Abstract
A lesson in a psychology course given to university students is presented, using the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach. A total of 78 psychology freshmen college students participated in this experiment. All participants received four lessons in a regular university class. The lessons were about general concepts on psychological disorders. The lessons were taught in English. Different quantitative and qualitative aspects of content acquisition were assessed. In addition, attitudes about and motivation to participate in this bilingual learning practice at the university were evaluated. Results showed a high level of approval and motivation for this methodology, along with a significant assimilation of the content taught. In conclusion, intensifying interaction and diversifying of linguistic skills, as well as adjusting the lecturing time to match the students’ learning capacity and the professor’s second language proficiency, could potentially improve this CLIL experience.
Highlights
The integration of content and language is a thriving process for learning languages and has become a relevant issue in Spain but in other countries (Lasagabaster & Beloqui, 2015)
Some comments such as the following were included: (a) clearly negative attitudes toward the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) experience: “I do not think that only few English classes helps my training
In this article we have described an experience of teaching psychology content in English with university students according to the CLIL approach, recording content learned, acquisition of English, as well as participants’ motivation and expectations
Summary
The integration of content and language is a thriving process for learning languages and has become a relevant issue in Spain but in other countries (Lasagabaster & Beloqui, 2015). The methodological framework developed by Coyle (2006) established CLIL’s theoretical foundations as including the following four principles: content: students must learn content, and be active in their development (personalized learning); b) cognition: content and thought are closely related and thinking processes must be analysed in terms of their linguistic demands; c) communication: the language must be accessible, and interaction is essential for learning; d) culture: it is necessary to be aware of the close relationship between culture and language (contextualization).These principles, partially derived from Vygostky (1962), show that CLIL requires enriching the language input, making it meaningful; it needs a didactic approach based on scaffolding that will allow the learner to achieve their potential in the process of second language learning; it requires focusing teaching on the interaction; asserts the importance of the intercultural dimension in learning a foreign language All these tasks are intended to stimulate higher order cognitive activities
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