Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Sile O‘Hora
SIS, and one English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at the B1+ level to
help students cope with the course requirements (writing papers in English,
making presentations in English) of the Master’s programme at the SIS or
indeed any EMI course, whether in the form of a Master’s degree abroad or as
part of the Erasmus programme. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the
positive and negative aspects of these two courses, organised at such short
notice and now at the end of their first experimental year, and to consider
how they can be further tailored to meet students’ needs, also in the light of
the fact that the faculty, from the 2011/2012 academic year, is opening a new
School for Social Sciences with PhD programmes held wholly in English.
2. The ESP course: English for Sociology
The stated aim of this 50-hour course was to help students read, write, listen
and speak in English for Sociology at the B1+ level in order to help prepare
them for further study through English e.g. the Master’s degree at the SIS. It
was optional, worth four credits, open to maximum 25 students and was
repeated in the second semester. The course was innovative both for the
faculty and the students because it was aimed at a higher level than the
previous ESP course (for many years the faculty had run an ESP course
concentrating on reading skills and translating texts into Italian) and because
it no longer led to the English faculty examination, the credits being awarded
for student participation and attendance, and for coursework, but not for a
final examination. Following Hutchinson and Waters’ well-known definition
of ESP as “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to
content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning” (1987: 19),
the course concentrated on all four skills, not just reading; students were
required to read authentic up-to-date texts (e.g. from The Economist) on themes
relevant to sociology (e.g. immigration, gender issues, education), answer
questions and discuss them in class; to encounter, understand and try to use a
range of lexis used in the field of sociology; to research ethical issues (e.g.
euthanasia, legalisation of soft drugs), present their findings in class and lead
a class discussion; to write three short comparative essays (e.g. Compare higher
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