Improving communication skills: students' viewpoint on a content & language integrated learning project

Abstract

The development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) scheme in Spanish universities implies a greater participation of the students in their own process of learning and competence-based teaching. Competences are the ability to apply knowledge, skills and attitudes and one of such competences is communication. Students must be able to communicate using their mother tongue, but they should be able to use a foreign language, especially English, too. This paper presents strategies applied in the School of Engineering at Manresa (EPSEM) (Barcelona), in order to improve students’ communication skills in English. An experimental research has been conducted, focusing on the point of view of engineering students, to check the efficacy of implementing content and language integrated learning (CLIL). First, second and third year students have been surveyed to test hypotheses about English level and implications on language and subject specific content learning. The data provide support to our hypotheses, showing an increasing positive attitude of the students towards studying subjects in English.