Comparing the language policies and the students’ perceptions of CLIL in tertiary education in Spain and Japan

Keiko Tsuchiya; Maria D. Pérez Murillo

doi:10.5294/5091

Authors

Keiko Tsuchiya Author Tokai University
Maria D. Pérez Murillo Author The Complutense University of Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5294/5091

Keywords:

AICLE, educación terciaria, bi-/multilingüismo, España, Japón, percepciones de estudiantes sobre el AICLE.

Abstract

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) was widely implemented in the education system in Europe in the mid-1990s based on their multilingual education policy. CLIL integrates acquisition of subject knowledge with language learning, either a second or foreign language, simultaneously. Recently, CLIL in English has been introduced in higher education in Japan although its implementation is still at an early stage. This article aims to provide a brief overview of CLIL in higher education in Spain, which advances CLIL research, and in Japan in relation to the social economic rationales, and to investigate students’ perceptions of CLIL implementation in the two countries through questionnaire surveys.

The results show differences in social economic rationales of CLIL implementation in both countries: CLIL in Spain, on the one hand, is ‘proactive’ (Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010), adhering the bilingual and multilingual education policy in the European Union. In Japan, on the other hand, introduction of CLIL seems to be ‘reactive’ to provide human resources with English proficiency for its economic purposes. In terms of students’ perceptions, about a half of the respondents in both countries shows a positive view of CLIL at tertiary level.

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Author Biographies

Keiko Tsuchiya, Tokai University

Keiko Tsuchiya (PhD, Nottingham) is Associate Professor of the Foreign Language Centre at Tokai University, Japan, where she teaches intercultural communication, sociolinguistics and academic English. Her research interest includes multimodal corpus analysis, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and professional communication, especially in health care and business contexts. She is the author of Listenership Behaviours in Intercultural Encounters: A Time-aligned Multimodal Corpus Analysis (John Benjamins, 2013).

Maria D. Pérez Murillo, The Complutense University of Madrid

Maria D. Perez Murillo is Associate Professor at the School of Education, Complutense University in Madrid (Spain), where she is involved in undergraduate and postgraduate courses of training for prospective teachers. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Linguistics in the area of Bilingual Education from Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests include bi/multilingual classroom interaction, bi/multilingual teacher development and CLIL. Her recent publications focus on multilingual literacy (the uses of texts in the classroom) and the evaluation of a bilingual programme (the joint British-Council/Spanish Ministry of Education National Bilingual Project).

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