Abstract:

As one of the most important cornerstones of any educational process, language teaching has always been one of the key tools providing the learners with certain significant advantages, such as cultural competence and flexibility, communicative capabilities and skills, thus opening broader horizons and more opportunities. The imperative to adapt language teaching to new realities and challenges calls for applying new and more effective methods and approaches. And one of them is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which has already proved to be quite efficient as it incorporates content, cognition, communication and culture (the 4Cs framework) and integrates linguistic and factual aspects of the language teaching process. One of the main targets of applying CLIL approach is to contribute to expanding European values, shaping a “European Citizen” in the present-day globalized world.

Actually, two types of CLIL are differentiated – hard CLIL and soft CLIL. Experience has proved that teaching a Foreign Language for Special Purposes (FLSP) becomes more effective through implementing especially soft CLIL when both the target language and the subject content are of equal relevance. FLSP, combined with CLIL, has been successfully implemented at the Department of International Relations at Yerevan State University (YSU) and the present research is based on the results achieved through practicing CLIL. While using this cross-disciplinary approach we have observed, among other advantages, accumulation of vocabulary and various structures in different interrelated fields in both the native and target languages. Courses designed under CLIL methodology increase students' language, cultural, cognitive and professional competences.

Keywords:

CLIL, FLSP, cross-disciplinary approach, cultural competence, cognitive competence, communicative skills, interrelated fields.