Has CLIL Got the Future in the Engineering Education Curriculum?

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is frequently viewed as an extension of communicative language teaching, with more emphasis on student activity, clear goal orientation and explicit focus on content-specific, real-world connections. This is different from contexts where subject teachers are teaching their content through the medium of a foreign language. The guiding principle for the latter is predominantly the meeting of the demands of the content curriculum. The aim of the paper is to analyze how content and language integrated learning (CLIL) could be helpful to the students in acquiring both: subject and foreign language skills. The research is based on the case study of a group of KTU first year students studying Sociology through the medium of English language. For students acquiring a foreign language the need to apply new information is critically important because discussing and doing some task practically make abstract concepts concrete. The best way to learn is to be involved in relevant, meaningful application of what you are learning. The research findings suggest that CLIL students become more proficient. Learning a discipline always implies learning the language of that discipline, and this is even more necessary when learning in a foreign language. This focus on the specific linguistic features of the discipline is precisely what is involved in CLIL, since here both learning content and learning a foreign language are seen as goals.