nd National Conference on Bilingual Teaching: Disciplinary languages in the bilingual classroom of English, French and German, organised by the Faculty of Education and the Interdisciplinary Research Group in Specific Didactics. The conference was held at the Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM). Spain on May 8th and 9th, 2025, and this event brought together more than a hundred participants; teachers, researchers and students, with the aim of promoting the understanding and implementation of bilingual teaching from an innovative and research-based perspective.?
Presentation Title and Overview
The title of his presentation was Exploring Cognitive Discourse Functions and Semantic Waves?across Japanese EMI Classrooms, which examined the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of teaching in EMI classrooms using data from the collaborative research carried out in the fall of 2024 at AIU with visiting researcher Dr. Natalia Evnitskaya from Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Spain. The presentation examined classroom data from EMI teachers at AIU, in terms of how the teachers used Cognitive Discourse Functions and semantic waves to scaffold students’ understanding of disciplinary knowledge. The analysis shows that teachers’ pedagogical approach across their lessons were different in their degree of unpacking dense and abstract concepts to scaffold students’ understanding (providing context and illustrative examples, using everyday language, etc).
About the Conference
The importance of this conference and presentation is reflected in the words of María del Carmen Balsas, Director General of Human Resources, Educational Planning and Innovation of the Regional Ministry of Education of the Region of Murcia, who highlighted the educational nature of this conference: ‘Bilingual teaching is not only about knowing languages, it goes much further; you need to know strategies to teach the subject in another language, and that is why these conferences are essential to prepare innovative teachers’. She highlighted the fact that more than 70 of the attendees are teachers from schools in the region, which reinforces the connection between the university and the education system.
The conference is part of the Cycle of Scientific Conferences and Seminars of the UCAM Research Plan and aims to promote an approach that effectively combines language and content, to train teachers in the use of the target language, to identify good practices, to promote research in bilingual teaching and to facilitate spaces for reflection and collaboration between professionals in the field of education.
The impacts of research like this certainly are highly relevant for the teaching and for the professional development in AIU, how we connect with teachers throughout Japan, and?how we can contribute to the change in education.