“Challenging, but not impossible”: Student-teachers’ views of CLIL

Abstract

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a learning and teaching approach with the dual purpose of enabling learners to acquire content such as geography together with an additional language (English). Since little is known about how ELT student-teachers understand CLIL and its implementation potential, the purpose of this exploratory, preliminary small-scale study was to explore student-teachers’ insights on CLIL at a four-year initial English language teacher education programme in Argentina. Data were collected by means of a survey with open- and closed-ended items and an interview to randomly selected participants. Findings show that CLIL is viewed as challenging given its dual purpose, which has a direct impact on teacher preparation and workload. However, it is seen as an approach that not only favours the contextualization of language learning but also promotes learner and teacher motivation.