Content and Language Integrated Learning: A Variant of Bilingual Education in Russian Universities

A tendency to academic mobility becomes a focus of Russian higher education system which is stimulated by the labor market. Today it is not enough to speak a foreign language to get a job, it is important to have a practical experience of work abroad. Many universities introduce bilingual programs to attract more foreign students and to raise university’s prestige among Russian enrollees. At the same time academic mobility requires high level of a foreign language, English in most cases. The goal of this research is to describe one of the variants of bilingual education which may benefit higher education in Russia and help Russian students master a foreign language. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a relatively new methodology for both linguistic and non-linguistic education in Russia and its introduction may cause certain problems. The study analyzes these problems and offers their solution. The experiment held within this research revealed the main obstacles of CLIL implementation from the point of view of students majoring in Pedagogy. Among them are lack of human resources (teachers able to implement CLIL in class); the need for content adaptation (the degree of complexity of a subject must correspond to the level of a foreign language of the group); methodology (teachers must learn to combine subject teaching with language teaching finding the right balance between the methods used) and lack of textbooks (foreign subject textbooks might be too difficult for Russian students). At the same time, future-teachers who took part in the experiment showed readiness for introduction of CLIL pedagogy in their practice. The paper offers an example of a CLIL lesson plan.