Teaching Language and Content in Multicultural and Multilingual Classrooms CLIL and EMI Approaches

With internationalization of education as the major driving force, English has played an important role in different fields of life, large number of programmes taught in English will inevitably continue to rise [1,2]. and many researchers of different spheres focus on English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teaching in secondary and higher education in the last three decades, and give recommendations and models for CLIL pedagogy [3,4]. However, the literature is not rich when it comes to teacher education or teacher training programs. The book, teaching language and content in multicultural and multilingual classrooms CLIL and EMI Approaches, makes up for this deficiency. This book collects 12 chapters based on theoretical and empirical research by 17 scholars from different countries around the world in the fields of language and teaching education. It explores the application of the two teaching approaches (CLIL and EMI) in different fields, giving readers a comprehensive understanding of the latest developments in this field, also advances research fundamentals in the field and supports the education of multilingual teaching better. In this book review, we first introduce each chapter briefly and then comment on the whole book from different perspective.

This book consists of an introduction, 12 research papers and a conclusion. The 12 chapters are divided into three parts as the main body of the book. In the introduction, the editors provide an overview of the book and give the brief descriptions of what each chapter contributes. The editors believe that CLIL and EMI are different and important approaches in foreign language teaching. As a collection of recent researches about CLIL and EMI, this book gives guidelines for teachers’ practice in foreign language teaching and has great significance of further advance research on teaching methodology in language education. Part I contains two chapters (Chapters2-3), Chapter 2 first gives the definitions of CLIL and EMI through literature review and then describes the differences and similarities between the concepts of CLIL and EMI alongside with the related research and findings about these two approaches. The similarity between this two approaches is that they are both forms of bilingual education, and the differences mainly reflect in two aspects: On the one hand, CLIL is an approach that involves language and content acquisition, including any foreign language learning and mainly used in primary and secondary schools, but EMI only refers to English learning and mainly used in universities; On the other hand, from the teacher’s perspective, both language and the subject content should be taught in CLIL, but in EMI, teachers only teach content speaking a foreign language, and typically EMI has “no explicit language learning aims” [5]. Chapter 3 surveys by interviewing the daily practice of experienced CLIL/EMI content lecturers of a university in Spain to investigate the nature of risk management in CLIL and EMI degree programmes. The result shows that lecturers are aware of integrating English in teaching can improve their teaching practice and beneficial to their teaching but the management relevant risk factors seem to go far beyond the mere learning of content.

Part Ⅱ consists of five chapters, mainly about EMI related studies. Chapter 4 open with the part, titled “EMI Lecturers’ and Students’ Perceptions: Can EMI contribute to enhancing intercultural competence?” explores the views held by local lecturers and students participating in the international EMI course with regard to their Intercultural Competence development and to what extent academic staff incorporates intercultural competenceenhancing practices. The findings show that EMI as a teaching approach has the potential of strengthening intercultural awareness of students and teachers. The next chapter, Chapter 5, examines to find out what extent teachers who have received instruction and training in pedagogical linguistics integrated language learning into the content-based lessons. Chapter 6 discusses how the internationalization of EMI in the setting of multilingual universities (EMEMUS) is developed under the context of Spanish universities by qualitative investigation. The results obtained clarify the role of EMI lecturer in the classroom and make recommendations for support and training to improve EMI practice. Chapter 7, by Z. Ter- Vardanyan, first reviews EMI methodologies in higher educational institutions in Armenia, then gives proposals and guidelines on how to enhance and improve EMI curriculum in the Business field through interviewing students and teachers in the discipline of Business and Economics. The last chapter of this part, Chapter 8, proves that using EMI approach can increase students’ writing confidence and improve their Second Language Writing.

Part Ⅲ also brings together five chapters mainly about CLIL studies, CLIL not only focuses on language but also content in the teaching and learning processes, it is an innovation of combining foreign language teaching and subject education together. Chapter 9 opens with this part, written by J. Ballester-Roca and C. Spaliviero, presenting literary and intercultural communication model, and a case study implemented in three secondary schools in northern Italy. The authors support the idea of combining with literary education and CLIL to improve intercultural content, stylistic and historical in foreign language teaching and learning. Chapter10, that follows, the author collects data through observation, questionnaires of students and analyzing linguistics autobiographies, explores CLIL from the perspectives of the students and the training teacher, contributing to establish the quality standards of CLIL training and provide strategies for language policies in the bilingual areas of Valencia. Chapter 11 introduces CLIL practices in the field of Computer Science at universities, the author contends that both content learning and language acquisition should be taken into consideration when developing CLIL syllabus and teaching objectives. Chapter12 is a survey addressed to some primary schools in Spain, analyzing the problems they faced when employing CLIL as well as their attitude towards this teaching approach with the goal of comparing the results of either trained or non-trained teachers in CLIL practices. Finally, the author, F. Alvarez-Gil, argues that it is need to provide teacher training course on CLIL teaching because this will ensure the achievement of teaching objectives. This part closes with Chapter13, the final chapter remains on the application of CLIL in the primary school. A corpus of 30 exam models was gathered with subjects including natural science and social science as a way of collecting data to examine the challenges of CLIL pedagogy in the classroom, assessment may be one of the most challenging and controversial features. Some related findings dedicate that the most assessed thinking skills correspond to the remember and understand categories in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. So, some possible ways are provided to reconsider CLIL methodology in the assessment tasks, along with how the teaching of low-order thinking skills may be expanded to the teaching of high-order thinking skills. In Conclusion part, by María Luisa Carrió-Pastor, gives a brief summary of the book and puts forward future research directions related to CLIL and EMI, the impacts of CLIL and EMI on the internationalization of different countries and the effect of the implementation of CLIL and EMI.

Overall, the book mainly reflects the following characteristics:

Firstly, it has big and unique contributions including showing the different advantages and disadvantages of EMI and CLIL, giving the evidence of successful use of EMI and CLIL at primary schools, secondary schools and universities, further, identifying the key points when implementing EMI and CLIL as well as the intercultural experiences in multilingual projects. It has great value for foreign language teachers to apply CLIL and EMI in practice. Researchers, education departments and graduates can also be inspired, so as to accelerate the promotion and application of CLIL and EMI on a global scale. Secondly, it is rich in content and wellorganized in structure. The book mainly focuses on CLIL and EMI teaching approaches. In the first part of this book, CLIL and EMI are specifically introduced, which not only gives a clear definition, but also clarifies the differences and similarities between the two, so as to unveil the mystery of CLIL and EMI, and enable people to get rid of traditional misunderstanding and have a clear understanding of CLIL and EMI, also lay the theoretical foundation for the whole book. The second and third part expand CLIL and EMI respectively, and each chapter of the second part focuses on the application of EMI in different teaching fields, such as intercultural awareness, teacher training, the challenges that the EMI lectures faced, their perceptions of EMI roles in the classroom, strategies for improving the methodology and second language writing in EMI subjects. The third part focuses on the research of CLIL in different fields, such as how to teach foreign literature from a cross-cultural perspective, how to establish quality standards for CLIL training, the need to adapt the content syllabus in CLIL subjects and assessments, training teachers in the CLIL pedagogy and how several thinking skills are considered when assessing content. In this way, readers can gain a comprehensive and profound understanding of CLIL and EMI in a vertical expansion way. At the end of the book, a brief of summary about the CLIL and EMI is presented, which deepen the readers’ understanding of this book. In addition, at the beginning of each chapter, providing an introduction of the intention, structure, and the overall view of the chapter makes readers have a basic understanding of the chapter. The clear and reasonable structure of this book can make readers have a clear frame diagram of the book in their minds after reading. Thirdly, this book covers a wide range of topics and learning stages , on the one hand, this volume covers a wide range of topics in the context of CLIL and EMI, such as conceptual clarification, cross-cultural competence and academic writing, pre-service teacher training and assessment, thinking skills, etc. A wealth of experiential data from different education levels and backgrounds provides practical insights for CLIL and EMI practitioners; on the other hand, it is comprehensive research involved in CLIL and EMI at primary schools, secondary schools and universities. These studies involved different countries, such as Spain, Italy, China and so on, with the aim of comparing both approaches and reflecting on their application in educational institutions. Besides, a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods are used in this book, such as investigation method, interview method, case study method and so on. Also, the data is collected from different sources, such as from interviews with teachers and workshops, and from students’ assignments and so on. But there are still shortcomings, although different countries are involved in this book, the distribution is uneven, with less Asian countries, and only Hong Kong of China involved. Therefore, some research results in this book have reference value for some countries, but they are not practical pertinence. Moreover, it does not involve kindergarten groups, but in fact, kindergarten students are also very strong in language learning ability. If the above aspects are taken into account, this book will be more perfect and more valuable to promote.

Overall, this book has great value, its minor drawbacks will not overshadow its merits. It presents a clear discussion of differences and similarities of two approaches, and offers a wide variety of application and experiences of CLIL and EMI in different countries, especially in Spain. It is beneficial to the teachers who use EMI and CLIL at universities, primary schools and secondary schools. This book also can give some suggestions for the instructors who in charge of designing how to implement CLIL and EMI subjects in educational authorities, also provide guidance on theoretical and practical training for the teachers enrolled in the university qualification for teaching in English, so as to promote the development of multilingual education. I recommend this book to teachers, educational authorities as well as instructors in charge of designing specific material for CLIL and EMI.