'Motivated' content integration: Reflections on developing a CLIL course with language learning motivation as the content

This presentation will describe the CLIL approach taken in undergraduate English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses at a Sino-US joint venture university in China. The institution uses English as its medium of instruction (EMI), yet roughly two thirds of the undergraduates experienced non-EMI secondary schooling. These required EAP courses are designed to help students in their first year meet the challenges of EMI in the liberal arts curriculum. Recognizing the advantages and limits of CLIL (Bruton, 2013; Cenoz, Genesee, & Gorter, 2014; Fortanet-Gomez, 2013), the course developers chose language and culture as the content for these first-year academic writing courses. The first course of the two-course sequence, Writing About Language Learning, addresses the broad question of how students can continue developing their ability to use English, focusing on the role of motivation in language learning. In a process-genre approach to writing (Badger & White, 2000) students read, analyze, and respond to texts about language learning and motivation from multiple genres. They move from reading and writing language-learning narratives to engaging with motivation theories, which they apply to gain new perspectives on their own experiences as learners. Throughout the course, learners reflect on both the content and on their reading and writing skills in learning logs that they share with their instructors and classmates. The course culminates in an argumentative paper that takes a writing/arguing to learn approach (Hirvela, 2017) as students discuss ways to sustain L2 learning motivation, integrating the perspectives they have read into their own views. The presenters will discuss the development and revision of an EAP writing course over three teaching cycles. They will illustrate the impact the course has on student learning and how the course fits into the larger undergraduate curriculum at the university. Course outlines and materials will be shared with attendees.