Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Underlying principles
Classroom principles
Lesson framework
Conclusion
Underlying principles
The principles behind Content and Language Integrated Learning include global
statements such as 'all teachers are teachers of language' (The Bullock Report - A
Language for Life, 1975) to the wide-ranging advantages of cross-curricular bilingual
teaching in statements from the Content and Language Integrated Project (CLIP).
The benefits of CLIL may be seen in terms of cultural awareness, internationalisation,
language competence, preparation for both study and working life, and increased
motivation.
While CLIL may be the best-fit methodology for language teaching and learning in a
multilingual Europe, the literature suggests that there remains a dearth of CLIL-type
materials, and a lack of teacher training programmes to prepare both language and
subject teachers for CLIL teaching. The theory may be solid, but questions remain about
how theory translates into classroom practice.
Classroom principles
Some of the basic principles of CLIL are that in the CLIL classroom:
In a CLIL lesson, all four language skills should be combined. The skills are seen thus:
For teachers from an ELT background, CLIL lessons exhibit the following
characteristics:
In many ways, then, a CLIL lesson is similar to an ELT integrated skills lesson, except
that it includes exploration of language, is delivered by a teacher versed in CLIL
methodology and is based on material directly related to a content-based subject. Both
content and language are explored in a CLIL lesson. A CLIL 'approach' is not far
removed from humanistic, communicative and lexical approaches in ELT, and aims to
guide language
processing and supports language production in the same way that an ELT course would
by teaching techniques for exploiting reading or listening texts and structures for
supporting spoken or written language.
Lesson framework
A CLIL lesson looks at content and language in equal measure, and often follows a
four-stage framework.
Language identification
Learners are expected to be able to reproduce the core of the text in their own words.
Since learners will need to use both simple and more complex language, there is no
grading of language involved, but it is a good idea for the teacher to highlight useful
language in the text and to categorise it according to function. Learners may need the
language of comparison and contrast, location or describing a process, but may also
need certain discourse markers, adverb phrases or prepositional phrases. Collocations,
semi-fixed expressions and set phrases may also be given attention as well as subject-
specific and academic vocabulary.
Tasks designed for production need to be subject-orientated, so that both content and
language are recycled. Since content is to be focused on, more language support than
usual in an ELT lesson may be required.
Typical speaking activities include:
Trivia search - 'things you know' and 'things you want to know'
Conclusion
From a language point of view the CLIL 'approach' contains nothing new to the EL
teacher. CLIL aims to guide language processing and 'support language production in
the same way as ELT by teaching strategies for
reading and listening and structures and lexis for spoken or written language. What is
different is that the language teacher is also the subject teacher, or that the subject
teacher is also able to exploit opportunities for
developing language skills. This is the essence of the CLIL teacher training issue.
Further reading
Forum for Across the Curriculum Teaching - www.factworld.info/
Comenius Project TL2L - www.tl2l.nl/
European Centre for Modern Languages - www.ecml.at/
Norwich Institute for Language Education - www.nile-elt.com
Science Across the Curriculum - www.scienceacross.org
EuroCLIC - www.euroclic.org
The National Centre for Languages (CILT) - www.cilt.org.uk
Content and Language Integrated Project (CLIP) - www.cilt.org.uk/clip/
The BBC and British Council are not responsible for the content of external web
sites, neither do we endorse them. These are the recommendations of the writer.
Comments
Submitted by Phil Ball on Fri, 11/20/2015 - 17:16
Permalink
Your conclusion
Hi Steve. Again, some good stuff here, but some of it a bit misleading too. The first line
of your conclusion couldn't be further off the mark, if you don't mind me saying. The
point is, surely, that CLIL approaches language from a completely different perspective
to ELT (or LT in general) in that it views language as discourse. It's much more genre-
based than ELT and it tends to encourage subject teachers to see their own subject
discourse as something quite specific. ELT teachers don't really understand the idea of
CALP, but they should. It's a good developmental tool for them. As you correctly point
out, CLIL language is based on the subject's particular discourse, but this is not merely
'lexical', as you suggest. Far from it. We also train teachers to identify the grammatical
patterns which are prevalent in their subjects, and to make it salient. Biological
grammar differs widely from historical, for example. CALP helps teachers and learners
to understand the stuff that is general (across subjects) and the stuff that's specific. I'm
afraid that CLIL's approach to language (done well) is very different from ELT. Best
Phil Ball