Book review
Reviewed by Elena Domínguez Morales
elena.dominguezmorales@ulpgc.es
Doctoral researcher Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
It is not surprising that there is a clear interest in specialised English language teaching at a time when academia needs to evidence its strong connection to social practices and internationalization (Carrió-Pastor, 2019, 2020). This is a timely book, both in scope and usefulness. The contents are organised in such a way as to allow an understanding of methodological practices, firstly by establishing the difference between CLIL, i.e. Content and Language Integrated Learning, and EMI, i.e. English as a Medium of Instruction. In principle, these two terms refer to clear concepts, but in practice the distinction does not always seem to be so apparent. In fact, this book succeeds in providing a theoretical stance and examples to illustrate and clarify these approaches. The usefulness of this Palgrave volume for language professionals, namely teachers, researchers and newcomers, is easy to foresee.
The book has been edited by María Luisa Carrió-Pastor and Begoña Bellés-Fortuño with recognised experience in teaching and researching English as an L2 language, which gives them a clear vision of the needs and problems in this field. This excellent command is evident in the selection of content and its organisation. These are divided into three sections, namely Part I CLIL and EMI, Part II English as a medium of instruction and Part III Content and language integrated learning, besides the ‘Introduction’ written by Begoña Bellés-Fortuño. This ‘Introduction’ presents the main objective of the book, i.e. to offer research and examples concerning CLIL and EMI methodologies, and a description of the contents into the three parts already mentioned. These parts are unevenly distributed, with Part I containing only two chapters, while the other two have five and six chapters respectively, although the last chapter is Carrió-Pastor’s recapitulation of the main achievements outlined in each of the chapters: i.e. ‘ CLIL vs EMI: Different Approaches or the Same Dog with a Different Collar?’. This last chapter also explains the diagnostic value of research on EMI and CLIL in order to see whether these two approaches are distinctively applied in specific teaching situations following explicit institutional language policies.
The other chapter following Carrió-Pastor’s in Part I is ‘“How Do I Find the Limit?”: Risk Management in EMI and CLIL at University’ by Monika Wózniak and Fiona Crean goes a step forward to “investigate the nature of risk management in CLIL/EMI degree programmes at a university in Spain” (p. 53), and they discuss how educators face these risks in order to integrate these methodologies to their particular educational settings.
Within Part II, ‘English as a Medium of Instruction. EMI Lecturers’ and Students’ Perceptions: Can EMI Contribute to Enhancing Intercultural Competence?’ by Marta Aguilar-Pérez relates “EMI, intercultural competence and internationalization” in order to evaluate how an EMI approach may benefit the students’ intercultural competence. Following is the chapter by Anna Krulatz, namely ‘Focus on Language in CBI: How Teacher Trainees Work with Language Objectives and Language-Focused Activities in Content-Based Lessons’. This text reports on how language remains a central feature of content-based instruction (CBI) programmes, and this includes especially the language level of educators, as content-based instructors must necessarily have a proficient command of the language besides other skills in order to face successfully the activities related to CBI.
The subsequent chapter by Niall Curry and Pascual Pérez-Paredes, i.e. ‘Understanding Lecturers’ Practices and Processes: A Qualitative Investigation of English-Medium Education in a Spanish Multilingual University’ represents a case study focusing on a Spanish university setting in order to see the way in which the internationalization process takes place following the ROADMAPPING framework in Dafouz and Smit (2016 and 2020). In the following chapter, i.e. The Challenges of EMI Courses in Armenian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Zhenya Ter-Vardanyan explains the situation of using EMI practices for teaching specialised contents within the context of higher education in Armenia. The last chapter in this Part is ‘Improving Second Language Writing Across the Disciplines: Resources for Content Teachers’. Written by Renia López-Ozieblo describes the use of English as a medium of instruction in Honk Kong at a tertiary level in the context of the T&L project (teaching & learning project).
Part III, namely Content and Language Integrated Learning, starts off with the chapter by Josep Ballester-Roca and Camilla Spaliviero, i.e. ‘CLIL and Literary Education: Teaching Foreign Languages and Literature from an Intercultural Perspective—The Results of a Case Study’. This chapter considers and evaluates the methodological practices of teaching literature with a focus on interculturality. In the following chapter, ‘Meta-CLIL: When Methodology and Aim Meet in Initial Teacher Training’, Anna Marzà explores the meta-approach to CLIL for primary educational settings in the region of Valencia in Spain. The author specifically works with data obtained from students enrolled in the course entitled ‘English Language Teaching for Early Education’ at the Jaume I University. Following to this, Begoña Bellés-Fortuño’s chapter, ‘CLIL Assessment: Accommodating the Curricular Design in HE’ provides information on “a CLIL teaching model applied to the Computer Science classroom at a Spanish university based on the dual focus approach and a team-teaching model” (p. 295).
The two following chapters in this Part are ‘Essential Framework for Planning CLIL Lessons and Teachers’ Attitudes Toward the Methodology’ written by Francisco J. Álvarez-Gil, and ‘Thinking Skills in Exam Models for CLIL Primary Subjects: Some Reflections for Teachers’ written by María Ángeles Martín-del Pozo and Débora Rascón-Estébanez. In the first of these, Álvarez-Gil focuses on teacher training in CLIL contexts at primary education, as the author believes that the institutional training offered to texts at this educational level may not be sufficient to be able to plan and develop content-based courses. In the second, Martín-del Pozo and Rascón-Estébanez analyse the summative evaluation of concepts in CLIL courses in primary education and the challenges it represents, as educators must be aware of the importance of language in understanding, practice, learning and reflecting on the new concepts being taught in the L2.
As my words in the introductory paragraphs might have already suggested, my opinion of this volume is definitely very positive, as the book really reveals a theoretical stance in relation to the notions of CLIL and EMI, as well as practical information which may be useful to encourage further personal reflections on the issues, or simply to illustrate particular cases of EMI and CLIL courses. The evidence used in this book is international in scope, though only from countries in Europe (Spain, Italy, Armenia...) and from Hong Kong, and this could be seen as a potential drawback. However, this volume can be seen as a solid precedent for other works in the area that collectively offer a more global perspective by complementing this book, even if string accounts of CLIL and EMI with an international scope are already available (cf. Bowles & Murphy 2020) Another aspect that I want to develop a little further here is the organisation of the chapters in this book. While I can see the editors’ possible reasons for their current order, I personally would have opted for a different distribution of the texts, especially in the case of Part III. My view is that an organisation based on topic relatedness should have been pursued and therefore the university courses for teaching CLIL at primary level should have followed the examples focusing on the use of CLIL practices in primary education. As they now stand, Part III offers first a text on secondary education, followed by one on primary teacher education and this chapter by one documenting a particular CLIL practice in a university course in engineering. The latter text precedes the two chapters on the use of CLIL procedures in primary education described earlier. That said, the current organisation does not detract from the quality of the volume as a whole.
I am sure that readers, both experts and potential newcomers to the field, may find this book interesting and useful in many respects. From a theoretical point of view, readers will find excellent definitions of the concepts of EMI and CLIL, and this is complemented by further development of particular aspects of EMI and CLIL methodologies, e.g. assessment. From a practical point of view, the volume provides significant evidence of actual experiences using EMI and CLIL methodologies.
Bowles, H., & Murphy, A. C. (Eds.). (2020). English-Medium instruction and the internationalization of universities. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carrió-Pastor, M. L. (2019). The implementation of content and language integrated learning in Spain: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In Peter Mickan & Ilona Wallace (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language education curriculum design (pp. 77–89). London: Routledge.
Carrió-Pastor, M. L. (Ed.). (2020). Internationalising learning in higher education: The challenges of English as a medium of instruction. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dafouz, E., & Smit, U. (2016). Towards a dynamic conceptual framework for English-medium education in multilingual university settings. Applied Linguistics, 37 (3), 397–415.
Dafouz, E., & Smit, U. (2020). ROAD-MAPPING English medium education in the internationalised university. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Received: 11 October 2021
Accepted: 15 October 2021