Content and Language Integrated Learning - CLIL > How to get 2 with 1

What do you know about CLIL? Do you know what the abbreviation stands for? Are you wondering if you use it in your classroom?

In this blog article, you will find a comprehensive guide to CLIL, with practical examples and tips on how to introduce it into your lessons.

Introduction to CLIL

As a CLIL teacher, I often use the example of a content course that might interest me, which is to take a French cinema (content) course in French (language), during a study trip abroad to Paris (of course!). Since French is not my native language, this type, of course, would expose me to learning the specific content of my interest, while also learning (and becoming more fluent) the French language.

So what does CLIL mean?

CLIL stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning and has been around since the 1990s. It is an educational approach that originated in the teaching of communicative languages (CLT) and is mainly used by language teachers.

The concept is often credited to David Marsh. CLIL involves both content learning and foreign language learning which is often English but can be taught in any foreign language other than the student's native language.

When we think of content, CLIL is often about teaching academic subjects such as science, history, or geography, but it can also be about teaching any other type of content that is less academic and, according to some, more fun subjects such as photography, fashion, cooking or cinema.

CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts thereof, are taught in a foreign language with dual objectives, namely content learning, and simultaneous foreign language learning. management system 

David Marsh, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1994)

Soft CLIL and hard CLIL: what is the difference?

Soft CLIL is often applied in (primary) classrooms for young learners and is primarily concerned with teaching words and vocabulary in a foreign language, e.g. familiarizing learners with a second language by providing limited exposure, while it is mainly taught in the mother tongue. Soft CLIL is suitable for lower skill levels such as beginner and elementary.

Hard CLIL means that an entire course is taught in a foreign language and students must have an intermediate proficiency level or higher and already be quite autonomous in the second language. In a course where everything is in a foreign language, students should be familiar with the second language and already have some study experience.

The challenges of planning CLIL lessons

I once attended a conference where the host said CLIL was a good way for primary and secondary schools to get 2 for 1. In other words, an academic subject teacher and a language teacher are represented by an individual, so two for the price of one.

As with anything, problems can arise when a qualified language teacher becomes an academic subject teacher and when a qualified academic subject teacher becomes a language teacher.

What is necessary, but not easy to achieve, is that each CLIL course has access to two teachers; an experienced academic subject teacher and an experienced language teacher who can teach non-native speakers a foreign language.

CLIL and language teachers: challenges and good news

If you are a language teacher, one of the biggest challenges you will face when teaching an academic subject is the lack of background knowledge when teaching specific academic content.

In addition, the development of this competence may not be a realistic expectation as many language teachers are trained to teach a foreign language and may not have a higher specialist degree in an area of academic content.

The good news: if you are a language teacher, you have experience teaching a foreign language to non-native speakers and you are already sensitive to working with these types of students.

You know how to conduct activities for second language learners and are used to checking students' understanding and correcting errors in both written and oral activities. Corporate LMS

CLIL and academic subject teachers: challenges and good news

If you are an academic subject teacher, you may have a higher degree in history or geography, but no language teaching experience, and you may find yourself unable to make the necessary adjustments to make your knowledge of the content comprehensible to language learners.

You may also find it difficult to teach their subject in a foreign language if you are also not a native speaker of the language required to teach.

The good news: if you are an academic subject teacher, you have experience in the subject area that a language teacher may not have. You probably have a highly specialized education and are an expert in your areas of study, such as history, geography, art, science, or math. Since you may also be a native speaker, you will know how to effectively communicate your subjects if the native language is used.

How to implement CLIL in your classroom

CLIL is academic or other subject-driven content and teachers interested in (or expected to) integrate this approach into their classrooms need to know and understand how to create and integrate the teaching of the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking to non-native speakers of a language effectively and beneficially for their students.

Receptive skills: CLIL activity listening and reading

Everything students receive in a foreign language is called input. The receptive skills are known as Listening and Reading and require all teachers to check that students understand what has and has not been understood.

A formula for the listening activity (with dispensation):

·        Teaches difficult or unknown vocabulary words in advance

·        Play for juice the first time - no pantry

·        Listen the second time for specific details - with pantry questions

·        This step can be skipped if more than 50% of the questions have been answered - listen a third time for confirmation and to get the missing details.

After the second or third listen, individual students, can share and brainstorm with those around them before reconvening as a class to confirm something else they are unsure of or have not been able to discern with their partner or partners.

In the Secondary School CLIL Course – Practical Activities for All Teachers in Florence, Italy, the second day is devoted to teaching CLIL through science. In one of the first listening activities, the trailer of the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth is used in a cloze* activity.

With First Listen, students can listen to and watch the 3-minute trailer. For the second listen, students are given a handout where 12 words from the transcription are listed in a word bank at the top of the worksheet. During the second listening, the students are asked to fill in the missing words in the text without watching the video, so that they can concentrate only on listening.

As indicated in the above formula, students can skip the third listening if they have been able to fill in at least 50% of the missing words.

*Conclusion Activity: An activity where words are removed from a passage for a student to complete as a reading comprehension exercise. The missing words may or may not be provided in a word bank.

A formula for the reading activity (with handout):

·        Pre-learn difficult or unknown words from the vocabulary and mark them in the text

·        Students Read aloud for the first time (spreading evenly into sentences or paragraphs) to practice pronunciation

·        The students read silently for understanding the second time

At this point, students can complete the comprehension questions with or without text, individually, or with one or more partners. If you answer comprehension questions without the text, you can answer them with a partner by talking and relying on your memory of what was read together.

In another example from the Secondary School CLIL Course – Practical Activities for All Teachers, the third day focuses on teaching CLIL through storytelling. In one of the reading activities, a short reading passage about the life of Henry VIII, a former king of England, is passed out. For the first reading, each student can read at least one sentence aloud.

During the second reading, students read silently (themselves) and are asked to write their names at the top of the handout when they have finished. Teachers can retrieve the reading fragment from all students when they have finished reading.

As stated in the formula above, individual learners or pairs receive a handout containing 12 comprehension questions to answer without the option to refer to the reading passage for answers.

Productive skills: five ways to do writing and speaking activities

Anything students produce in a foreign language is called output. The productive skills are known as writing and speaking and require teachers to correct mistakes that can be made by the teacher, student, or colleague, depending on what needs to be corrected, the level of the student, and/or the activity.

Students can work on productive activities (where writing and speaking are required) in one of the following ways:

·        Individual (1)

·        Couples (2)

·        Small groups (3-4)

·        Two 50/50 teams

·        The whole class

On the fourth day of the CLIL course in secondary - Practical activities for all teachers, the focus is on teaching geography through CLIL. Students should role-play, using speech, based on Marco Polo's travels. A two-minute clip from the 2014 film Marco Polo is used on this day.

The first students choose the role they want to play. Then the transcript of the movie is provided to them. After highlighting the role(s) and what they have to say, they listen and watch, paying attention to the character they play and how they sound. The next step (depending on how many students are in the class) is to place students in small groups, two teams, or an entire class to practice the script.

When each group is ready, the students perform. There can be more than one performance and anyone present as an audience can provide oral or written feedback. As students study the part of the world that Marco Polo explored, they can also research and write about different cities during his journey.

Using authentic material made for and by native speakers

Because CLIL is about knowing how to prepare and conduct a reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities for non-native speakers of a language, educators who are highly creative and dedicated to their subject can seek authentic, real-world material to develop their material. Courses. LMS for Education

Using the same example of learning more about French cinema in the French language while enjoying a vacation in France, I might think about embedding movie trailers (listen); short interviews (in French) found on YouTube with French directors or actors (listen); including movie reviews of movies in French (read); anything about the places, people, or events that take place in a movie (read).

I could also engage my students in oral and written activities that would allow students to express their opinions or thoughts about particular movies, French actors and actresses, cinematic subjects, places depicted in French movies, timelines, genres, or songs featured in French movies. used. Students may be asked to create movie posters or a short guide to French movies, perhaps from different periods, as a fun project.  LMS for Higher Education

Conclusion

Many countries and educational institutions around the world promote the teaching and learning of both content and language through CLIL. That is how the European Union (EU) embraces it.

The EU language policy, drawn up by the European Parliament at the Social Summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2017, states that by 2025, young EU citizens should learn and speak at least two other European languages in addition to their mother tongue at the end of school.

As we all know, mastery of more than one foreign language plays an important role in improving educational and employment opportunities. The argument is therefore that through CLIL, students can simultaneously study academic or other subjects in a foreign language at school, which will help them achieve a good level of multilingualism when they become adults.

Teachers themselves should therefore follow an integrated and well-prepared education to help them adequately prepare their pupils to become open-minded European citizens speaking more than one language.

Since CLIL is about teaching content through a foreign language. It can serve as an approach to provide meaningful content-driven language. CLIL is not only an important tool to promote the language learning goals of European citizens; it is a way of embracing linguistic diversity and a better understanding of other EU countries and ways of life. Find more details,