http://wjel.sciedupress.com World Journal of English Language Vol. 13, No. 2; 2023 Published by Sciedu Press 331 ISSN 1925-0703 E-ISSN 1925-0711 The Potentials and Limitations of Applying Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Approach to English Teaching for Medical Students I Made Sujana 1 , Untung Waluyo 1 , Eka Fitriana 1 , & I Wayan Sudiarta 2 1 Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, the University of Mataram, Indonesia 2 Faculty of Science, the University of Mataram, Indonesia Correspondence: Untung Waluyo, the University of Mataram, Idonesia. Received: November 29, 2022 Accepted: January 4, 2023 Online Published: February 22, 2023 doi:10.5430/wjel.v13n2p331 URL: https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n2p331 Abstract The Faculty of Medicine, the University of Mataram, Indonesia, renewed its curriculum to teach English to aide Indonesian university graduates to enter the competitive international job markets. Adopting this new curriculum will affect the provision of teaching and learning activities. This paper attempts to justify whether the use of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) would fit within the current English curriculum. A comprehensive review of a literature was conducted to identify barriers and facilitators for the implementation of CLIL in higher education settings. Results of the literature review were then used to evaluate the potential strengths and limitations of the recently renewed curriculum when implemented at the Faculty of Medicine. Availing of curriculum and learning materials has the potential to sustain CLIL implementation in the Faculty of Medicine. However, factors that may impinge the successful implementation include: lecturers‘ language, content pedagogical competences and the need to employ differentiated instructional modules. An ongoing professional development for lecturers prior to curriculum implementation could address these limitations. Keywords: CLIL, English, medicine 1. Introduction Most Indonesian universities produce several graduates every year to compete at both national and international levels. Regardless of such ambitious goals, many of those graduates are not adequately equipped with language abilities to work in competitive international job markets. This situation becomes a bottleneck in the development of internationally competitive graduates in Indonesia. This limitation also applies to graduates of Medicine from the Mataram University. Sujana et al., (2020) developed a renewed English Curriculum under the auspices of the Indonesian National Research Grant to provide students the opportunities to improve their English learning proficiency in response to various local, national, and global challenges. Thus, faculty graduates would learn English as a means of communication to meet the demand of global job markets. Curriculum development is an important step in preparing competitive graduates to ultimately compete for job opportunities at the international level. The newly established curriculum is comprised of 6 strands ranging from General Academic Reading to English for Communication in the Workplace. Each strand represents a level of language proficiency to be acquired by a student. We prepared teaching syllabus and learning materials to complement the newly developed curriculum. Also, we set out to describe whether the CLIL approach is suitable for implementing the newly developed English curriculum and identify models for CLIL implementations for the practical classroom. Our review was prompted by the limited information on CLIL implementation in higher education as it is still at its‘ early stages. The term CLIL was first coined by Marsh (1994) to refer to teaching and learning situations in which subjects (contents), or parts of contents, are taught through a foreign language. CLIL has dual-focused goals, which are the simultaneously acquisition of subject matter (content) and the target language. In Ball‘s term (2002), CLIL is likened to ‗killing two birds with one stone.‘ However, during its development, CLIL has been variously defined and applied depending on contexts and focuses. Out of the various definitions available in literature, Coyle, D, Hood, P, Marsh (2010 p.1) provided a vivid CLIL definition, i.e., ―A dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used in the teaching and learning process of both content and language;‖ a definition widely agreed upon by several CLIL research studies. From the onset, CLIL‘s adoption by many countries in Europe was driven by political and educational motives. Meanwhile, polit ical issues related to the needs of high levels of language competence for community mobility in a global competition and educational issues are related to the needs to design language teaching for higher level of competence (Marsh, 2012). Several theories underlying the CLIL application are bilingualism, SLA, constructivism, cognitive learning, authenticity of contexts and purposes as well as intercultural understanding (Awan & Sipra, 2018). The common framework used to design teaching units in the CLIL approach is known as Coyle‘s 4C Framework, comprising of (1) content, related to subject matter/unit being taught, (2) communication related to appropriate language development and use, (3) cognition,