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ICLHE 2006: Research and Practice

ICLHE conferences.jpg
ICLHE 2006.jpg

As a consequence of rapid change in higher education, universities are finding themselves increasingly engaged in competition for both students and staff. Competition is stimulating universities to offer programmes in other languages (especially English), and in many cases, successfully. However, as the implementation of multilingual programmes grows, so do the challenges universities face in offering such integrated education across the breadth of their educational provision. Hence universities will be looking for solid evidence of good practice elsewhere, especially grounded in research. This is what ICLHE 2006 was designed to address.

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ICLHE 2006 thus focused on the integration of disciplinary content learning and language learning in universities and other institutes of higher education. In particular, following on from the ICL 2003 Conference, it highlighted research into issues affecting higher education learning through a foreign language.

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ICLHE 2006 addressed key issues:

  1. educational approaches that promote the integration of content and language in higher education

  2. content adaptations as a result of learning a foreign language and of having a multicultural/multilingual student population and academic staff, including facilitating access to higher education for speakers of minority languages

  3. course and programme design, especially master’s programmes, promoting the development of writing and research skills

  4. evaluation and assessment of multilingual programmes

 

Keynote speakers: Prof. David Crystal gave the opening keynote “Towards a philosophy of language management” on Thursday 29 June, and Prof. Jeroen van Merriënboer, the second on “Instructional design and cognitive load” on Friday 30 June.

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ICLHE 2006 led to two books, the first focusing on research into ICLHE and the second on practice:

Wilkinson, R. & Zegers, V. (eds.) (2007). Researching content and language integration in higher education. Maastricht: Maastricht University.

Wilkinson, R. & Zegers, V. (eds.) (2008, online). Realizing content and language integration in higher education. Maastricht: Maastricht University.

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