CLIL in higher education: towards content and language integrated learning

The internationalisation of higher education poses a specific challenge to university lecturers: they are required to teach students in another language than their own mother tongue and that of their students. As a result, institutions of higher education devote much attention to instructional language proficiency of their lecturers. Language tests are often considered a solution to objectively assess language proficiency, but they should be accompanied by a professionalisation trajectory for the lecturer and a remedy trajectory for the student. In addition, special attention should be given to a form of didactics specifically adapted to the situation. Based on a discussion of recent literature on content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and higher education, this article presents a design research aimed at developing and evaluating the effectiveness of a language didactic professionalisation programme for lecturers.