THE IMPACT OF CLIL ON MILITARY UNDERGRADUATES’ SPEAKING PROFICIENCY AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS LANGUAGE LEARNING

Abstract

The speaking skill is important for military undergraduates for academic gains, professional career development, achieve higher military education, involvement in multinational military operations and career courses overseas. Although there have been efforts to improve the teaching strategies to develop the speaking skill, research studies revealed that military undergraduates speaking proficiency decreases gradually, and they have difficulties to improve the spoken language. In addition, undergraduates have unfavourable attitude towards English language learning. CLIL with case studies is an innovative teaching strategy to develop language skill and attitude towards language learning. This research was carried out in a defence university in Malaysia to explore the prospects of CLIL with case study-based learning for the development of the speaking skill and attitude of military undergraduates. A quasi-experiment quantitative method design was employed. A non-random sampling with 50 undergraduates and two teachers taking part in an EAP 18-weeks program participated in the research study. The data was collected from the ADFELPS proficiency test and portfolio assessment. The findings of this research revealed that the CLIL pedagogy improved the speaking proficiency and the case study-based learning strategies contributed significantly towards building positive attitudes towards English language learning.