Characterizing CLIL teaching: new insights from a lower secondary classroom (original) (raw)
Related papers
Investigating Content and Language Integrated Learning
2019
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), introduced in the 1990s, has been gaining considerable ground across the globe in recent years. With this as a backdrop, Liss Kerstin Sylvén provides this latest edited collection which is systematically organized to illuminate a plethora of perspectives of CLIL through a 3-year longitudinal research project Content and Language Integrated Learning in Swedish Schools (CLISS). The volume is arranged in 5 diverse thematic parts, comprised of 16 chapters, and an epilogue by the editor. Covering the first three contributions, part 1 presents the general context and the layout of the CLISS project. In chapter 1 (by Sylvén), the Swedish educational system and the pivotal role of English in Sweden are introduced, followed by a detailed description of the CLISS program including its aims, informants, methods and research team, among others. Paulsrud (Chapter 2) compares and analyzes three official national statistics concerning the scope and extent of CLIL in Swedish schools. Chapter 3 by Apelgren reports and discusses the results from the initial student questionnaire in the CLISS study as regards the participating students' language and home background, extramural language activities in Swedish and English as well as attitudes and experiences of school and classroom work activities. Undoubtedly, these three chapters lay the foundations for the readers to better understand the findings in the succeeding chapters which revolve around the project. Part 2 (Chapters 4-5) is devoted to assessment and motivation with respect to CLIL. Based on data from teacher interviews, questionnaires and teachers' written assessment design, Reierstam and Sylvén (Chapter 4) explore and compare the assessment practices of CLIL versus non-CLIL teachers, as well as those of content versus language teachers. The results indicate that more conscious language-oriented assessment practices need to be established in CLIL instruction. Furthermore, benchmarks for assessment in CLIL should be created to normalize and facilitate assessment procedures. In view of the insufficient amount of research so far on assessment in CLIL, this study is timely and appealing to fill the gap in the literature of its kind. Chapter 5 (by Thompson and Sylvén) looks into the changes in language learning motivation of CLIL and non-CLIL students over their three-year senior high school period. Besides, the addition of the gender factor makes it a unique three-dimensional exploration of motivation, CLIL and gender. Part 3 (chapters 6-9) examines students' proficiency and progress in as well as their contact with English. By adopting the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT; Nation 2001), Sylvén and Ohlander (Chapter 6) investigate learners' receptive L2/FL English vocabulary knowledge within the CLISS project. Statistically, the CLIL students significantly outscore, both pre-CLIL and at the end of their three-year CLIL program, their non-CLIL peers who appear to stagnate between the two test rounds. The authors argue that even though CLIL students make significant progress at all frequency levels covered by the VLT, there is much room for improvement for both CLIL and non-CLIL students, especially with regard to the more difficult frequency levels and academic words. In Chapter 7, Olsson & Sylvén present a quantitative inquiry over three years into CLIL and non-CLIL students' English writing proficiency, not least their development of productive English vocabulary. The most remarkable finding is that CLIL students do not seem to progress more in their use of either general or academic vocabulary when compared with non-CLIL students, even though they are at a significant advantage at the outset of the investigation. The authors consider that one reason could be the limited focus on productive L2/ FL English proficiency in the participating CLIL classes. Besides, CLIL students might not be challenged in their productive L2/FL English use in the schools. Thus, this study is conducive to reflections on what INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM
CLIL. Journal of Innovation and Research in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education
T his paper provides a presentation to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) aimed at any reader who needs a basic understanding of this approach, be they teachers, teacher educators or education stakeholders in general. The article contextualises CLIL within the European Union (EU) policy intended to promote effective plurilingualism for all, offers a rationale for CLIL and warns policy makers and practitioners of certain practices commonly observed in CLIL settings that may undermine its effectiveness. E ste artículo aspira a familiarizar a cualquier persona interesada -ya sea docente, profesional de la formación del profesorado, o persona con responsabilidades educativas -con el enfoque Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenidos y Lengua (AICLE). El artículo sitúa el AICLE en el contexto de la política lingüística de la Unión Europea (UE) encaminada a promover un plurilingüismo activo para toda la ciudadanía, presenta algunos principios teóricos que fundamentan este enfoque, y advierte sobre prácticas observadas en aulas AICLE que pueden amenazar su potencial educativo.
'Something new and different': student perceptions of content and language integrated learning
ELT Journal, 2021
Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a growing field, but we have limited knowledge of how students actually experience CLIL teaching. This study examines why students choose CLIL programmes, how they perceive them, and how they assess their science teaching in English L2. Students from two Norwegian CLIL 11th-grade classes (N = 50) answered two questionnaires. The results revealed that students primarily chose CLIL programmes because they view English as a key factor to success in their studies and their future work lives. The pros included improving English, classroom environment, and motivation, and the cons were the diminished role of L1, school environment, and cognitive difficulties in learning through L2. Students were satisfied, noting that their teachers clarified the material and often conferred with and challenged them. However, students lacked the freedom to create their own tasks and felt that L1 needed to be more clearly integrated into the teaching.
Content-and-Language Integrated Learning: From Practice to Principles
This article surveys recent work on content-and-language integrated learning (CLIL). Related to both content-based instruction and immersion education by virtue of its dual focus on language and content, CLIL is here understood as an educational model for contexts where the classroom provides the only site for learners' interaction in the target language. That is, CLIL is about either foreign languages or lingua francas. The discussion foregrounds a prototypical CLIL context (Europe) but also refers to work done elsewhere. The first part of the discussion focuses on policy issues, describing how CLIL practice operates in a tension between grassroots decisions and higher order policymaking, an area where European multi-and plurilingual policies and the strong impact of English as a lingua franca play a particularly interesting role. The latter is, of course, of definite relevance also in other parts of the world. The second part of the article synthesizes research on learning outcomes in CLIL. Here, the absence of standardized content testing means that the main focus is on language-learning outcomes. The third section deals with classroom-based CLIL research and participants' use of their language resources for learning and teaching, including such diverse perspectives as discourse pragmatics, speech acts, academic language functions, and genre. The final part of the article discusses theoretical underpinnings of CLIL, delineating their current state of elaboration as applied linguistic research in the area is gaining momentum.
Attaining Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in the Primary School Classroom
American Journal of Educational Research 3.4 (2015): 418-426, 2015
In consideration of the need for pupils to start using English as a second language (L2) beyond the 2-3 hour a week compulsory “English lesson” in Italian primary schools, the new Italian National Curriculum Guidelines encourage multilingual education. This official stimulus could lead to the achievement of a more bilingual classroom with increased usage of English throughout the school day, especially through the use of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) strategies. Teachers need clear, practical indications of easy, brief activities that they can carry out daily in English in their classrooms in the various subject areas and they need to be familiar with the multimedia opportunities that exist to achieve this goal.
CONTENT & LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING
To begin with, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) refers to any dual-focused educational context in with an additional language, thus not usually the first language of the learners involved is used as medium in the teaching and learning of non-language content. Our task is to form either a defence or a repudiation of the notion that ‘CLIL is the approach for the future’. We have made a research and we shared our experience so as to arrive to our conclusion, our own perspective. We have taken into account advantages and disadvantages. First of all, we considered the different attempts to a definition, how a curriculum is divided, contents, the very basic considerations, age and cognitive states. We also analysed the types of CLIL practice, for example that it tends to be measured in quantity because the movement is relatively new. Then, the teacher should involve adequate target-language competence, subject-knowledge and materials in the target language, institutional and parental approval of CLIL practice, inter-departmental co-operation and institutional bilingual/multilingual policy across the curriculum.
2019
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is currently getting increased attention in higher education. This article describes an interventionist study whose aim was to investigate the effectiveness of CLIL instruction, and offers information on the challenges that teachers face in providing CLIL instruction in real classroom settings. After creating relevant CLIL material, and in collaboration with both language and content teachers, data was collected using student questionnaires, and class observation forms were analysed. Six teachers and 24 students were interviewed regarding their attitudes towards, perceptions of, and experiences with CLIL lessons. Student abstracts written in English were also analysed. The results indicate that the implementation of the CLIL approach requires close collaboration between content and language teachers through training sessions so that the steps and procedures that need to be taken in the classroom can be properly understood and provided....