Prospective Teachers’ Perceptions of CLIL in Spain and Japan: Translingual Social Formation through EMI-CLIL Lectures

Abstract

English Medium of Instruction/Content and Language Integrated Learning (EMI-CLIL) is on the increase at the tertiary level. As for Japan, EMI has been promoted at university since the 2000s. In a previous study, Tsuchiya and Perez Murillo (Comparing the language policies and the students’ perceptions of CLIL in tertiary education in Spain and Japan. LACLIL, 8(1), 25–35, 2015) identified different rationales behind EMI lectures in Europe and Japan: in Europe, the strategy seems to be proactive to realise the EU’s multilingual policy, whereas in Japan, it is a more reactive strategy to provide professionals with English proficiency for economic purposes. In this chapter, we further investigate how prospective teachers frame the practices of EMI-CLIL, adapting the concept of transnational social transformation to the translingual context of EMI-CLIL (Duff, Transnationalism, multilingualism, and identity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 57–80, 2015; Vertovec, Transnationalism. London: Routledge, 2009). We report on a four-year research project of EMI-CLIL at a Spanish and a Japanese university, focusing on students’ use of languages in daily life and their perceptions of EMI-CLIL in the two sites, which are located in Madrid, Spain and Kanagawa, Japan. A questionnaire survey was conducted from 2013 to 2016 in both countries, and 500 respondents contributed to the study in total (408 students in Spain and 92 in Japan). The results from the students’ responses, which were obtained through a thematic analysis, show their ambivalent attitudes towards EMI-CLIL. On the one hand, they desire to be bi/multilinguals, but on the other, they are concerned about not knowing content in their mother tongues. There are also some differences in the attitudes to EMI-CLIL between the Japanese and Spanish students. Most of the Japanese respondents commented that EMI-CLIL improve their English skills, while the Spanish students tended to emphasise the importance of being plurilingual, relating to their experiences in bilingual schools and their future career as bilingual teachers. Their voices seem to reflect the diverse realities of EMI-CLIL in the distinct situations and the different translingual social formations in individuals.