Enhancing EMI teacher education through research-informed training and accreditation at the University of Turin’s Language Centre (CLAUniTO)

This paper describes an English-Medium Instruction (EMI) training programme launched by the University of Turin’s Language Centre (CLA-UniTO) in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Languages, Literature and Modern Cultures. The programme offers a teacher professional development course leading up to the Open Badges «Certificate of Competence in EMI» (B2 or C1 level). The course consists of six three-hour meetings focused on language, teaching methodology, multimodal communication, and intercultural awareness, and concludes with participant-delivered mini-lectures that are formally assessed. Before the launch of this programme, EMI training at the University of Turin had developed in a relatively fragmented manner, with limited coordination across initiatives. The University had a four-year agreement with an external provider, The British Council, for EMI training. This was followed by one-to-one tutoring for lecturers organised by CLA-UniTO. The language centre also organised EMI training courses on request for individual departments. Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Languages, Literature and Modern Cultures was involved in the international projects TAEC (Erasmus+) and EMILC (Grant for Internationalisation, University of Turin) and periodically offered workshops and seminars. The initiative described in this article brings the department and the language centre together, meaning that training and accreditation are now provided exclusively in-house. We will suggest that this approach is preferable because it is more cost-effective, allows for more flexibility and adaptability to the specific needs of the university at a local level, enables ongoing progress tracking and awareness, and facilitates a research-informed approach to classroom practice.