I am participating in a course for bilingual teachers and I would like to share some reflections.
Task 1:
Inteview & CLIL
Transforming
practice after theory
Four students
in my educational context were interviewed with the purpose of analysing the
challenges they face by learning content through an additional language and the
elements/instances they would pick out as supporting their learning. The
students interviewed belong to a bilingual school located in the southern area
of Buenos Aires. Two of them are in 5th form primary school; and the
other two are in 3rd year, secondary school. The four students have
attended the same bilingual school since kindergarten and they have a standard
level of English, both spoken and written.
To begin
with, students were asked about the topics learnt the previous year in order to
see whether they gave more importance to content or language, or both. Primary
school students mentioned mainly grammatical items of the language. However,
secondary school students remembered topics dealt with in different subjects
such as literature, environmental management and history. This might give
evidence on the fact that the main focus of the lessons in primary school last
year was grammar. Therefore, they were asked whether they studied any
particular content which might be related to Spanish in order to trigger their
memory and they mentioned the knights, Manuel Belgrano and May Revolution.
In relation
to the difficulties they find when they have to study content in the foreign
language, the four students coincided in that using the correct words is hard
and expressing the ideas in English takes them longer than in their Spanish
lessons. This might be because the language demanded by the content may not
properly highlighted in the lessons, as it is suggested by Coyle (2010).
Students stated that when they have to study content it is easier if they work
with a partner preparing posters, filling in a shared document, using books or
the computers. Finally, they claimed that when there is something that they
can’t understand they use the material available to work out meaning, they ask
their partners or, as a last resource, they ask the teacher.
Having read The
CLIL Tool Kit: Transforming theory into practice, and analysed the answers
obtained in the in the interview I realise that it is important to consider the
four components of CLIL when planning a project, content, communication,
cognition and culture, so as to achieve a successful and meaningful
performance. I have significantly improved my understanding of the learning of
the different types of language which is demanded by the content (language of,
for and through). Additionally, I have learned the theoretical reason behind a
task that I have included in my project and which links classrooms throughout
the world. As Coyle (2010) puts it “CLIL integrates
language learning and content learning at cognitive and cultural levels
appropriate to the learning. It is this interaction which results in new
learning scenarios which are different from regular language or content
lessons”
References
Coyle, D et
al. (2010). Content and Language
Integrated Learning. UK: CUP.
