Abstract
Empirical evaluations of practical teaching units integrating content and language in higher education are rare and deserve more attention. The current article aims to narrow this gap by providing an empirical study of an integrating content and language in higher education (ICLHE, Smit & Dafouz, 2012) teaching module. It investigates the effectiveness of a content-based English for specific purposes module in tertiary aeronautical engineering education, which incorporates recruitment advertisements as online resources. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach and surveyed three aeronautical engineering student groups (N = 141) over three consecutive years on their perceptions of the module’s learning outcomes. This longitudinal survey was complemented by a teacher-assessed writing task and a qualitative content analysis of online recruitment advertisements (N = 80) in a self-built corpus. All three year groups rated the 10 questionnaire statements on a 5-point Likert scale rather equally, thus suggesting a similar perception of academic achievement stemming from the module’s completion. This student view was supported by the results of the writing assignment. In short, the module’s effectiveness was corroborated both quantitatively and qualitatively, which identifies this teaching concept as a feasible way forward.
Highlights
Integrating content and language (ICL) has become a goal for many degree programmes in higher education (HE, Smit, & Dafouz, 2012)
A central issue is that of deskilling content and language teachers (Paran, 2010) when both content and language goals should be pursued in all courses because most university lecturers are experts in their academic fields but not in languages, whereas most tertiary language professionals have no deep knowledge of students’ disciplines and their respective subfields (AbelloContesse, 2013, p. 13, p. 17; Räisänen & Fortanet-Gómez, 2008, p. 48; Snow, Met, & Genesee, 1989, p. 214; Studer, Pelli-Ehrensperger, & Kelly, 2009, p. 13; Tatzl, 2011a, p. 261)
This study evaluates the ICLHE module’s effectiveness and validity in empirical terms to contribute to the research on content and language integrated teaching techniques in ESP/EAP
Summary
Integrating content and language (ICL) has become a goal for many degree programmes in higher education (HE, Smit, & Dafouz, 2012). 12-13; Baetens Beardsmore, 2009; Doiz, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2013; cf Bruton, 2011; Paran, 2013, for controversial aspects of content and language integrated learning [CLIL] at secondary level). Even native-speaking content teachers usually have not been educated in linguistics or the target language of instruction in foreign-medium degree programmes. It may be reasonable not to aim at full but partial integration of content and language objectives and find integration niches in single course units or modules.
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