IntroductionEnglish-Medium Instruction in Japanese Higher EducationKeywords： English-medium instruction （EMI）, semi-structured EMI program, task difficulty, qualitative case study, higher education in Japan 【Abstract】 This study explored student experiences with the difficulty of classroom tasks during English-medium instruction （EMI） and provides insights that can inform more effective pedagogical practices and student support systems. Employing an interview-based case study approach, this study highlights contextualized student experiences, thus aligning with calls for more context-specific approaches in EMI research. The study focused on EMI students at a leading private university in Japan. Eight undergraduate students were interviewed, with six scoring in the low to mid-500s on the TOEFL ITP and two scoring around 600. Qualitative content analysis was applied using a data-driven summarizing strategy, with a focus on students’ specific difficulties, the underlying causes, strategies employed, and desired support across different EMI phases （pre-class reading, lectures, class and group discussions, presentations, and written assignments）. These were categorized as language-related, content, or based on other factors. Our findings illustrated that while proficiency issues do influence EMI task performance, academic content difficulty, time constraints, and busy schedules emerged as critical contributors to task difficulty. These findings provide valuable insights into student challenges in this specific EMI context but may be transferable to similar settings. Support strategies such as breaking up long monologues and incorporating understanding checks, for example, may also be relevant to broader EMI contexts. 1Today, universities around the world offer English-medium instruction （EMI） courses as part of their internationalization strategies as they become more competitive both domestically and internationally （Bradford & Brown, 2017）. EMI refers to “the use of the English language to teach academic subjects （other than English itself） in countries or jurisdictions where the first language of the majority of the population is not English” （Macaro et al., 2018, p. 37）. In line with the global trend, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology （MEXT） took the initiative, and the Top Global University Project was launched in 2014, which offered prioritized support to participating universities that could lead the internationalization of Japanese universities （Hino, 2017; Ota, 2018）. In response to the Akiko KIYOTA, Shuhei KUDOStudent Voices on Challenges and Support in English-Medium Instruction: A Case Study from the Department of English Language and Literature
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