Plenary Lecture

COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR

CLIL - CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

Suzana Carmen Cismas PhD,

Department of Modern Languages and Communication,

The Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania

Computers are a basic tool required in Content&Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which involves teaching a curricular subject through the medium of computers and a language other than the native tongue normally used. CLIL is taking place and has been found to be effective in all sectors of education at all ages, to adult and higher education. Its success has been growing over the past ten years and continues to do so. Professors working with CLIL are specialists in their own discipline rather than traditional language teachers. They are usually fluent speakers of the target language, bilingual or native speakers, working in partnership with other departments to offer the program in various subjects. Benefits of CLIL include, but are not limited to: building intercultural knowledge and understanding, developing intercultural communication skills along-side with multilingual interests&attitudes, improving language competence&oral communication skill, providing opportunities to study content through different perspectives, and diversifying methods and forms of classroom practice. It does not require extra teaching hours and comple-ments other subjects rather than competing with them. Hence it is a modern and effective approach, which increases learners' motivation and confidence in both language&subject taught.

Brief biography of the speaker:

Suzana Carmen Cismas is Doctor of Philology and Doctor of Education Sciences and has been performing didactic activities for 24 years on research topics dealing with cultural studies, communication in foreign languages and English testing for engineering. She held the quality of Invited professor at Coventry University UK and at Universite Libre de Bruxelles. She is the author of nine books and 87 articles published in Romania and abroad. Proficient in English, Spanish, Italian, and French, she has benefited from numerous scholarships in London University libraries, free schools & didactic material centers in Denmark, at the Sorbonne, François Mitterand National Library, Centre Pompidou and Centre Henri Pierron, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and the Royal Library Stockholm. She was granted cultural heritage post-doctoral research by the Italian Government in 1999. The study visit to Tokyo and Hiroshima for documentation purposes shed new light on eastern culture&civilization: patterns and bias in cultural studies, heritage preservation, promotion of the national culture worldwide, the status of the contemporary metropolis, translation issues and equivalation of cultural codes among European, American and Japanese communication styles. She has also been involved in numerous debates and workshops on issues regarding orientalism and occidentalism, and in many courses organized by the British Council and by the American Cultural Center. She has participated in grants and research projects with the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, the SOROS Foundation for an Open Society, Centre Education 2000+, and ANSIT (National Agency for Supporting Students’ Initiatives), and is member of numerous professional and research associations in the field.