Some First reflections on CLIL: a Means towards Internationalization

at the Phuket Campus of Prince of Songkla University

Sombat KHRUATHONG
Faculty of International Studies,
Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus
E-mail: sombat.k@phuket.psu.ac.th

Abstract

This article aims at presenting the results of a document research concerning Content and
Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)". In view of its growing success in the European Union, we
are planning to integrate this approach in a new bachelor degree curriculum in European studies
which has a double objective: deepened knowledge concerning the European Union and skills in
foreign languages among which two languages, English and French, will be its main focus.

At first, the history of this approach will be presented, as well as its advantages and weak
points. Secondly, we shall speak about the linguistic policy of the Prince of Songkla University at
the Phuket campus in connection with its internationalization and the problems of teaching foreign
languages in Thailand. We will present the ongoing curriculum in European studies at the of
Bachelor of Arts level that will be dispatched in the Faculty of International Relations at the Phuket
campus in 2014. The results of some experimental projects conducted in European schools and
universities will be presented and commented. Our ambition is to place learners in a situation of
learning where the taught contents are in constant interaction with a foreign language. This could
answer the need of putting learners in a situation of authentic communication.

In conclusion, important factors of CLIL will be discussed, based upon the analysis of the
information collected from various reports of feasibility study conducted in some schools and
European universities. Finally, we will roughly sketch our first proposals for the implementation of
CLIL as it is conceived by European Studies, as a part of a curriculum of the Faculty of
International Relations, Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus.

Keywords: CLIL, European Studies, Western Languages and Cultures, Thailand.

1. Introduction

Before moving to the Faculty of International Studies in the Phuket Campus of Prince of
Songkla University, I had studied some information about teaching and learning environment of my
new university. In fact, Phuket is not really new for me because the Island is my hometown. I felt
happy to be resettled there, after more than 30 years of absence. I had to review my English
because I found that in a new workplace, it is possible that I will teach not only French but also
English. After looking around linguistic policy of the campus, I discovered that CLIL has already
been practiced by most lecturers: most undergraduate programs are mainly taught in English. Some
are taught in Thai because of the nature of the program. Concerning linguistic policy, there is no
evident one precisely declared by the campus.

2. Perceptions of English in Thailand and Implementation of CLIL

Kristina Litchford (2011), in her report entitled Perceptions of English in Thailand, states
in conclusion that Whenever one looks at arguments and perceptions the Thai people have, it
comes back to the idea that they feel resentful at being categorized as a former colony. The Thai
people ultimately want to get along with English-speaking countries and participate in the global
market, but still maintain their unique identity as the nation of Thailand. [..] Ultimately the people
of Thailand are attempting to follow what one of their former kings advised them to do. Even as he
recognized the power of Western influence, King Rama V was always aware that the Thai people
needed to adopt technology with criticism. We can explain why English is still considered as a
foreign language taught in the country.

Pattanida Punthumasen (2007) from the Office of the Education Council, Ministry of
Education, in her report in the 11th UNESCO-APEID International Conference, held in Bangkok,
cited that one of five reasons showing why English is not well learnt by Thai students relies on the
fact that Teaching Methods are not attractive or engaging for students. Most of teachers still use
grammar and rote learning methods for teaching English. They focus on reading and writing skills,
not listening and speaking skills. They seldom set up interesting activities to encourage their
students to have fun learning English.

The Thailand Ministry of Education, in acknowledge of the importance of English in
globalization era, established in 2007 the English Language Institute (henceforth ELI), as an
office of the Basic Education Commission. Its main aims are to promote, support and develop the
efficiency in teaching and learning English by developing English teachers, educational institutes,
educational staff, Networks and relevant entities and to elevate the ability of teachers and students
in using English to communicate, search knowledge and perform work according to their
professional or for further education.

From that year, English Program classes were a nationwide implementation. At present,
more than 100 schools are implied. Some universities by their faculty of Education opened a
similar program called for example The English Program for Talented Students (EPTS). Its a
prestigious program opened to students who can pass an entrance examination. The word
prestigious used in this context means that learning in English environment is a special occasion
for them. This can be explained by perceptions of English by Thai.

3. Preliminary information of the informal implementation of CLIL in Phuket Campus

The Phuket Campus of Prince of Songkla University is one of the five campuses located in
five provinces in the southern part of Thailand. Founded in 1977 as a community college, the
Phuket Campus was promoted to be one the academic campus consisting of 3 faculties, namely
faculty of Technologies and Environment, Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism and Faculty of
International studies.

The Faculty of International Studies (henceforth FIS) is composed of 4 departments:
department of Chinese Studies, department of Korean Studies, department of Thai Studies and
Department of International Business: China. It is necessary to underline that FIS is also
responsible of distributing in English 35 credits of general education to all students of the Phuket
Campus.

In general, in all Thai universities, an undergraduate program is composed of 129 to 135
credits. General education shares 1 of 3 parts. The second one consists of specific subjects. 9 to 12
credits are reserved to elective subjects.

4. Western languages and Cultures instead of European Studies

After the settlement in the campus, I started the procedure to submit the establishing
curriculum of European Studies as cited in the abstract to the university council. We had a
recommendation from the Phuket Campus council that it would be better to setup a B.A. of western
languages and cultures. English and French are still kept targeted.

5. What is CLIL?

CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)". In view of its
growing success in the European Union, we are planning to integrate this approach in a new
bachelor degree curriculum in European studies which has a double objective: deepened knowledge
of western cultures and skills in English and French languages.

David Marsh & Mara Jess Frigols Martn, respectively from University of Jyvskyl,
Finland and Valencian International University, Spain, define "CLIL as a dual-focused
educational approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of
content and language with the objective of promoting both content and language mastery to pre-
defined levels. CLIL is a methodological approach particularly suitable for contexts where students
learn content through an additional language.

Do Coyle (2010), in a seminar, presented the conceptual framework of CLIL based on the 4
Cs: content, communication, cognition and culture.


Figure 1: Meeting mind: toward the holistic views of the curriculum

Content means subject matter, what to teach and learn. Communication means
language learning and using. Cognition concerns learning and thinking processes. Culture
aims at developing intercultural understanding and global citizenship.

6. Why are we interested in CLIL?

The main reason is that we are concerned with a public whose average age is from 19 to 22.
We consider them as adults. This consideration is based on Malcome Knowles (1950) who outlined
a new learning theory called Andragogical learning theory. For him, Andragogy is different
from pedagogy in the sense that pedagogy is for child-learning while andragogy means
man-leading in Greek. Sabina Nowak (2011), from Poland, resumed Knowles six assumptions of
adult learning as following:

1. Adults need to know the reason for learning something;
2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities, self-directed
learning, and instruction should allow learners to discover things for themselves;
3. Adults need to be involved in as well as responsible for their decisions connected with
planning and evaluation of their instruction;
4. Adults are most interested in learning subjects having immediate relevance to their work
and/or personal lives. Learning activities should be in the context of common tasks to be
performed
5. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented. Learning as problem-
solving. Strategies such as case studies, role playing, simulations, and self-evaluation
are most useful;
6. Adults respond better to internal versus external motivators.

7. CLIL Matrix

According to the core Cs, in terms of culture, Content implies an appropriate target input
authentic materials. In terms of communication, it outlines a real interactive both in learning and
teaching. In learning perspective, students can work in pair or in group. For teaching point of view,
lecturers, in many of courses, in particular for 35 credits of general education, have to teach in pair
and in some of them in groups.

For cognitive aspect, learners will get a technical assistance from lecturers: for example,
how to use dictionaries, how to give an attractive presentation, etc.

In terms of community, a faculty or a campus is kind of community. Learners must learn
faster and effectively in a real environment where they can be in every moment invited to use their
target foreign language.

For Language, as one of the two objectives of CLIL, students have to develop cultural
aspect in any selected language. They are highly invited to think about the choice of language and
the choice of location. This objective of CLIL can be maximized by a very high range of
communication between teachers-learners, learners-learners and teachers-teachers. For cognitive
development, student have to learn how to build their linguistic concepts frequently supplied by
interactive environment. All language teachers know that classroom is not sufficient for allowing
students to archive their linguistic and communicative performance.

For Integration, a new culture is be created: students learn to understand transactions from
teachers and on the other side, teachers and learners communicate together in a real situation. This
is very important because most language classrooms are built on simulation. As CLIL depends on
an academic consensus, teachers must very closely cooperate in designing contents and its
distribution. The concept of team teaching is created based on this principle. Another element can
meet with the concept of community is the possibility that parents and stakeholders who will
recruit students after their graduation.

For the last matrix concerning the relation between Learning and the four Cs in CLIL, it is
an opportunity to underline intercultural learning and understanding. For communication skills,
learners have to use diversified strategies to regulate any negotiation in order to success in any goal.
For cognitive aspect, the dual focus allows to establish contents and target language. In terms of
community, learners have their real physical location.

8. Some Implementations of CLIL in European Union

Christiane Dalton-Puffer, University Of Vienna, in her article entitled Outcomes and
processes in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): current research from Europe
underlines that in general, language learning outcomes of CLIL students are unsurprisingly
positive because by way of CLIL students can reach significantly higher levels of L2 than by
convention. She concluded that the learning goals which are formulated for CLIL tend to be
unspecific at present and it is important that it will be necessary in the future to state more
explicitly which language learning aims are pursued through the practice of CLIL (and by
implication, therefore, which are not or cannot be pursued but must be taken care of by EFL lessons
or altogether different learning environments). Once these more concrete language learning goals
come clearly into view, it should be easier for CLIL teachers to align their didactic/pedagogical
decisions about teaching the content in such a way that their classrooms can be content- and
language-rich. Very often what is good for language (such as having to actively encode new
concepts for a specific audience) is also good for the content.

The Directorate-General for Education and Culture of the European Commission published
a report of European language policy and CLIL: a selection of EUfunded projects. This paper
allows us to see different implementations of contents in different European languages and in
different countries. From 1999 to 2004, we see that CLIL can be implemented with different
languages not only in English.

Geraldine Ludbrook from University of Venice, in CLIL: the potential of multilingual
education, outlines the necessity to train CLIL teachers for qualification, in particular, to provide a
scientific framework for good practice in the CLIL approach, considered not only as a cost-
effective, practical and sustainable solution to attaining the EU Commission aim of training
plurilingual citizens, but an important means of increasing inter-cultural knowledge, understanding
and skills, promoting internationalization and enhancing multilingual education.

For some reasons, CLIL is still not clear enough in spite of the growing interest of this
approach. Although it has resulted in enthusiasm for improving methods of foreign/second-
language teaching in Europe. Jasone Cenoz1 & al. (2013), in the abstract of their article entitled
Critical Analysis of CLIL: taking stock and looking forward, suggested that CLIL has to be
developed much more in terms of clarification and definition.

9. From informal Implementation to a full implementation of CLIL in Phuket Campus

In the previous section, we stated that CLIL is already informally implemented in the
Phuket campus. But it is not recognized as CLIL. Like in most Thai universities, we lack of
researches in the domain. Although ELI has been established since 2007, we have not enough
localized researches. If it is assumed that the learning process organized by the students themselves
create a better learning environment than the one organized externally, the official implementation
of CLIL in a Thai university can be a solution in the long term for putting constantly Thai students
in a real communicative context by underlining the oral aspect because they are very weak in
speaking. This weakness is well stated in Kristina Litchfords report: most Thai elites had good
command of written English, but they could not speak it well, or use it effectively in conversation.
Servants, maids, and drivers surprisingly knew better conversational English because they work for
English speakers such as ambassadors and business people; they used this as a marketing technique
that helped them get employed.

10. My first observation of English context in Phuket Campus

After my settlement in Phuket Campus, I found that, general speaking, there is not much
different between my former university and this campus: foreign teachers and Thai teachers have
less connections out of their professional connections. Students have less conversation with their
foreign teachers out of classroom. I consider that this comes from cultural event: Thailand is proud
of the fact that it has never been colonized by western countries. Thai will be still the only official
language of Thailand. Some foreign researchers who did a research in order to understand
perceptions of English in the country said that a general view of English for Thai people is not
negative one. They simply saw no value in learning English for their personal lives. It was not
something that was essential to their way of life. In the long term, I am not sure this will change.

11. Establishing program of western languages and cultures

The objective of this program is to offer a B.A. in western languages and cultures with two
targeted languages: English and French. This program is composed of 128 credits divided into 3
parts: 35 credits of compulsory subjects and 84 credits of specific contents concerning both
English/French language and culture. In this curriculum, subjects learnt in the part of specific
contents are less than if the French part because students will have learnt as general education 35
credits.

The content in both language is extended to culture of English speaking countries and
French speaking countries because we found that students need to be more involved in local
environment than in English or French one. The structure of this program also includes 9 credits of
elective subjects. They can target 3 courses of basic Chinese or basic Korean or any other ASEAN
countries, namely Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, etc.

As the Faculty of International Studies is responsible for distributing all language courses to
all students of the campus, this will allow me to be more concerned in the design of formal
implementation of CLIL in the system of the campus.


Figure 2: Structure of English focus


Figure 3: Structure of French focus

In this curriculum, students have to study both languages. They will have 18 credits of
translation courses. The 6 first one will invite them to deal with English-Thai translation. The six
second one concerns French-Thai translation. The last one will make them aware of English-French
translation problems.

12. Conclusion

My teaching experience from French side shows that a program that targets English and
French can become a new trend of language and culture learning in Thailand, in particular in a local
context like in Phuket because it is by nature a real multilingual and multicultural laboratory
Island. CLIL could answer to the need of rendering its purpose more authentic and to produce
better learning results.

In such a program applied to CLIL, it is a must that Thai lecturers teaching in Phuket
campus have to think about the implementation of this approach that can provide better results. We
cannot abandon Thai language. We even acknowledge the important role of Thai in developing
cognitive skills of local learners. We cannot refuse some needs for speaking Thai in a classroom.
Thats why researches focusing on code-switching will be essential to know how and when a code-
switching should be allowed. We hope that CLIL can create a new way of learning and teaching
any foreign language in the campus or in nationwide level. As responsible for distributing English
in all of general education (35 credits), FIS must establish a real linguistic policy allowing a team
of CLIL conducting common discussions on the matter (Kristin Bartika & all). By doing that, we
can assure the quality of CLIL implemented in the campus.

References

Kristina Litchford (2011), Perceptions of English in Thailand.
Retrieved from http://www.auburn.edu/~kzl0013/pdf/linguistics.pdf
Pattanida Punthumasen (2007), International Program for Teacher Education:An Approach to
Tackling Problems of English Education in Thailand.
Retrieved from http://worldedreform.com/pub/paperie13dec07.pdf
David Marsh & Mara Jess Frigols Martn , Introduciton: Content and Language Integrated
Learning.
Retrieved from http://www.uni-due.de/imperia/md/content/appliedlinguisticsdidactics/
lingon/marshfrigols_clil_intro_ts_me.pdf
Do Coyle (2011), Teacher education and CLIL Methods and Tools. Seminar presented in
Arisaig, Scotland.
Sabina Nowak (2011), The Need for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
Development.
Retrieved from http://www.alte.org/2011/presentations/pdf/sabina-nowak.pdf
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(CLIL): current research from Europe.
Retrieved from http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/Dalton/SEW07/CLIL%20research%
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Retrieved from http://www.dosalgarves.com/revistas/N17/3rev17.pdf
Jasone Cenoz &Fred Genesee &Durk Gorter(2013), Critical Analysis of CLIL: taking stock and
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The Faculty Of Applied Sciences.
Retrieved from http://www.uco.es/poling/multilingualism_plan/wp-
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