Transforming University English with CLIL Curricula: An In-depth Case Study

How will universities throughout Japan meet future challenges of enhancing students’ English academic skills to achieve MEXT goals, prepare students for study abroad and EMI courses at home, and boost overall international English-language competitiveness? Adopting CLIL-based curricula is one promising solution. Based on a four-year MEXT grant to researchers at four major universities, this article describes action-research curricular reform of a first-year English program with 230 students. Its research objective was to design an effective content-based curriculum to improve academic readiness for study in English and significantly boost TOEFL scores. The researchers/curriculum designers examine the reform background, innovative steps taken, significant difficulties encountered, initial results, and remaining challenges. In Year 1, a pilot was conducted in which three of 16 classes adopted a partial CLIL curriculum; in Year 2, all 16 classes engaged in coordinated four-class-per-week study of liberal arts fields including sociology, economics, earth science, biology, and natural history; in Year 3, this CLIL study expanded to five classes a week. For the past 10 years, the curriculum designers’ university has used the TOEFL ITP as a benchmark for English improvement, administering the exam to students at the beginning and end of their first year. In 2022, the year of the first full implementation of the CLIL curriculum, students’ TOEFL ITP gain was 140% greater than the average score gains in the previous seven years. In 2023, the score gain of students was 107% higher than the seven-year average. In Year 4 of the curriculum reform (2024), researchers-curriculum designers hope to share curricular materials on a common platform to partner with other universities. 日本の大学は、文科省の基準を満たしEMIや留学に適したレベルまで学生の英語力を向上させ、国際的な競争力を高めることが求められている。かかる課題に対する有望な解決策がCLILベースのカリキュラムである。本稿では、４大学の研究者らによる4年にわたる科研費プロジェクトを元に、230名の学生を対象とする初年次英語プログラムのカリキュラム改革のアクションリサーチを報告する。カリキュラム設計担当者の所属大学では過去10年にわたり、初年次の開始時と終了時にTOEFL ITPを実施し、学生の英語力の伸びを測る指標としてきた。CLILカリキュラム完全実施の初年度にあたる2022年度には、学生のTOEFL ITPスコアの伸びは、過去7年間の平均得点上昇に比して140％増を達成、2023年度のスコア増は7年間平均を107％上回った。カリキュラム改革4年目の2024年度にあたり、他大学との連携を視野に、本カリキュラム教材を共通のプラットフォームで共有することを期している。