Exploring Teachers' Perceptions on the Potential of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)-Based Approaches for Students' Development of Intercultural Communicative Competence in Chinese Higher Education

Abstract

To embrace the opportunities and challenges of a globalised, interdependent, and multicultural world, individuals are required to have Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), which is the ability to effectively act between languages and cultures so as to develop a repertoire of communicative resources and strategies for meaning making. Accordingly, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), a dual-focused educational approach that places equal emphasis on both content and language to promote deeper learning through disciplinary literacies, developed exponentially and established itself as a mainstream mode of instruction within the broad framework of bilingual education. The last decade has witnessed the rise and boom of CLIL-based courses in Chinese higher education, but there remains a paucity of empirical studies on the development of ICC through the appropriate use of CLIL-based approaches, notably from teachers’ perceptions. Thus, this study aims to close the gap through an exploratory single case study approach. As for conducting the study, two data sources are employed: a) document analysis to analyse available documentation related to prevailing discourses about CLIL and ICC, and b) semi-structured interviews with twelve teacher participants recruited in the case study university through purposive sampling. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the data, and the researcher will synthesize findings and summarize the factors of CLIL that are influencing students’ ICC development in China.

This will be followed by looking at how these factors inform an adaptation of a Chinese based model for CLIL, which will then be available for further robust investigation on a larger scale.