Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in higher education: The use of a CLIL conceptual tool for research into a university elective course

Abstract

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has a history of a little over thirty years and has been proposed as an approach which supports the learning of content, a second language (L2) and learning skills. It is also an approach that has been used and researched over all three levels of education: primary, secondary and tertiary which, for the purposes of this article, will be referred to as higher education (HE). However, over the past decade there have been voices which question the validity of CLIL as an approach to be used in HE for the teaching of subjects taught in English to students whose first language (L1) is not English. Instead alternatives such a English Medium Instruction or English Medium Education have been proposed. In this article, I argue that CLIL still has a role to play in HE and that over its history conceptualizations useful for SLA teachers have been proposed that are equally productive for researchers into the field, including those inquiring into HE. In the first part of the article, a description of CLIL is given followed by examples of how it has been used in HE. After this, English Medium Instruction is presented and what it proposes that is an alternative to CLIL. The article finishes with a description of a research project in HE instigated by this author, in which a CLIL conceptualization was used as a research tool.