Challenges of using English as a medium of instruction in Tanzanian universities: a case of the university of Dodoma and st. John’s university of tanzania

ABSTRACT

This case study has investigated the challenges of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in Tanzanian universities particularly the linguistic difficulties, their causes and assessing its suitability. The study was conducted at the University of Dodoma (UDOM) and St. John‟s University of Tanzania (SJUT). It involved 110 science students and 22 lecturers. It employed a mixed research approach in which direct observation, semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis and questionnaires were utilized to collect data. The findings indicate that the use of EMI in Tanzanian universities faces a range of challenges of which the main is students and lecturers‟ low proficiency in English. This is due to the fact that both students and lecturers were found to encounter a number of linguistic difficulties which affect their productive and receptive skills and in turn the teaching-learning process. The difficulties include the use of codeswitching; wrong spellings; confusion of tenses; insufficient vocabulary; incorrect pronunciation and poor sentence construction. The causes of these difficulties include poor English language background; the influence of Kiswahili or Ethnic Community Languages (ECLs) and inadequate exposure to English. Despite the difficulties, more than half of the respondents (53.3%) were of the view that EMI is suitable in universities. Hence, the study recommends that there is a need for policy reform by either formalizing the use of both English and Kiswahili as it is what was observed to be happening; or declaring English to be the Language of Instruction (LoI) from nursery to tertiary levels.