Strategies to Enhance Comprehension in EMI Lectures Examples from the Italian Context

Fifteen years after EMI was introduced in Italy, the need was felt for \r\na review of studies outlining the critical issues involved and addressing \r\nproblems relating to students’ comprehension of lectures and to ways of \r\nimproving understanding as one of the main issues affecting the quality of \r\nthe learning experience in English-taught programmes. Comprehension is \r\nan essential pre-requisite for the acquisition of competence in any language (Krashen, 1987), and in EMI the fact that an L2 is used as the \r\nmedium for the transmission of disciplinary content to students makes \r\ncomprehension even more relevant. It was decided to start our reflection \r\non comprehension-related issues by providing information on the Italian \r\ncontext since the rapid spread of EMI in Italy has not been guided either \r\nby language policies or by dedicated funding. For this reason, this chapter will present an overview of strategies that enhance comprehension in \r\nEMI lectures and will then introduce the context of study by discussing \r\nthe research carried out on EMI in Italy and illustrating how some of the \r\ncomprehension-enhancing strategies evidenced in the literature have been \r\napplied in Italy with the help of discursive examples taken from lectures \r\nin Italian universities.