CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING AT THE FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

In this work we will present our content and language integrated learning (CLIL) experience in English at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Under the new degrees introduced recently, students need to acquire competence in a foreign language. One way to achieve this is by taking 12 credits of courses in English. We teach Mathematics and International Economics in English.

These courses are primarily based on graphic and symbolic languages, which makes them more suited to be taught in English as compared to other subjects with a more descriptive or historical content. However, being taught in a foreign language, the course can be challenging and for this reason the students have available tools to help them: notes, articles and books in English, as well as access to different material in Spanish and Catalan.

Our years of experience are still not long enough to extract conclusions about the student’s performance relative to the Spanish teaching groups. However, the popularity of the English courses is growing, as shown by the increase in the number of students taking them, which we consider a very positive trend. Further, these courses tend to attract a lot of foreign visiting students (Erasmus), which introduces an intercultural dimension to the courses.