ICL (integrating content and language) biology courses for Asian undergraduate students

Abstract

Recently a Korean science and engineering school where over 80% of all classes are taught in English has introduced ICLHE (integrating content and language in higher education) courses with their dual aims of content and language learning (Unterberger & Wilhelmer, 2011). In addition to the already well-established English for academic purposes (EAP) courses, the EFL Program has decided to offer ICL courses, a type of adjunct CLIL (Greere & Räsänen, 2008), in collaboration with various major departments to help students become better prepared for their major studies. Following the 4 Cs Framework (Coyle, 2008), the study presented here analyzes the two biology ICL courses offered for first-year undergraduate students. Course materials, class tasks, and teaching methods were analyzed. Also analyzed was how the content professors and language professors collaborated before, during, and after the courses. The content and language professors, students, and teaching assistants were interviewed for their opinions on the courses. Students' high satisfaction levels suggest the first biology ICL course was successfully conducted. However, several issues were raised such as the school administrators' demands for a stronger emphasis on content learning rather than language learning and the insufficient extent of collaboration between the language and content professors. The language professor of the second ICL course made efforts to meet the school's demands and improve the issues raised. This study discusses the results of her improvement measures in detail and concludes with further suggestions for future biology and other ICL courses at the university and for other Asian universities that may be considering introducing ICL/CLIL courses in the future.