CLIL Workshop at Meijo University, Nagoya.

1st December saw the start of a two-day workshop on English language teaching at Meijo University. The coordinator was Philippa Coleman, a teacher at the University of Queensland, Australia. A group from AUE, Anthony Ryan, Anthony Robins and Taka Nagamine, joined the first day which was all about Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL).

CLIL was first proposed in Europe in the 1990’s to encourage a pluralistic view of language - so called ‘multilingualism’. It was introduced to Japan later, and it has only been a few years since it became popular. Philippa is an experienced English teacher and a teacher trainer who has travelled to many countries, and she has provided very insightful and practical ideas of what CLIL is and how it should be introduced to Higher Education including university.

The workshop itself was a demonstration of CLIL, namely, teaching content in another language. When it comes to teaching content, you might want to name English as a medium of instruction (EMI), but Philippa argued that it is clearly different as CLIL is a pedagogical/teaching method, not just a way of instruction. She also briefly touched upon the crucial ‘4Cs’ in CLIL - Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture. Plus, her practice at UQ includes 3 ‘pillars’, rather than the 4Cs - Content, Language, and Learning skills, which explain what abilities students would need for full understanding. If any of the three pillars collapse, CLIL would not work well in a classroom. The three pillars make it explicit what teachers expect students to gain; CLIL is for developing students’ understanding of the contents and the language, as well as effective learning skills.

However, it is easier said than done. The participants then discussed the difficulties in introducing CLIL to their institutions from perspectives of 1) Academics & Teaching, 2) Students & Learning, and 3) Institutions. We agreed that a majority of members at an institution should understand what CLIL is and what benefits everyone can receive. The possible barriers discussed were how people at administrative level understand CLIL, what is the appropriate level of English of teachers, and how we can raise students’ awareness of language.

The workshop seemed to be very successful, and I also learned a number of things. The most important thing may be that we have to consider the way we approach students, since  Japanese students are traditionally used to sitting in a lecture, taking notes very hard, and being all ears about what teachers say. In fact, I feel like there is nothing special needed in introducing CLIL - all we need is to think about is how we can get students involved actively, and how we can let them do things by themselves. Of course the name CLIL sounds very fancy and would be very useful to pick up a well-established theory when we have to change something. However, what we need to change is our attitudes - some of the lecturers, including the two gentlemen who were with me, have long done this!


Colleagues past and present. Yasuhiro Fujiwara and Tony Ryan with me at the
CLIL teacher training event at Meijo University on 1st December.

Find out about our CLIL Research in Hong Kong.