International & Regional Studies, Meiji Gakuin University, No.

54, 61－81, March 2019

【Research Note】

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL):

Compatibility of a European Model of Education to Japanese Higher Education

Keiko Tanaka

Abstract
Universities have an obligation to live up to the expectations of the stakeholders—
students and their families, community groups, industries, and governments to ensure that their
graduates have the requisite skills to succeed in a rapidly transforming world influenced by
globalization, interconnectivity, and advancement in artificial intelligence. This paper reports on
the findings of a study that explored the possibility of using English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) Course as a platform for teaching of future-oriented skills—21st Century Skills and
Global Competence through an instructional approach which has gained currency in Europe
called, Content and Language Integrated Instruction (CLIL). The paper begins with an overview
of the investigation into the origin of CLIL focusing on the context in which it was developed,
and examines the issues and problems surrounding its inception. Then this paper examines the
essential concepts of CLIL, its framework, and instructional principles derived from the
framework, and discusses CLIL’s potential to fulfil the goals of 21st Century skills and Global
Competence. Last, the paper describes one EFL course in which CLIL was implemented. It is
hoped that this paper will serve as an incentive for classroom practitioners to explore the use of
CLIL in their classes and embed in their syllabus, approaches and practices that develop 21st
Century Skills and Global Competence.

Keywords: Global Competence, 21st Century Skills, CLIL, EFL.

1. Introduction

Educators in many parts of the world lament what appears to be the decline of
education as the great equalizer, capable of promoting upward social mobility of students in
low-income families and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. For example,
Marginson (2016) states that in United States, social mobility is decreasing and access to
university education has not been able to compensate for this decrease. He also states that higher
education system in the United States is becoming increasingly hierarchical with access to elite
institutions dominated by upper middle class, and middle and lower-tier institutions for the
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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

masses becoming weaker with decreasing public support. Similarly, Darling-Hammond (2001)
indicates that there exists a growing gap in the quality of education in primary and secondary
schools in the United States and that access to high-quality curriculum and teaching which
results in student achievement is largely unavailable to students of color.
In contrast, Japan appears to be a model country in terms of both learning achievement
and equity in primary and secondary education. According to OECD results from PISA 2015,
Japan ranks 2nd, outperformed only by Singapore in the 15-year-old students’ science
achievement, and in both reading and math, it is ranked 5th following Singapore, Hong Kong,
among other countries. Perhaps more importantly, the same study also shows that in Japan, less
than 10% of the variation in student performance is attributed to differences in students’ social
economic status as opposed to 13% of variation across OECD countries (OECD, 2015). Indeed,
Japan’s relative ability to provide equity in education at the elementary and secondary levels
appears to be well-supported.
The landscape for Japan’s higher education though is different from what we see for
elementary and secondary education. OECD data reveals that while 60% of high school
graduates study at a university, public spending on higher education accounts for only 34% of
total expenditure which is half the amount of 70% that other OECD countries spend (OECD
Education at a glance, 2017). This means that households bear a large share of the cost of
university education which is also among the highest across OECD countries. In addition,
despite the huge expenditure students and their families bear for university education, the
evaluation of the quality of Japanese university education has produced mixed results. Stating
that the literacy rate of university graduates is the highest among member countries, OECD
asserts that the quality of Japan’s universities is excellent. However, Times Higher Education
ranks Japan’s top two public universities—The university of Tokyo and Kyoto University at rank
46 and 74 respectively in 2018 World University Ranking which is remarkably low for a nation
that boasts a third place in GDP after the United States and China. Among Japan’s private
universities which comprise 80% of all universities, the two top tier universities Keio University
and Waseda University are both ranked between 600-800 (Times Higher Education, 2018).
With so much at stake for the students, universities should live up to the immediate
goals of the students and their families and ensure them an appropriate “return on investment”
which in one measure is labor market success. Fortunately, today’s solid labor market, 98% of
university graduates find jobs by the beginning of the fiscal year (Japan Times, 2018). However,
universities should also implement measures to educate students so that they have the skills that
enable them to succeed not just in finding their first jobs but in years ahead. Globalization,
interconnectivity, and advancement in artificial intelligence is transforming the job market and

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the society in unprecedented ways, and individuals will need future oriented skills and attitudes
that enable them to adapt to continuous changes throughout their lives (McKinsey, 2017). Scott
(2915) identifies such skills as 21st Century Skills and categorizes them in terms of the following
framework (see Figure 1):

Figure 1 21st Century Skills

• Mastery of integrating core knowledge 1 • Personal qualities that shape

and commitment to life-long learning identities and guide individuals in
failure, conflict & crisis, and prepare
• Core knowledge:Language arts,
them to solve problems and work with
world languages, math,
different others
natural sciences, government
and civics, etc. • Social skill, cultural skill, sense-making
skill, entrepreneurial thinking,
Learning Learning learning to learn, habits of life-long
to Know learning
to Be

Learning Learning
to Do to Live
• Ability to connect knowledge together • Personal qualities that enable
and engage in active learning individuals to work cooperatively
with others
• Critical thinking, problem-solving,
• Seek & value diversity , teamwork &
communication & collaboration, interconnectedness, civic & digital
creativity & Innovation, information literacy citizenship, global competence,
intercultural competence

Adapted from Scott (2015) What kind of learning for 21st century

UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education underscores the importance of 21st Century Skills
suggests that educational style of the industrial society which focused on the development of
factual and procedural knowledge is no longer adequate in this knowledge society.
In addition to the 21st Century Skills, universities should also exercise foresight to
think beyond this economic social imaginary and prepare students for the future by
implementing measures to develop the students’ Global Competence which can be defined as:
Capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate
the perspectives and world views of others, to engage in open, appropriate and
effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to act for collective
well-being and sustainable development (OECD, 2018).
This definition is represented in Figure 2 below:

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

Figure 2 Global Competence

• Engage in open, • Take action for

appropriate and collective well-being
effective interactions and sustainable
across cultures development

attitudes values

knowledge skills

• Examine local, • Understand and

global and appreciate the
intercultural issues perspectives and world
views of others

Adapted from PISA 2018 Global Competence

Transnational organizations, governments, accreditation agencies and universities all

agree that students need these future-oriented set of skills to cope with challenges that they will
inherit such as rise in ethnocentrism and violence, unprecedented movement of people across
national boundaries, and ever-increasing threats to the environment made by humans. However,
for many Japanese universities, preparing students so that they have the requisite skills for the
future is a major undertaking: How will they educate students so that they become proactive
individuals who can synthesize knowledge acquired from their classes to solve the complex
problems of the future? How will they coach students to transform their attitudes and
dispositions from an inward looking one to an outward looking one?
Instructors who teach in Japanese universities are likely to acquaint students to issues
and topics from across the world in hopes to awaken their intellectual curiosity and awareness of
the many global issues that need to be addressed. Yet in typical classes with an instructor to
student ratio of 1 to 50 or more, it will be difficult for them to engage students in meaningful
discussions that stimulate critical thinking or organize cooperative learning activities that support
intercultural understanding. It will be equally challenging for instructors to give writing
assignments and then provide meaningful feedback on the assignments to facilitate
problem-solving skills. However, these practices could be implemented in English language
classes which often have one of the lowest instructor to student ratio and by its very nature, lend
themselves to groupwork and introduction of various content using authentic materials.
This paper reports on the findings of a classroom-based study that explored whether

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the teaching of future oriented skills—21st Century Skills and Global Competence can be
incorporated into the English language curriculum through the implementation of Content and
Language Integrated Instruction (CLIL) in a required second year English language course. The
paper begins with an overview of the investigation into: (1) the origin of CLIL focusing on the
context in which it originated and examines the issues and problems surrounding its inception;
and (2) the essential concepts of CLIL, its framework, and instructional principles derived from
the framework, and discusses CLIL’s potential to fulfil the goals of 21st Century skills and Global
Competence. The latter part of the paper describes one English course in which CLIL was
implemented. It is hoped that this paper will serve as an incentive for classroom practitioners to
consider using CLIL in their classes.

2. What is CLIL?

(1) The Origin of CLIL

Literature on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL hereafter) indicates

that CLIL is an umbrella term now accepted internationally for the teaching of content subject
through the medium of a second language. 2 One of the first widely circulated definitions of
CLIL is, “a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for the
learning and teaching of both content and language” (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010), and
according to Marsh (2012), it is a uniquely European framework to promote bilingualism or
multilingualism launched in 1964 to realize a vision of enabling Europeans to achieve mobility
that requires a high level of second language competence. Indeed, supported by the Council of
Europe which advocates proficiency in first language and two other EU languages to all citizens
(Commission of the European Communities, 2003), it quickly became the most coveted
approach to second language learning and teaching.
Cenoz, Genesee, and Gorter (2014) question whether CLIL is uniquely European
stating that, “although CLIL’s origins in Europe might make it historically unique, this does not
necessarily make it pedagogically unique” (p.244). Studies concerning CLIL’s theoretical
underpinnings and concepts (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008) indicate that CLIL cannot be
characteristically distinguished from Immersion Education whose practice is teaching content
subjects in the students’ second or subsequent language and whose core concept promotes
second or subsequent language development and also nurtures multilingualism in the community
where two or more language groups come into contact. Other studies (Cenoz, 2015;
Dalton-Puffer; 2007; Ruiz de Zarobe, 2008) indicate that CLIL is nearly the same as Content
Based Instruction (CBI) which originated in the United States. 3

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

The most well-known and successful immersion program recognized by CLIL

educators is the Canadian immersion program which started in 1965 in St. Lambert, Quebec.
This program involved teaching school subjects such as math and science in French to
English-speaking elementary school children so that they become highly proficient in both
English and French and develop integrative motivation—a desire to appreciate the people and
culture of the French-speaking Canadians (Ball, Kelly, & Clegg, 2015). For Canada, troubled by
a deep divide between the French and English-speaking communities, this educational initiative
embedded a hope to repair the divide and unify the country. This unifying concept was likely to
have been appealing to not just Europe but also to other regions, and variations of the immersion
program have been implemented all over the world with both successful and unsuccessful
outcomes having to do with various contextual factors (Wesche, 2002). However, in the
university setting, the term immersion education has not been used and instead, CLIL has
become the catch all definition for a wide range of programs in which a second language is used
to teach content.
Finally, it should be noted that CLIL and immersion education concepts were also
influenced by the Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) movement which emerged in Great
Britain in the 1960’s under the slogan of “every teacher an English teacher” and by Writing
Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement in secondary and post-secondary education in the
United States (Hanesová, 2015) which can be characterized as “every teacher a writing teacher.”
In both cases, the approach was introduced to develop academic literacy including reading and
writing skills across content areas of students from linguistically and culturally diverse
backgrounds. 4
CLIL is deeply connected to EU’s vision of developing its own competitive power in
the global marketplace (Commission of the European Communities, 2003). Hence, its goals are
different from the 21st Century Skills and Global Competence goals whose focus is more global
and not limited to a single region. However, CLIL as well as Immersion and Content Based
Education also view language learning as both key to bridging differences and unifying
communities and as means of empowering individual students. Therefore, this goal resonates
with the educational needs of contemporary society reflected in 21st Century Skills and Global
Competence both of which want students to be empowered to “take action.”

(2) The Essential Concepts of CLIL

Because language communities in Europe and the relationships between these

communities are both complex and diverse, how CLIL is implemented in the classroom is
diverse with differences in the starting age of the students, adopted content subjects, instructional

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objectives, and so on. Also, as mentioned above, some researchers, particularly those who
investigate immersion programs take issue with CLIL’s defining concepts. However, a cursory
examination of research on CLIL shows that the earlier conceptualizing work done by Coyle,
Hood, and Marsh (2010) is serving as a guiding principle for practitioners in many regions in
Europe and elsewhere. Hence, I describe two concepts they introduce as central to CLIL.
The first widely circulated concept put together by Coyle and her colleagues is the
Language Triptych which represents components for language progression that occurs through
language use as shown in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3 Language Triptych in CLIL

Language OF learning

CLIL Language
Language FOR learning Progression Language THROUGH learning

Adapted from Coyle, Hood and Marsh (2010)

In this Figure, Language of Learning consists of content obligatory language such as key
concepts related to the content subject which the students need to access. For example, in an
interdisciplinary university course on globalization, students will have to become familiar with
terms such as nation states, transnational organizations, and modernity. Language for Learning
consists of both formal and informal language needed to communicate in the classroom and
beyond—to participate in activities such as pair-work, discussion, debate, and negotiation.
Language through learning consists of new language that emerges through communication and
negotiation of meaning in the classroom which need to be recycled and developed.
The Language Triptych serves as a reminder for practitioners that language is central in
any learning process. However, the components in the triptych are common concepts in
education and they are not new or uniquely European. For example, language for learning has
always been emphasized in early childhood education which suggests that explicit teaching of
classroom language will support children learning better in the elementary classroom. Of course,
this practice is common in the ESL classroom as well. Language of learning and teaching as well,
has been an important topic for classroom researchers as well as those concerned with language
policy because what language will be selected as language of learning will determine access to

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education in a multi-lingual classroom.

Another concept Coyle and her colleagues state as essential for CLIL is the 4Cs
framework consisting of 4 interdependent components—Content, Communication, Cognition,
and Culture. 5 Stating that this concept is unique to CLIL, they insist that CLIL should be taught
with these four principles in mind—Content refers to the subject content (for example, subject
such as science, history, or cross disciplinary themes such as sustainability or global citizenship),
Communication refers to a focus on interaction in the classroom that is needed for knowledge
construction, 6 Cognition refers to higher order thinking and problem solving skills, and Culture
refers to awareness of self and others which facilitates cooperation and intercultural
communication (Coyle, 2015). Figure 4 shows how 4C’s might be used by CLIL instructors as a
guide to curriculum or syllabus development.

Figure 4 4C’s for teaching using CLIL

•Teach new knowledge & skills •Teach vocabulary and concept as

using authentic materials for the well as language form and
development of declarative meaning; and give opportunites
knowledge and procedural for interaction in the classroom
knowledge to develop language for
academic and communicative
purposes

content communication

cognition culture

•Teach, moving away from low •Teach to develop awareness of

order skills toward high order global issues and cooperative
thinking; or from recalling facts and intercultural
and concepts to constructing communication skills
new knowledge

Adapted from Coyle, Hood and Marsh (2010) and Coyle (2015)

The 4C’s guides instructors in considering Content that go beyond the traditional
approach to teaching whose aim is to transmit specific knowledge and skills and instead,
promote understanding or acquisition of deep knowledge that enables students to construct their
own knowledge and utilize it in their own future. Ikeda (2011) adopts the term declarative

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knowledge and procedural knowledge to distinguish these two kinds of knowledge. The 4C’s
also guides instructors when designing lessons to be cognizant of Communication and therefore,
to create opportunities in the classroom in which language is used for learning, and learning
takes place as students communicate with the instructor and other students. In addition, it guides
instructors to consider Cognition and to ensure that students are engaged in activities that
develop their high order thinking skills so that they can find creative solutions to problems.
Finally, 4C’s also reminds instructors that Culture is an important consideration and that they
need to make sure students develop an awareness of differences between self and others. It also
reminds instructors to use authentic materials from different contexts and cultures and to design
cooperative learning activities in which students must work with different others.
Again, as in the case of Language Triptych, the concepts introduced in the 4C’s
framework are not new. In fact, they are all concepts commonly used in education. For example,
the use of authentic materials was proposed in the field of second language teaching as early as
1980 (see for example Schmidt & Richards, 1980). The concept of declarative and procedural
knowledge is taken from cognitive science though discussions of their distinctions take place in
widely different fields such as mathematics and business administration, and the focus on
teaching low and high order skills is taken from Blooms’ Taxonomy (Ikeda, 2011) to classify
different learning objectives that instructors can set forth. What is new, perhaps is that these
concepts are assembled and packaged in a way that can be easily unpacked by practitioners to
design the type of CLIL that matches their particular context and teaching goals.
How compatible is CLIL in designing a curriculum or syllabus that develops 21st
Century Skills and Global Competence? To address this inquiry more effectively, the two
competencies were reorganized into two distinctive components—a cognitive component and an
affective-social component within which are specific elements consisting of descriptors and
examples. 7 It should be also underscored here that both competencies firmly endorses the idea
that education involves bestowing students with knowledge and skills as well as cultivating the
students’ attitudes, values, and dispositions for the purpose of interpersonal and intercultural
understanding and cooperation.
As for the compatibility inquiry, Figure 5 and Figure 6 demonstrates clearly that
CLIL’s teaching principles depicted in 4C’s are directly targeted for the development of both
cognitive and affective-social components of the two competencies. For example, Figure 5
illustrates that the cognitive component of the 21st Century Skills includes doing something such
as solving real-world problems using acquired knowledge, and similarly, Global Competence
states taking action for collective well-being or sustainable development as a goal. It is clear that
such active engagement cannot be easily nurtured in a traditional classroom where students are

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

expected to absorb information presented by the instructor. On the other hand, since CLIL’s 4C’s
mandates the use of authentic texts that can raise the students’ awareness of global problems and
motivate them to think deeply about the problems, it has a possibility of involving students in
finding solutions to problems and in knowledge construction. Also, as shown in Figure 6 below,

Figure 5 Cognitive Components of 21st Century Skills & Global Competence

Compatibility with CLIL Principles

Cognitive Component

Compatibility

Figure 6 Affective-Social Components of 21st Century Skills & Global Competence

Compatibility with CLIL Principles

Affective-Social Elements

Compatibility

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 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

the affective-social component of both 21st Century Skills and Global Competence includes
teamwork and intercultural communication skills. In CLIL, these competencies are learning
goals that can be met through activities that prompt the students to communicate with each other
and in so doing, develop an awareness of interpersonal differences even if they are members of
the same community, and hopefully, find ways to work together with support of the instructor.

3. Why CLIL in Japanese Universities?

The use of CLIL has spread across Europe supported by EU’s policy that advocates
plurilingualism—competence in first language and two other EU languages for all its citizens.
However, in Europe, English has become pervasive as the second language that CLIL is used for
teaching. Hence, CLIL is sometimes referred to as CEIL or Content and English Integrated
Learning. This certainly appears to be the case in Japan where the Ministry of Education,
Science, and Technology (MEXT) uses gaikokugo (=foreign language) to mean English.
Indeed, in Japan, CLIL is actively promoted for developing English skills especially
through the collaborative effort of Society for Testing English Proficiency (STEP) and Sophia
University. There is even a website dedicated to CLIL whose aim is to disseminate information
to support teachers who wish to implement the approach in their classrooms. Advocates indicate
that CLIL has a great potential for facilitating English as a second language education in Japan.
Ikeda (2011), for example, states that CLIL excels because its 4C’s framework is well-developed
and user friendly, and the approach can be adopted to a wide range of situations. For example, if
an instructor wishes to emphasize language learning more than content learning, Soft CLIL can
be adopted. Conversely, if the instructor wishes to emphasize content learning more than
language learning, Hard CLIL can be adopted. For an instructor who wishes to use CLIL a few
times within a course, then Light CLIL can be used. In contrast, if the instructor wants CLIL to
be the used throughout the course, then Heavy CLIL can be adopted.
Although this paper does not address the issue of CLIL effectiveness, my research and
classroom experience suggest that following conditions are likely to affect its learning outcomes:
1. Level of students’ foreign language ability (English)
2. Level of students’ first language academic literacy
3. Degree of class diversity
4. Instructor’s knowledge of content
5. Instructor’s competence in the instructional language
6. Number of courses taught in foreign language
7. Position and use of foreign language in the community outside
8. Degree of institutional support

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4. An Experimental CLIL Course

This section describes an experimental course (syllabus) designed using CLIL’s 4C’s
Framework. The class was implemented to seek new ways to motivate and prepare students to
pursue their majors while fulfilling relevant parts of the 21st Century Skills and Global
Competence. It was hypothesized that CLIL is a compatible approach to meeting these goals
based on an analysis of its goals, framework, and teaching principles. The final decision was
made to implement the new CLIL syllabus based on the criteria listed in Figure 7 below—the
possibility for achieving a successful learning-outcomes was high. 8

Figure 7 Criteria for Successful Outcomes

Criteria Evaluation Comment

Level of students’ foreign language ability (English) High Intermediate TOEFL ITP
Level of students’ first language academic literacy Medium-with some University Freshmen with
difference near 3.0 GPA average
Degree of class diversity Diverse 5 foreign students
25 Japanese students
Instructor’s knowledge of content High
Instructor’s competence in the instructional language High
Number of courses taught in foreign language Limited Japanese/English
10/1
Position and use of foreign language in the community outside Valued foreign language
Degree of institutional support Unknown

The syllabus of the English course was designed to reflect the CLIL approach as much as
possible as shown in Figure 8 which breaks it down to the four components of the 4C’s
framework as will be explained below.

(1) Content

The Content selected for the course were: (1) Future of Work; (2) Womenomics; and
(3) Immigration. These topics are aligned with both 21st Century Skills and Global Competence
goals as shown in Figure 9.
The essential questions for each of the topics were created to ensure that students obtained
declarative knowledge about the topic first and later, endeavor to answer questions that require
procedural knowledge (see Figure 9). The set of materials were both written and spoken texts
and selected based on quality, variety, and whether they were relevant and recently produced.
Also, effort was made to select materials that represented diverse viewpoints from diverse groups.

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Figure 8 Course Topics & Their Relationship to 21st Century Skills and Global Competence

Course Topic 21st Century Skills Global Competence

Future of Work Interdisciplinary Focus provides an Meets All 4 Goals
opportunity to connect knowledge: Focus on SDG’s
• Economics & Business • No. 4 Quality Education
• Education • No. 9 Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

Essential questions are asked to develop

critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Group-work is used so that students

experience working cooperatively with
different others.

Group-work experience enables students to

seek and value diversity, and, teamwork &
interconnectedness.

Womenomics Interdisciplinary Focus: Meets All 4 Goals

• Economics & Business Focus on SDG’s
• Gender Studies • No. 5 Gender Equality
(See above for other • No. 10 Reduced Inequalities
21st Century Skills)
Immigration Interdisciplinary Focus: Meets All 4 Goals
• Economics & Business Focus on SDG’s
• Ethnic Studies • No. 11 Sustainable Cities & Communities
• No. 8 Decent Work & Economic Growth
(See above for other
21st Century Skills)

For example, for the topic on Womenomics, students listened to a lecture on Abenomics given by
the instructor and read two articles published by a research institute that include economic data
showing labor shortage in Japan, ratio of Japanese women in part- and full-time work, Japan’s
M-curve, etc. They also watched a video of a forum sponsored by Asia Society in California,
United States titled, Gender Equality in Japan and the U.S. which featured a professionally and
ethnically diverse group of panelists including a university professor, a corporate consultant, and
an NPO executive.

(2) Cognition

The development of Cognition when the topic on hand is complex requires multiple
steps. In this course, as a first step, worksheets were assigned to students for “recalling” what
was presented in the material (see for example, Appendix 1). This was an extremely important
step without which student activities that followed could not have been done. As it is usually the

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

Figure 9 Syllabus Outline for CLIL Course in the Advanced English Program

Content Cognition Communication Culture

Topic Low-order skills Focus on Language Awareness of Global Issues

Future of work: Focus on “remembering Spoken • Select authentic

• What skills are needed content • Language of materials from other
in the future and how discussion parts of the world
can these skills be Comprehension worksheet • Discussion • Invite guest lecturers
learned? (Appendix 1) management strategies from other cultures to
• How can we make the • Speech language & provide alternative
future of work better structure perspective
for people in Japan • Debate language & • Invite students to
and in developing structure explore related global
countries? Written issues
Womenomics: • Essay & report writing
• Why aren’t there more • Feedback on content
women in leadership and form after
roles? students write
• What can we do to discussion response on
create more women the whiteboard
leaders in Japan?
Immigration
• Replacement
Migration: Is it a
solution to declining
and aging population?
• What can be done to
prevent problems that
might occur if Japan
implements this
policy?
Input Material High-order skills Focus on Communication Intercultural
Communication Skills
Spoken Focus on essential • Class discussion Create diverse groups
• lecture by instructor questions such as: • Online discussion (mixed age, gender,
• YouTube videos of • Group presentation cultural background)
forums & roundtables, Prime Minister Abe has
presentations by been committed to Overtly address
experts, street surveys realizing a society where intercultural
Written all women can flourish communication issues
• academic journal (=女性が輝ける社会).
articles, online Discuss whether the Prime
articles, journal Minister is an advocate of
articles gender equality.

Project or Problem―based
learning

See Appendix 2
Authentic Materials from Class and Online Creating diverse groups
diverse source intended for discussion (mixed age, gender,
a wide range of audience cultural background)
Writing Task

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case, authentic materials like these are difficult for university students since most of them have
spent their secondary school years working on non-authentic materials—textbooks. Therefore,
providing students with well-developed support materials such as worksheets and clear, explicit
instruction in listening and reading strategies are critical for accessing the materials. 9 The
second step began when students had acquired adequate declarative knowledge about the topic.
They were asked to work on tasks that demanded higher-order thinking. Naturally, this part of
the course goal is the most difficult to achieve and probably an area where the instructor’s effort
to facilitate the thinking process becomes critical as will be explained below.

(3) Communication

Communication, whether it is student to student or student-teacher is central in CLIL,

and in keeping with second language acquisition theory, the course was designed to make sure
that each student had ample opportunities to communicate—or produce comprehensible output
even though 30 students were enrolled. Therefore, students worked in groups of 4 to 6 and spent
approximately 60 percent of the course-time in their groups. They were also put purposely in
groups that were as diverse as possible. For example, for each topic, students had to work in a
new group. Each group consisted of both male and female students, and whenever possible, each
group had a student from a different age-group, from other cohorts, or from different ethnic
group. Online learning system was used to promote online discussion—and it served an integral
purpose of promoting equitable “speaking time” for all students. This in turn demonstrated that
some students whose social style categorized them as reticent, having lower communicative
needs because they communicated less in the classroom had opinions and thoughts that: showed
that they were indeed participating in their own way in their group and had ample things to say. 10
Hence, ICT served an important purpose.
While student-to-student communication was important, the role of the instructor as a
communicator and a facilitator of learning for both language and content was critical for the
course. Just as students were not used to authentic materials, they were not used to the
communicative, active-learning classroom. Therefore, class time was allocated to explicit
instruction on the language of discussion, discussion management strategies and so on as shown
in Figure 9 above. Also, discussion tasks had clear goals and at the end of the discussion, groups
had to “publish” the results of the discussion on the white boards placed in different sections of
the classroom and make a presentation of what they discussed. This session served as an
opportunity for the instructor to give feedback, not just on the content but also on the language
form that the students produced.
An essential part of the class was guiding students from recalling and summarizing

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information, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating it, and finally, responding to the essential
questions by making, for example, policy recommendations along with a plan to implement them.
This was done in this course with the instructor and the other students giving feedback to group
presentations and getting the group to make revisions. Hence, students’ work received
constructive feedback and an opportunity to think again and make revisions. However, this was
the most challenging part that utilized question strategies such as: (1) Lets find out more about
that (to encourage further investigation); (2) Are there other explanations for this (to encourage
an alternate line of reasoning or explanations); and (3) What are the strength and weaknesses (to
encourage evaluation of ideas). Since students had to think about complex ideas in a second
language, the cognitive load on them was heavy. In some instances, students needed time to
respond to the questions. In other instances, the class resorted to translanguaging by leveraging
their Japanese language to think aloud to sort out the thinking process.

(4) Culture

A consideration of culture was at the core of the syllabus design. How culture weighed
in the selection of authentic materials and in grouping students for class activities has already
been explained above. This section explains the criteria by which material selection were made
and the activities that were implemented to raise the students’ consciousness about cultural
differences and ways to accept the differences and work together in teams: For example, if a
news video is adopted, an effort was made to expose students to, American and European, as
well as Indian and Middle Eastern news sources. Students do notice the differences in
communicative style easily—hence a part of the class-time was used to discuss these differences.
Similarly, if a recording of a forum is adopted, an effort was made to ensure that speakers who
appear in the video were both men and women, and that they represented diverse ethnicities as
well. Again, class time was used to develop student awareness about gender and ethnicity along
with communicative style differences. Finally, differences in organizations do affect how
information is constructed and published as texts. Therefore, students were made aware of these
differences. For example, students noted the differences in writing style between academic
articles and reports written for transnational organizations or corporations and discussed
differences in the intended readership. They also discussed both the usefulness and quality of the
texts. In short, the concept of culture was widened for the course, and by using the Internet to
retrieve authentic materials, students were exposed and sensitized to a wide-range of cultural
differences.
As mentioned above, groupwork is not easy for the students and within group
problems arise inadvertently. These problems were taken as “critical teaching moments” where

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simple conflict resolution strategies were used to talk through the differences instead of ignoring
them as unfortunate incidents to be avoided. Teaching these strategies were important because
they were tools that students do not yet have at their disposal and they also solved
communication issues effectively. Therefore, the instructor’s leadership in providing tools for
communication and conflict resolution was critical to learning intercultural communication
skills.

(5) Summation and Path Forward

Designing and teaching the CLIL experimental course was at once a challenging and
enjoyable endeavor which paved a way to formal curriculum implementation. What remains to
be done is an investigation on whether students learned the requisite content knowledge,
acquired higher level competence in English, and developed both 21st Century Skills and Global
Competence. Objective assessments of the latter cannot be done easily. However, a portfolio
system, for example with student self-assessment and other classroom products might be the first
step toward investigating the efficacy of CLIL in a university English classroom.

5. Conclusion

This paper reported on the findings of a study which investigated whether the use of
Content and Language Integrated Instruction (CLIL) in the required English course can be used
in the students’ acquisition of content knowledge and English along with 21st Century Skills and
Global Competence. An analysis of existing literature on CLIL that investigated its origin and its
key teaching principles and subsequent comparison of these with 21st Century Skills and Global
Competence indicates a high degree of compatibility. In addition, the actual experiment in
attempting to design and implement a CLIL course shows that CLIL serves as an excellent
approach to teaching both content and English as a part of a larger goal of preparing students to
meet the challenges they might encounter in their futures.
However, there are important caveats that need to be mentioned. Designing a CLIL
syllabus, especially selecting materials that meet the conditions outlined above and preparing
worksheets is a time-consuming endeavor that requires higher degree of content knowledge and
second language education expertise. Not only that, it requires a high level of commitment to
professional development on the part of the instructor, since such expertise cannot be developed
by attending a few workshops on teaching English or acquiring content knowledge by, for
example, reading a book or two on the subject. Perhaps more importantly, it requires instructors
to leave their comfort zone, reflect objectively on their own practice by investigating a wide

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range of materials on how best to teach university classes, and finally, experiment with new
ways—through a trial and error process—to teach better. 11

Notes
1 Integrating core knowledge means ability to integrate and synthesize knowledge acquired from individual
content subjects such as math, science, and language arts rather than to know them separately.
2 In this paper, I use the term second language instead of foreign language. Terms such as new language or
additional language are also used in research literature.
3 Fortanet Gómez (2013) points out that CLIL and CBI are nearly the same. However, she asserts that the goal
of CBI is mainstreaming limited English proficient students in North America to make them proficient in
English without promoting the students’ first language, and therefore, it is different from CLIL whose goal is
multilingualism. Similarly, Ikeda (2011) states that the principal difference between the two rests in its
different contextual origin—CILI was born to serve the needs of Europe whereas CBI was born to serve the
needs of students in North America.
4 Asserting that writing is thinking manifest, these approaches placed the responsibility of teaching academic
literacy on both language and content instructors. In practice, these approaches necessitated the content
instructors to use teaching strategies that make the content accessible to language learners in the classroom.
Not only that, it also necessitated them to give and respond to writing assignments to develop language skills.
“I’m not an English teacher,” and “I don’t have time to do a lot of extra correcting,” are the refrains
Goldberger (2014) continues to hear from content instructors when promoting WAC.
5 Coyle, Hood, and Marsh use the term Culture as a label for the 4Cs framework. However, some CLIL
educators in Japan (for example Ikeda), claiming that since Japan is not as multicultural as Europe, prefer to
use the term community instead. Community in this instance refers to other students, classroom, school, town,
country, region, and the world.
6 Some researchers (see for example Lyster, 2007) state that the communication component should add focus
on form so that students acquire target forms of the second language.
7 The descriptors and examples do not belong exclusively to a specific component. For example, in Global
Competence, the descriptor, “examine local, global and intercultural issues” is placed in the Cognitive
Component because examining requires cognitive elements. However, a deep examination of an intercultural
issue may involve an Affective Component such as empathy and appreciation of different world-view.
8 The focus of the study was not the students’ learning outcomes—that is a future research agenda. Therefore,
reference to student learning made while describing the syllabus are based purely on impression.
9 Some practitioners advocate the use of video transcripts to enable students to access the content. However,
one pilot study which surveyed 21 students regarding the provision of transcripts for difficult listening
materials indicates that giving transcripts to the students is not an effective approach for language
development and defeats much of the purpose of CLIL. Students testified that they take the time-saving route
and read the transcript rather than to listen to the input. Hence, they may also miss out on rich information
about communication and culture which they could obtain by watching the video, and on an opportunity to
develop Global Competence is also diminished.
10 Second language acquisition research points out that there are individual differences in social and cognitive
styles though these differences do not affect the extent or speed of learning (see for example, Wong-Fillmore,
1979).
11 This comment is derived from Eric Mazur’s video regarding his assumptions about teaching https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=D4-4tfYq3m4 and his video depicting his journey as an instructor of physics at Harvard
University feature in https://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/twilight-of-the-lecture.

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Appendix 1
Womenomics 4.0: Time to Walk the Talk

1. In your own words, what is the economic reason for Womenomics?

2. Has the situation improved between 2010 and 2014? How about 2014 to 2018? (respond using these
criteria: (a) overall female labor participation; (b) daycare capacity; (c) gender-related disclosures by
corporations).

3. What areas are improvements needed for Womenomics? Use your own words to explain.

4. Look at the recommendations for government policy, private sector and society. For each sector, determine
which one can be implemented the fastest and has the most impact. Create a matrix to decide.

5. Changing society’s view is probably the most difficult to implement. Given that, what can be done to facilitate
the change.

Appendix 2

Replacement Migration Policy:

What problems are likely to occur if Japan implements a policy that significant increases immigrants into Japan
and how can these problems be prevented? (Describe the problems and propose a solution – ways to prevent the
problems from occurring)

Watch the following video and read the following articles to answer the case study question presented above.

General Survey-Do Japanese want immigrants in Japan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W0tYeK_kkA

Hidenori Sakanaka Searching for Immigrant Nation Japan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXelbgSCX9o

United Nations Population Division, Replacement Migration: Is it a solution to declining and aging population?

M. Shimasawa and K.Oguro: The Impact of immigration on Japanese economy: A multi-country simulation model

H. Nakata: This is how an aging society is affecting Japan’s attitudes towards immigration

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