CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND AI TOOLS FOR ACADEMIC ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT IN EMI CONTEXTS

Resumen

English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) has become a central strategy for the internationalization of higher education institutions, particularly in contexts where English is not the official language. However, EMI presents significant challenges for both students and teachers, including difficulties with specialized vocabulary, academic discourse conventions, listening comprehension, cognitive overload, communicative anxiety, and insufficient institutional and pedagogical support. This article discusses these challenges and proposes an integrated pedagogical approach based on Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) resources to support the development of academic communication skills in EMI environments. Drawing on literature from EMI, Corpus Linguistics, and Natural Language Processing, the study presents a set of freely available tools—including AntConc, ChatGPT, the Manchester Academic Phrasebank, MICUSP, Grammarly, QuillBot, and Text-to-Speech applications—and discusses their pedagogical applications for vocabulary acquisition, academic writing, paraphrasing, self-editing, oral communication, and rhetorical awareness. A step-by-step pedagogical sequence is proposed to guide learners from terminology identification to academic writing revision and oral presentation. The article also critically examines the limitations of these technologies, emphasizing the need for teacher guidance, corpus literacy, ethical AI use, and institutional support. It concludes that, although AI and corpus-based tools cannot replace systematic language instruction, they can significantly enhance academic communication in EMI contexts when integrated into carefully designed pedagogical practices.