language barrier breaking, cultural awareness and motivation increased.

Language barrier, which is the problem of communicating with someone who speak different languages(Wikipedia), exists in the communication of some second language learners , it’s not just about the vocabulary amount, but also about cultural differences. There’s no lack of dummy English learners in China. Most of these learners have remembered a great amount of words and they might do well in reading and writing except speaking because they are out of English context.

Even though some learners think they can speak fluently, such as the author of this thesis, cultural differences like the use of pause, the rate or flow of conversation, even some kinds of dialect and accent still make them feel stressful when facially talk to native English speaker. Different cultures makes different expression way, so misunderstandings and embarrasses could easily happen.

How these learners mentioned above who want to learn English well as a second language can be helped effectively? Except for the well-described methods in TESOL, CLIL is another approach we can use in classrooms.

Content and Language Integrated Learning, or CLIL, is an approach for learning content through a second language, which is English in this case, therefore, teaching both the subject and the language. It is a term created in 1994 by David Marsh and Anne Maljers as a methodology similar to but distinct from language immersion and content-based instruction. This kind of approach has been identified as very important by the European Commission.(Wikipedia )

CLIL can help students to learn a different language and culture better in non-English environments. CLIL is a student-centered type of teaching method that could make language be learned mainly through acquisition and using it. As it is known that language is learned best when the language is used to learn something else. Examples like in a bilingual English school, maths and sciences are taught in English. In CLIL classes, language serves to communicate meaning.

Students are expected to be able to reproduce the core of the text in their own words, this can nurture self-confidence and provide effective opportunities for students to use their English skills now, rather learn them now for use later.

CLIL can also help teachers to plan a sequence of lessons that are more targeted for students to motivate them on language learning. CLIL is where a subject is taught in the target language rather than the first language of the learners. So materials are often characterized by lots of visual support for meaning, to allow low language level students to access high level content; tasks are designed to allow students to focus on and learn to use the new language as they learn the new subject content. Teachers could provide tasks taking into account the learning purposes and learner styles, receptive skill activities of language competence such as read, listen and do genre, e.g., listen and fill in the table. This can provide exposure to the language without requiring extra time in the curriculum.

In summary, the benefits of CLIL can be seen in terms of language competence(e.g.four skills), language barrier breaking, cultural awareness and motivation increased. In this consideration, enhancing teachers’ language competences in general to promote the teaching of non-linguistic subjects in foreign or second languages, this might be the essence of teacher training issue next.