Language-content partnership at Chinese universities: A review of practices

Abstract

<p>Language-content partnership or the interdisciplinary collaboration between English teachers and content teachers is an issue of wide interest in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and other pedagogical traditions where there is a dual concern with developing learners’ language skills and disciplinary content knowledge. While the English-medium literature on language-content partnership has been growing, a fuller picture of what is happening on a global scale cannot be obtained without exploring academic literature published in a language other than English. In this paper, we report a review study that was based on a body of Chinese literature purposefully collected through systematic searching. Content analysis of the 36 identified Chinese papers was conducted to address the research question “How is the collaboration between English teachers and content teachers practiced at Chinese universities?”. Our findings on the Chinese scene will be enlightening for practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in other contexts who are interested in exploring the educational value of language-content partnership. <br></p>