TAKASHI UEMURA (YAMAGUCHI UNIVERSITY)
MAYUMI TANAKA (Mukogawa Women's University)

ASSESSING POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS’ ENGINEERING CONTENT LEARNING OUTCOMES AND ASSOCIATED LINGUISTIC COMPETENCIES THROUGH CLIL-BASED INSTRUCTION : ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC/SPECIFIC PURPOSES

This paper examines Japanese and international master’s degree students’ engineering content learning outcomes and associated linguistic competencies via online presentations and spoken tasks, implemented based upon the principles of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The presentation involved identifying issues in manufacturing products and proposing solutions in line with the given specifications. The spoken tasks simulated a meeting with a potential customer in which students should confirm the customer’s current procurement process, investigate their needs, and introduce their product to the customer. The English for Manufacturing Course was designed based on the linguistic model proposed by Tanaka et al. (2017), which outlines four types of expressions (simple, detailed, logical, accurate and appropriate expressions) necessary for communication in the manufacturing industry as well as the 4Cs of CLIL (Coyle et al., 2010). Data were obtained through rubrics assessing students’ pre- and post-spoken tasks and presentations. Sixteen Japanese students and four international students from China participated in the presentation, while seventeen Japanese students and five international students participated in the spoken tasks. All were enrolled in a 15-week elective CLIL-based English course for engineering master’s degree students. Presentation results showed that the students were mostly able to explain issues and their solutions in manufacturing business situations, mainly by emphasizing the advantages of their product compared to a competitor’s. Spoken task results revealed that students were generally able to apply situationally appropriate expressions by accurately providing information sources and delivering concrete explanations with quantitative expressions.

TAKASHI UEMURA is a professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Yamaguchi University, Japan. He holds an MA in TESL/TEFL from the University of Birmingham, UK. Prior to his English teaching career, he worked in the international finance and accounting field for approximately ten years. His research interests include CLIL.

MAYUMI TANAKA is a Professor in the Department of English and Global Studies at Mukogawa Women's University in Hyogo, Japan. She holds a PhD in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. She is interested in critical reading, materials development, and CLIL.