Wen-Hsien Yang

Topic: ESP and CLIL in Synergy: A Demonstration of How ESP can Support Content Teaching

Abstract

Encouraged by the strong driving forces of socio-economic globalisation, the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach, with its dual purpose of integrating language and content learning, has recently been growing rapidly at all levels of education in Taiwan. However, compared to ESP (English for Specific Purposes), which also emphasises language learning with situated content knowledge and has received much attention in both research and practice, research on the (in)compatibility of the two teaching approaches is still rather underrepresented in Taiwan. My presentation will begin with a historical review of the two approaches, comparing and contrasting them at a global level. I will then discuss a study I conducted in Taiwan that examines the actual practice of both approaches, looking at the status of language and content in individual classrooms to show how language and content are treated with different weights. Finally, I will show how CLIL teaching can be integrated with the ESP approach to achieve a dual focus.

Bio data

Yang, Wenhsien is currently Professor of Applied English and Dean of the International College at the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, Taiwan. His main research and teaching interests are bilingual education and English for Specific Purposes, and he has published many papers in the relevant academic journals. He is also a CLIL teacher trainer and consultant for the implementation of bilingual education at different levels of education island-wide.