Irish Expert Offers Pedagogical Solutions for STEM Lecturers Through Corpus Linguistics in Jakarta
JAKARTA – At the International Conference held in Jakarta on September 10, 2026, the discourse on enhancing the quality of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in higher education took center stage. The presentation, titled Corpus-Assisted Reflective Practice for STEM Lecturer Professional Development, highlighted existing pedagogical gaps while offering a technology-assisted professional development framework. The presence of Dr. Angela Farrell from the University of Limerick (UL), Ireland, as a principal speaker at this conference served not merely to disseminate research, but as a manifestation of the robust academic collaboration bridging two continents.
Global Profile and the Trajectory of Indonesia-Ireland Collaboration
Dr. Farrell’s involvement in Jakarta reinforces the international reputation of her home institution, which has fostered strong and expanding partnerships with various Indonesian universities since 2017. Her global expertise is deeply rooted in her role in facilitating the DIKTI PhD scholarship scheme across five Irish universities, as well as the DIKTI Bridging Programme, which mentored cohorts of Indonesian academics in 2022 and 2026. Dr. Farrell’s cross-disciplinary proficiency is evident in her capacity to guide delegates from diverse academic backgrounds, ranging from English Language and Literature, Politics, Performing Arts, Nursing, and Psychology, to Business, Science and Technology, and Computer Science.
Her international impact is further amplified through cross-border student and lecturer mobility initiatives. Her track record includes increasing the mobility of visiting scholars via the Erasmus ICM (International Credit Mobility) program, as well as organizing virtual exchanges and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). Within these programs, Irish and Indonesian students collaborate to address societal challenges and design public awareness campaigns for social media, establishing Dr. Farrell as a grounded and highly relevant global educator.
Core Insights: Transforming EMI Pedagogy in STEM
The core of her presentation focused on classroom-based research that combines Reflective Practice (RP) with Corpus Linguistics (CL) to assist Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) lecturers who are transitioning to teaching their subject disciplines through EMI. Drawing on empirical data from diverse contexts—including Iran, China, Algeria, and Indonesia—Dr. Farrell unraveled several critical challenges in current EMI implementation:
There are profound systemic tensions between government internationalization ambitions and the reality of lecturers’ linguistic capabilities, which are often inadequate for effectively delivering complex scientific content in English.
STEM lecturers frequently lack awareness of, or even resist, their dual role as both content and language teachers, resulting in an absence of specialized EMI pedagogical skills.
Data indicates that contemporary EMI classrooms remain heavily dominated by a teacher-centered approach, characterized by excessively high levels of lecturer talk and low student interaction.
The questions posed by lecturers are often non-strategic, dominated by “display questions” that merely demand factual recall rather than referential questions designed to stimulate deeper comprehension.
To address this pedagogical crisis, Dr. Farrell presented an innovative solution known as Corpus-Based Reflective Practice (CBRP). Through an intensive three-day workshop piloted with lecturers in Algeria, this approach proved highly effective. By utilizing evaluation frameworks such as the Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk (SETT) alongside authentic classroom recordings, lecturers were guided to explicitly “notice” their linguistic habits. Consequently, these STEM lecturers experienced heightened awareness regarding the importance of interactional strategies and were equipped to adopt a learner-centered teaching approach, thereby simultaneously facilitating both language and content comprehension.
Dr. Angela Farrell’s insights provide a urgently needed methodological foundation for Indonesian higher education institutions currently expanding their international class programs. By synthesizing data from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, this presentation affirms that the success of EMI relies not solely on policy directives, but on an institution’s commitment to equipping its educators with data-driven, reflective tools.