Lecturer and student perceptions on CLIL at a Spanish university

Abstract

This study reports on a pilot implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at a Spanish university. In order to find out how both lecturers and students perceived their experience, several interviews and meetings took place with lecturers, and an open-ended questionnaire was passed to students. The meetings and interviews with lecturers yielded important information about their satisfaction. It was found out that lecturers were mostly interested in practising and improving their English spoken fluency, they did not feel that the quality of their teaching had been sacrificed, they had not included any question on language learning in their assessment and they showed great reluctance to receiving any CLIL methodological training. As to students’ reactions, analysis of their questionnaires revealed that most of them found the experience positive. Their self-reported perceived gains unanimously point to the specialised vocabulary they have learnt and, in the second place, to an improvement of their listening and speaking skills. The most outstanding negative aspect they found is lecturers’ insufficient level of English. CLIL training specially adapted to university teachers is necessary so that lecturers can overcome their reluctance to a methodological training and thereby the potential of CLIL is realised.