Teaching Methods and Approaches: Looking into a Unique CLIL Classroom in Germany

Abstract

In the wake of globalisation, methods and approaches designed to teach content-subjects using a second or foreign language, often English, spread across the global educational landscape (Marsh 2006). Regions or countries such as Hong Kong (Wannagat 2007) and Indonesia (Ibrahim 2001) have adapted English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) to their curriculum and distinct local situations. Within the wider context of EMI, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) can be understood as a specific, European alternative provision (Marsh 2006; Wannagat 2007), which is also related to the North American immersion programmes launched in Canada during the 1960s (Elsner and Keßler 2013). CLIL, which has become increasingly popular in Europe, is usually defined as ‘a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language’ (Mehisto et al. 2008: 29). The amount of time allocated to teaching content subjects in another language is the major difference between immersion or EMI, on the one hand, and CLIL, on the other (Wannagat 2007). Immersion or English medium instruction (EMI) typically refers to 50 per cent or more of all subjects taught in the L2 (i.e. the foreign or second language), whereas CLIL-type education usually consists of less than 50 per cent, in usually one or two subjects alongside ordinary L2 classes (Mehisto et al. 2008; Wolff 2012).