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6 - Transition from Secondary School CLIL to Tertiary EMI

Theories and Realities

from Part I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 December 2025

Piotr Romanowski
Affiliation:
University of Warsaw
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Summary

When students make the transition from a secondary school environment (high school) to a tertiary (university) one, they are almost inevitably presented with a number of challenges. With the increasing use of English Medium Instruction (EMI), sometimes in both phases of education, the scale of those challenges is likely to increase. We first provide a theoretical account of those challenges and then exemplify them from the perspective of two different linguistic and geographical contexts: Italy and Hong Kong. We conclude that currently there is insufficient research on the transition between phases of education with regard to EMI.

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