Measuring the Effect of Implementing Content and Language-Integrated Learning (CLIL) in The Institute of Languages for International Integration (ILANI): An Experimental Research Project

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was originally defined in 1994, and launched in 1996 by UNICOM, the University of Jyväskylä, and the European Platform for Dutch Education, to describe educational methods where “subjects are taught through a foreign language with dual-focused aims, namely the learning of content, and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language” (Darn, 2006, p.4). Springing forth from the fact that few experimental studies have been carried out on CLIL at different levels of the educational system and virtually none in language centers, this paper aims to provide insights into experimental research on a CLIL project for communicative skills in the context of a language center. The participants in the experiment were 50 learners of different age groups, different nationalities, and different academic and professional backgrounds, learning English as a foreign language at the Institute of Languages for
International Integration located in the town of Buea in the South West Region of Cameroon, a country in central Africa. The research design involved observing, conducting interviews, and administering a CLIL test with a focus on communicative skills and the target disciplines. The data collected were statistically processed and the data analysis techniques employed were mean and standard deviation (SD) and ANOVA. The data provided support for the efficacy of implementing CLIL in a language center as the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of both communicative skills and content knowledge and showed a considerably higher positive attitude towards the CLIL course than their peers in the control group. This paper could therefore serve asa stepping stone on which many similar yet profound experimental pieces of research on CLIL could follow suit in language centers to ascertain its effectiveness in all other aspects and to bring all the stakeholders implicated in language valorization to applying CLIL in the teaching/learning process in language centers.

Keywords: CLIL, ILANI, Language center, Communicative skills.