Law and Business Students’ Attitudes towards Learning English for Specific Purposes within CLIL and Non-CLIL Contexts

Resumen

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses are present within most non-linguisticundergraduate studies offered in Spain. In particular, the University of Cádiz has a wide range ofESP teaching being delivered in the four campuses of the institution. Whereas this ESP instruction isthought as a way to help students develop language skills to be applied to their career paths, thisvery practical and useful goal may not be easily recognized by certain students. While previousresearch has revealed students’ attitudes towards learning ESP were generally positive, little hasbeen said on their progression throughout the whole course. The aim of the present paper is toidentify Law students’ approaches to a Legal English course taught through a specific methodology.Certain teaching strategies, which are also characteristic of the Content and Language IntegratedLearning approach, were applied. For that purpose, the opinions of 88 respondents were collectedand analysed during the second phase of their ESP course. Results revealed that although studentsshowed a certain level of rejection before the course started, once they became well aware of theteaching methodology, their opinion changed positively. This would definitely be influenced bypromoting students’ motivation, as well as the teaching methodology applied.