Designing a College English General Education Course on the SDGs within the CLIL 4Cs Framework

Against the backdrop of global sustainable development and the reform of college English general education in China, this paper explores the construction of a college English general education curriculum integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the framework of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and its 4Cs model. Through literature review and theoretical analysis, the study reveals a strong alignment between the four dimensions of the CLIL framework—Content, Communication, Culture, and Cognition—and the core competencies advocated by the SDGs, such as global citizenship, critical thinking, and intercultural understanding. Based on this, the paper proposes a systematic curriculum design scheme encompassing content development, teaching methodology, and assessment mechanisms. The curriculum aims to foster students’ language proficiency and sustainable literacy through task-based learning, project-based learning, and intercultural collaboration in authentic contexts. Additionally, by integrating the concept of intercultural citizenship education, the curriculum enhances students’ global responsibility and intercultural dialogue competence. This study provides both theoretical support and practical pathways for shifting college English education from a tool-oriented to a competency-based approach. Future research may further explore localized teaching cases and conduct cross-cultural comparative studies to validate the feasibility of the proposed curriculum model.