Abstract
Traditional study programmes for students of modern languages and language teacher-training programmes offer practical language courses to guarantee that requisite language proficiency is reached and that students are versed not only in academic but also practical language. The aim of this paper is to explore how such courses can be designed in situations where the initial proficiency is already at least C1+, but where further language development is desirable as the students in question are to become English language teachers.
The paper describes four years' experience of running one such course for which CLIL was used as the primary instructional approach. It explains why CLIL was chosen, illustrates how it was implemented and describes the principles of the syllabus design in this course.
It shows that in this particular setting CLIL's dual-focused approach created the right learning conditions both for ensuring language growth and for the inclusion of key language-teaching topics and concepts which only receive scant attention in the rest of the study plan. The introduction of these concepts within the framework of an essentially communicative language classroom fostered the establishment of a professional community of future English teachers.
The course is another evidence of the viability of the CLIL methodology at tertiary education.