Content And Language Integrated Learning Course Research Articles

Content and Language Integrated Learning: A Duoethnographic Study about CLIL Pre-Service Teacher Education in Argentina and Spain

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual-focussed approach that promotes the learning of curricular content in tandem with an additional language, usually English. Since its inception in the 1990s in Europe, CLIL provision has increased considerably not only in Europe but also in other contexts, such as Latin America, given its purported benefits in terms of motivation, cognitive skills development, and language awareness. However, little is known about how future teachers, i.e. pre-service teachers, are trained to teach through CLIL. This article aims to address this gap by describing how we – two CLIL teacher educators based in Argentina and Spain – offer CLIL courses. Through duoethnography, we show how we plan and implement CLIL input and what lessons we have learnt drawing on reflective practice in interaction. Analysis of our interaction illustrates how CLIL is conceived and operationalized and what CLIL competences are prioritized in our practices. Pedagogical implications are included.

Understanding and addressing the challenges of teaching an online CLIL course: a teacher education study

ABSTRACT This exploratory action research study aims to understand the challenges that a group of pre-service teachers faced while participating in an undergraduate course unit introducing Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teaching in an online context (Cycle 1), and the way in which they implemented plans of action (Cycle 2) to address issues uncovered in Cycle 1. The study found that the pre-service teachers experienced problems applying appropriate English teaching approaches to promote their pupils’ communicative competence. Four measures were applied in Cycle 2, such as restructuring the training-teaching module, reinforcing the concept of English as a lingua franca to promote students’ communicative skills, selecting authentic materials to enhance students’ motivation, and obtaining administrative support to resolve technological problems. The results from English proficiency tests showed that the pupils improved their reading and listening skills in Cycle 2. Although the actions taken in Cycle 2 were focused on improving pupils’ English abilities, these actions also had the effect of enhancing the pre-service teachers’ CLIL pedagogical concepts, such as the translanguaging approach. The study provides a detailed description of CLIL teaching with online storybooks and adds to the body of much-needed studies of CLIL in practice, especially in the Asian context.

Разработка динамической веб-программы предметно-языкового курса на базе Google инструментов для развития устно-речевых медиативных умений студентов

The changing social demand as well as modern trends of education modernization in Russia, are aimed at organizing foreign language teaching in such a way as to train specialists who will possess not only all components of foreign language communication competence, but also who are able to carry out professional communication and act as mediators in difficult situations of communication in a foreign language. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) due to its two-focused nature, provides an opportunity to cope with this task within one discipline. Web-based CLIL syllabus expands these possibilities for designing an educational online space in order to develop communicative and subject or professional competencies simultaneously. The purpose of this article is to describe the structure of web-based syllabus of the course “Political and Socio-Economic Systems of Canada and the United States in a Comparative Aspect” and to determine the didactic potential of some Google tools for designing web assignments and a web-based syllabus for the CLIL course. The article provides a comparative analysis of two educational standards of higher education in Russia, as well as an educational document of the Council of Europe to define some key cognitive skills that can be developed as part of CLIL course. The article also describes the structure of web-based CLIL syllabus created by the author in connection to the research.

Insegnare italiano attraverso la storia. L’approccio CLIL e il peso di conoscenze pregresse e curriculum di studio nella definizione del rapporto tra contenuto e lingua

This article considers problematic aspects of the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach to the teaching of historical subjects in a foreign language. Specifically, the teaching of history of the Mediterranean region in a monolingual class of learners of Italian as foreign language is examined as a case study.
 The main lexical areas developed during four years of bachelor studies in Italian philology are compared with the main lexical competences actually required in the Lithuanian job market for translators specialized in Italian language. The incongruences between the competences required by employers and those developed at university constitute the base for a discussion about the validity of several CLIL precepts.
 Firstly, the CLIL principle that the content (the subject) should always determine the teacher’s lexical choices, and generally, the teaching language, is challenged. As an example, the teaching of history in Italian would impose the use of passato remoto tense, which in the job market seems to be almost unnecessary. Secondly, the author challenges the idea that the list of topics should be determined independently from other factors such as the type of audience. On the contrary, a preliminary evaluation of student’s prior knowledge permits to define topics capable of stimulating certain cognitive and communicative abilities coherently with the requirements of the job market.
 In the conclusions, the author claims the whole four-years study curriculum should be considered in order to define the aims of a CLIL course. Secondly, in a monolingual class, a survey of student’s prior knowledge is fundamental to determine the series of topics presented in a CLIL module. Finally, it does not seem necessarily true, that the subjects discussed must determine the register and lexical choices of the teacher. 

Uso de recursos digitales para el Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenidos y Lenguas Extranjeras: propuesta para el enriquecimiento de un curso de Biología y Geología mediante tecnologías educativas

Nowadays a wide range of digital tools are used to support the teaching and learning of languages. Their potential positive effects in the learning process can be particularly useful to address the challenges that may arise in approaches such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), where students are expected not only to gain mastery in the content of the subject, but also the foreign language that is used as a vehicle of communication. This paper aims to offer a proposal for the ICT-enrichment of CLIL subjects which has beenimplemented in a course of Biology and Geology in English taught in a Spanish Secondary School. A semi-structured interview with the teacher was used to analyse the needs faced in that particular educational setting. The results obtained, together with current literature on CLIL, were subsequently considered as the starting point for the judicious selection of digital platforms and tools to create and curate the supplementary resources from a principle-based approach. This process of ICT-enrichment is presented as a practice that could be applied in different CLIL courses to adapt them to the specific needs of each context.

“On thin ice” <br> – Discomfort using Sie among Danish students and teachers of German, and implications for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

The article discusses discomfort with using the polite/formal form of address Sie among students and teachers in German CLIL courses at university level in Denmark. Based on focus group interviews with students and teachers, we show that Danish students and teachers find it awkward to adopt the German Sie when German is the language of instruction in Denmark, typically resulting in pragmatic transfer of the Danish informal norm instead. Adopting a critical pedagogy perspective, we discuss how Sie seems to violate Danish cultural values of egalitarianism, causing cultural cognitive dissonance (CCD) in CLIL learning environments. We show that Danes cope with CCD by rejecting Sie or employing (sometimes quite complex) strategies to avoid direct address altogether. However, our investigation also reveals that CCD is partly locational/situational, and that Danes are less reluctant to use Sie in Germany or towards a native German teacher, suggesting a need to raise awareness about this issue in CLIL-courses and foreign language courses where language and intercultural training is taking place ‘at home’ and possibly with a teacher who is not a native speaker of the language. Finally, we offer some suggestions for attenuating this discomfort by rethinking the way that German polite forms of address are taught, and we make the critical point that a major premise of CLIL teaching - the idea of learning a foreign language ‘on one’s own territory – may give rise to cultural resistance, to which teachers should be alert.

(In)compatibility of CLIL and ESP courses at university

Author/s
 Joseba M. González ArdeoUniversidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Spain
 
 ABSTRACT
 This paper deals with the current coexistence of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) courses in tertiary educational settings in the Basque Country. The University of the Basque Country (UBC) is immersed in an ongoing process of internationalization and, consequently, its language teachers are witnessing an unstoppable process of Anglicization. At present, and presumably in the medium and long term, institutional decisions will continue to support CLIL in preference to ESP. In order to analyse this process within the UBC, quantitative data about these two linguistic approaches are gathered and compared with data from 2005. A questionnaire aimed at gathering the opinions of engineering students who currently take both types of courses is also used as a source of qualitative data. The main conclusion of this exploratory study is that both types of courses seem to be compatible. However, language teachers, English-medium content teachers and students are facing a tough challenge, since neither of the two types of course is a panacea.

CLIL PRACTICES IN TOMSK POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY: SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

Introduction. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has recently been applied into education system, but a range of supporters is rapidly increasing, covering diverse countries. The CLIL approaches simultaneously use a foreign language as an object to studying and as an instrument to learning other subjects. The emergence of CLIL was related to a wide distribution of bilingualism in society and the need to cope with the problems related to this process, including the elimination of international conflicts, the consolidation of society as the factor of a social well-being, the support of a competitive labour market, etc.Despite growing popularity of CLIL across the world and recognised status by the European Union as one of the leading effective means to implementing international language policy of multilingualism, the academic teaching staff of Russian higher school does not still fully understand the organisational mechanisms and forms of a similar learning process, largely as a result of national characteristics and traditions. In a globalising world, CLIL didactics is currently becoming a perspective direction of higher education and an effective way both of acquiring and improving language and communicative competencies to provide further successful professionalising of students and to facilitate their career promotion in the chosen field of activity.Theaimof this paper was to sum up and discuss the experience of Tomsk Polytechnic University in conducting CLIL-based courses.Methodology and research methods. The concept of practice-oriented vocational education was used as the methodological base of the experimental work in order to search optimal variants when developing foreign language knowledge in the students of engineering specialties. In the course of the research, the approaches of comparative analysis, synthesis, generalisation, forecasting, design, modelling, prolonged monitoring of learning outcomes, observation and questionnaire survey were applied.Results and scientific novelty.The actualising reasons for CLIL approach in the Russian high school education were formulated and proved. The brief historical overview of didactic concepts was presented. The authors analysed temporary challenges which preceded the implementation of CLIL methodologies in the learning process of Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) and the introduction of programme “Vocational Training and Education in a Foreign Language” (3rd-4th years of education). The stages of teaching foreign language evolution at the university were distinguished: the anglification of engineering education transformed into multidisciplinary model of English for Specific Purpose (ESP); the creation of “pedagogical tandems” – the organization of courses with “double agents”; and, finally, CLIL training in which a cognitive component can be seen as the key characteristic and the main advantage. Success and failure in the field of CLIL practices available today at TPU were revised. The examples of private implementable practices were described and analysed. The research findings revealed the rationality when using various applied variations of CLIL methodology.Practical significance. The research outcomes allowed the authors to adjust not only the main educational programmes of higher education institution, but also internal programmes of professional development of teachers. Although the long-term experiment summarised in the publication in a single higher education institution does not apply for universality and mass circulation, the authors believe that experimentative materials will contribute to consistent embedding of CLIL courses into a complete system of vocational training.

Integrating Content and Language in Business English Teaching in China: First Year Students’ Perceptions and Learning Experience

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a key construct in Business English teaching in universities in China today. While there is a plethora of articles on implementation in European contexts, there is limited evidence in the literature of the teaching/learning experience in other foreign language learning environments—despite its wide application in, for example, south-east Asia and China in particular. As CLIL programs have been developed in a variety of ways to meet the unique needs of learners and societal expectations, the context of teaching and learning is critical. This paper focuses on the perceptions and learning experiences of students in a first year, first semester course, Introduction to Contemporary Business, in a Chinese university. Lesson observations, questionnaires, and interviews explore the experience of learners. While most students found the course very challenging in their first semester, they met the challenge. Coping with both language and content is always a double challenge: most students found their Introduction to Contemporary Business their most difficult course, yet they perceived it as manageable and worthwhile. Students coped with the difficulty level in two main ways: either by spending much time in review and translating the textbook prior to class, or by focusing on the teacher’s PowerPoint slides after class—as they considered these were the key points and the textbook was too difficult. Suggestions for a closer integration between language and content within CLIL courses are offered, such as a case-task-based approach, a greater variety of input, and the role of content teachers in English enhancement.

Immersed in academic English: vocabulary and academic outcomes of a CLIL university preparation course

ABSTRACTThis article reports on an English for academic purposes course designed following the tenets of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) to address the needs of language minority (LM) high school graduates entering Canadian universities. The language used in and required of post-secondary study is challenging for many LM students, particularly those with marginal English language arts grades, contributing to a difficult transition into university. The goal of this course was to improve academic English language skills to mitigate this transition; academic language skills and strategies were embedded, and the content and materials mimicked mainstream university courses. To determine what, if any, vocabulary gains took place during the course, data from pre-/post-testing and writing samples of the ten consenting participants were analyzed using t-tests. These data consisted of lexical measurement tools including the Gates MacGinitie Test of Reading (Vocab) and the Productive Academic Word Test, along with writing analysis using TAALEs and Lextutor software to evaluate lexical sophistication. Each measurement indicated vocabulary gains occurred during the six-week CLIL course. Qualitative examples of student work are provided, and subsequent academic performance of participants is presented. This research concludes with recommendations for future research and CLIL implementation in higher education.

Promoting Writing Competence and Positive Attitudes among College Students in a CLIL English Course

The study targeted a group of 27 students at a college in Kuwait who were enrolled in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) English course during the academic year 2015-2016. The purpose of the study was to monitor students’ assessments of their writing competence in English and to measure their attitudes toward the CLIL course. Data collection utilized a total of five focus-group interviews with the students which were recorded and transcribed, and a category system was generated to describe the commonalities in the participants’ responses. Additionally, an online survey using Google Forms was based on the categories delineated from the interview data. The Microsoft Excel program was used for counting the means, standard deviations, and percentages for each of the survey items. The results of the study indicated that the majority of the students (80%) thought that the CLIL course enhanced their writing competence both within and beyond the sentence level. Writing skills within the sentence level included the accurate use of punctuation marks and capitalization rules. Writing skills beyond the sentence level included paragraph organization, use of proper transition words, and writing cause-and-effect paragraphs. Approximately 20% of the students did not think CLIL improved their writing competence beyond the sentence level. Furthermore, the students displayed highly positive attitudes toward all aspects of the CLIL course. Implications were drawn for specialized teacher training to cope with the demands of CLIL courses, and longitudinal studies to track students’ development of writing competence over time.

CLIL and non-CLIL: differences from the outset

This article reports on a survey that argues that secondary level Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) cohorts are different to their non-CLIL counterparts in a number of respects at the start of their courses. These include students’ previous grades (especially for English, the target foreign language), along with parental interest and students’ future expectations. A high percentage of the CLIL students think their programmes are selective, and the students’ previous grades suggest that CLIL courses exclude the less academically able, while not always selecting all the most able students. Most of the CLIL students believe that CLIL programmes are good for their schools, but they should not be imposed on all students. A number of the CLIL students find their programme difficult. One conclusion is that CLIL programmes exclude certain students, and, even if CLIL is successful, this is partly due to its selective nature. Furthermore, CLIL courses should not divert attention away from existing foreign language classes, especially in non-CLIL courses, which have a more diverse student cohort.

Some Lessons Learned: The ReCLes.pt CLIL Project in Higher Education

Abstract This paper draws together a number of best practices identified over the course of the national ReCLes.pt CLIL project. Developed by Portuguese Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) associated in the Network Association of Language Centers in Higher Education in Portugal (ReCLes.pt, http://recles.pt), the project promoted pilot teacher training courses in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Ultimately, 33 CLIL course modules were implemented in six participating HEIs, impacting over 600 students. Over the course of three years to reach this initial long-term goal, the ReCLes.pt CLIL researchers collaborated to review the literature and work through the resulting debates. The resulting overarching course of action is reflected in the teaching manual, written collaboratively and published with the related data-gathering tools for the study partially funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. The best practices focused on in this article include promoting the perspective of FL learners as FL users, the practical implementation of communities of practice and learning, and the development of CLIL modules to include scaffolding and ICT.

“Do We Need to Know That for the Exam?” Teaching English on the CLIL Fault Line at a Trilingual University

This article describes how a course based on the concept of English for specific academic purposes (ESAP) was transformed into content and language integrated learning (CLIL) at a trilingual university where English serves as a lingua franca and medium of instruction, due to the application of a task-based communicative approach. The article describes how the trilingual learning context (German, Italian, English), the specific needs of the students, the teaching methodology, the course design, and the assessment procedure unintentionally resulted in CLIL. These observations may suggest that all task-based communicative language learning based on the input-interaction-output model of second language acquisition has the potential to transform into CLIL when applied to a specific academic context, especially one in which the target language serves as a medium of instruction. But a more detailed and systematic study is required to determine the effectiveness of this particular CLIL course within this unique learning environment.

La integración de lengua y contenidos afines a diferentes carreras universitarias

This article shows the description of an experience involving a group of graduate-level university students taking a CLIL (content and language integrated learning) course in Spanish as a foreign language. An important contribution from this study is to show that it is possible to achieve the integration of content and language by incorporating the content of the students’ interests related to the concentrations of their master’s degrees. This group of students is taking a Spanish class at the low and mid-intermediate level (ACTFL, 2012). Their fields of their Master’s programs varied from international policy, to environmental studies, to business. The students had the opportunity to work with content related to their programs over the course of a semester. The instructor used an adaptation of the European Language Portfolio in order to measure part of their performance in class.

Integrating language and content related to different university degree programs

This article shows the description of an experience involving a group of graduate-level university students taking a CLIL (content and language integrated learning) course in Spanish as a foreign language. An important contribution from this study is to show that it is possible to achieve the integration of content and language by incorporating the content of the students’ interests related to the concentrations of their master’s degrees. This group of students is taking a Spanish class at the low and mid-intermediate level (ACTFL, 2012). Their fields of their Master’s programs varied from international policy, to environmental studies, to business. The students had the opportunity to work with content related to their programs over the course of a semester. The instructor used an adaptation of the European Language Portfolio in order to measure part of their performance in class.

CLIL and motivation: the effect of individual and contextual variables

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is burgeoning all over Europe and this is particularly so in Spain. During the last 10 years, content language instruction through a foreign language (FL) (mainly English) has become a key area of curricular innovation. One of the main reasons put forward by the advocates of this approach is that students are more motivated as a result of participating in CLIL programmes. Since motivation is one of the most influential individual variables when it comes to learning an L2, the benefits of the CLIL approach are assumed. However, there is a dearth of studies which empirically confirm differences in motivation when comparing traditional English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction and CLIL. This article aims to shed light on this issue through a study carried out in the Basque Country (Spain) in two different grades. Three hundred and ninety-three compulsory secondary education students (aged 12–13 and 14–15) enrolled in EFL and CLIL courses participated in the study. The data were gathered by means of a previously piloted and validated quantitative questionnaire. The statistical analyses showed that CLIL students were more motivated; however, these results should be analysed with caution, taking into account a series of individual (age and sex) and contextual (socio-cultural) variables that may influence such results. The effect of these variables, which have little to do with the CLIL approach per se, has not always been sufficiently considered when explaining the positive outcomes of CLIL.

The effect of proficiency on CLIL benefits in Engineering students in Spain

This paper reports on a follow‐up study of a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) pilot experience with bilingual postgraduate engineering students at a Spanish university. It aimed at examining learners' gains in listening and grammar skills after a CLIL course in English for a semester, in particular whether students' listening and grammar skills were affected similarly and whether participants' proficiency level played a role. Paired‐sampled t‐tests showed the difference between the mean scores in the pre‐and post‐listening test was significant but it was not for the pre‐and post grammar tests. When students were distributed into three groups on the basis of their pre‐test scores, a repeated measures ANOVA showed that less proficient students obtained higher gains in listening and grammar skills than more proficient students.

An empirical study on the acquisition of content in a CLIL-based chemistry course: A preliminary report

This article presents the findings of an empirical study on the acquisition of content in a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) course conducted by the author at a middle school in Radom, Poland. The research involved a group of Polish students who learn chemistry through English as part of their school curriculum. The results of the research support an understanding that using a foreign language as a means of teaching non-linguistic subjects does not impair content acquisition—and may actually improve overall learning processes. The research raises questions about the relationship between a foreign language and conceptual knowledge, as well as about the mechanisms that may compensate for the additional difficulties students may encounter while learning content (such as chemistry) through a foreign language. By way of introduction, the article offers an overview of the literature on the effectiveness of CLIL teaching. This theoretical background leads to the description of the experiment, followed by an analysis of its results. The paper ends with conclusions and some final thoughts relating to the experiment.