Integrating Elements of LSP Language Teaching and CLIL Methods in the Context of Tertiary Education

Abstract

LSP and CLIL differ significantly in their perspective, as standard LSP teaching focuses primarily on foreign language competences, while CLIL methodology always implies teaching contents as well as language. Consequently, they nurture different approaches to foreign language teaching, different learning aims and outcomes, as well as different teachers’ roles. However, these two linguistic approaches seem also to share some basic features: use of needs analysis, context-based and task-based instruction, subject-specific orientation, fostering of both communicative and academic competence etc. In this paper the integration of LSP and CLIL is examined in the specific settings of tertiary education in Serbia, more precisely, within an LSP course – Italian for students of Social Studies and Humanities. This small-scale research conducted to establish whether it is possible to bridge the gap between the two approaches has shown that integrating elements of LSP and CLIL is not only feasible, but highly desirable.

Keywords

• LSP
• CLIL
• tertiary education
• foreign language learning and teaching
• subject-specific content