CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT: CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

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- Length: between 6 and 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices if there are any-). Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman. Size: 11. Line height: 1.5. Alignment: Justified.

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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

Assignment:
Consider the various caveats expressed about CLIL in section 5.6 entitled 'Some problems'. Take these points and any others that you wish to consider from the whole subject, and use them to form either a defence or a repudiation of the notion that 'CLIL is the approach for the future'. This must take the form of an appraisal of CLIL, in which you must consider the arguments and the materials that you have seen in this subject, and then balance these with perspectives gathered from your own teaching experience. Most importantly of all, you must organise these points into a coherent essay. Please avoid taking the points one by one, as if you were simply appraising a list. Try to look at the issue from both a local and an international perspective, and also try to consider CLIL from both a practical and a philosophical viewpoint. Will it enable us to teach languages better? Perhaps. Will it enable you (in your context) to teach languages better? Perhaps not. But the latter is not a total repudiation of CLIL. Try to give the defendant a fair trial!

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the cover (see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions will not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING A view for future Language Teaching

Name and surname(s):Anglica Mara Escamilla Martnez Login:MEFPMTFL558013 Group:22 Date:November 27th, 2009.

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

INDEX

1. Introduction: CLIL An initial view to an interesting approach.

2. CLIL Around the World.

3. Friend of Foe?

4. CLIL in Mexico. Perspectives in the near future in English Teaching in Mexico.

5. Conclusions

6. Bibliography

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

1. Introduction: CLIL An initial view to an interesting approach. The term Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) refers to educational settings where a language other than the learners mother tongue is used as a medium of instruction in subject content not only as a linguistic framework for teaching. (Marsh, web page accessed Nov. 20th, 2009). With this definition by David Marsh, we could consider that CLIL classrooms are not typical language learning classrooms, since language is neither the designated subject nor the content of the interaction but the medium through which other content is transported. Many supporters of CLIL have come to the conclusion that this approach is not only a fad but a new approach that will be leading content instruction in our modern globalized world from now on and will provide not only more multilingual students but also a costbenefit political savings. This essays aims to discuss the various issues that have been put on the table posted as advantages and disadvantages to this interesting approach as well as considering whether Mexico is ready to fully implement a CLIL methodology in its bilingual context.

2. CLIL Around the World. Demographic developments, which have transformed European societies into communities that receive immigrants and have consolidated in the European Union and the Council of Europe. We are then witnessing a globalization putting pressure on

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

education systems to provide skills which allow students to stand their ground in international contexts. Both the European Union and the Council of Europe have had initiatives for further dissemination of CLIL by offering multinational seminars, working groups or conferences resulting in information platforms or networks. (Dalton-Puffer, 2007:2) This has also been considered as political advantage to achieve a greater degree of multilingualism being a cost-effective alternative that is being implemented. (Marsh, D., 1998:52) As an example of the current trend we will discuss some information that the GoetheInstitut has gathered in reference to their schools around the European territory. The current focus is on Europe. The specific activities may be quite diverse. In Spain, for example, the Goethe-Institut Madrid is involved in developing the curriculum for bilingual specialist subject lessons at general schools in Andalusia. In Poland, there are both language courses for kindergarten teachers and summer language courses for CLIL teachers. In addition, teaching materials and working materials are being developed there. The Goethe-Instituts Sofia, Budapest and Krakow are taking part in a Socrates project by the European Commission to take stock of the German-language content and language learning in eleven European countries. Another EU project (MEMO), involving the Goethe-Instituts London, Nancy and Paris, occupied itself from 2001 to 2004 with developing multi-lingual modules for specialist subject lessons. These modules were teaching and in-service training units that may be used flexibly. This enables teachers to become involved gradually in Content and Language Integrated Learning. (http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/dos/ifs/cda/en2770288.htm, accessed November 22nd,2009.) It seems that they have had a high success at implementing CLIL in diverse contexts. However, as we are aware, this is not the case throughout Europe, a few countries have found serious difficulties when trying to implement CLIL in their curricula in L1, L2, and even L3 at a time where some backsliding has been detected.
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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

Nevertheless, most countries seem to have found more advantages than disadvantages to the implementation of CLIL in the European Union. 3. Friend of Foe? The globalization and pressures among the European Union to constantly receive immigrants has caused for socio-political reasons to push countries to offer CLIL with English and other prestigious languages as mediums of instruction. This brings us to the export possibilities behind CLIL. In my opinion, there is not one single version of CLIL that could be fully exportable due to the fact that CLIL should be treated with a very contextualized/regionalized practice. Some researchers have mentioned that CLIL will interfere with the learning process of a subject. Some say it will interfere with the learning but for the better, because language learning and subject learning will be enhanced for some subjects as music, Social and Natural Sciences. It is depending on the countrys political and educational policies that we should define the subjects that could be implemented in a CLIL syllabi. Which then, does not disregard the use of CLIL, only should a careful selection be done. Another issue discussed is the death of the English teachers considering that they may be substituted by language competent subject teachers. I also believe this is not a threat but a challenge. In my perspective, a language teacher has been trained to motivate and adequately introduce a second language, moreover, this is an opportunity for language teachers go up one more step in their versatility ladder. Training will be required and personal intrinsic motivation to fully become involved in a subject where they will be capable of teaching becoming then a subject-language teacher in full. It is a fact that the education of language teachers should be much more intensified reinforcing professional skills that need to be acquired for the teaching of science through the medium of the English language and should also have a good command of
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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

the target language and resort to the learners mother tongue with care. For learners, however, code switching is a natural communication strategy, and teachers should allow it, particularly in the first stages of CLIL. Teachers task is to flexibly adapt their instructional support bearing in mind that in order to enable incidental language learning, i.e. language acquisition in the learners, their main concern should be to scaffold them on their way towards achieving science competences. Learners, whose attention is focused on the non-linguistic content, need to have access to spontaneous speech, preferably in an interactive context. As an example of this, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education, has run a special optional course whose aim is to give students involved in pre-service teacher education insight into both theoretical and practical aspects of CLIL. In CLIL teacher training programme, the following items are substantial: interaction of the languages L1 and L2 during teaching mathematics in L2 with attention paid to advantages, disadvantages and possible problems that might occur, and differences in the work of a mathematics teacher when teaching in L1 and L2. Rather than throwing teachers into a new situation with little support, schools need to invest in CLIL in-service training for teachers who will be teaching content in English and teacher training colleges need to train content teachers to use ELT tools from their pre-service training. There is however a valid concern about the effects of subtractive bilingualism on mother tongue attrition and cultural alienation. This would happen in some subjects where transfer and iconic issues might be considered a problem. As mentioned in our material, subjects such as Local History should not be taught in a different language but the mother tongue to avoid losing cultural identity. I taught Mexican history in L2 to elementary school children at a bicultural school where I previously worked. And although the children understood the content well, there seemed to be an alienation at the end of the subject despite the effort of making them aware of their own heritage. It has also been stated that some functions might not be taught as well when CLIL is teaching content and leaving aside the CALP.
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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

Here I must agree. I believe CLIL is a very beneficial approach when teaching subjects because it provides a further immersion space for learners. However, language teaching needs to continue to be part of the curricula to further enhance the use of the language in an accurate manner. The same way as in any country the mother tongue is taught as a core subject for the same reason, to develop accuracy. Another issue to consider is the current published materials available. The material available at this time is insufficient, most authors are still not very convinced of a CLIL as a real possibility. This does leave the teacher in a wandering perspective where much of the material needs to be developed by the teacher himself. This would seem as a disadvantage at first due to time constraint, but if we reconsider the fact that CLIL is not fully exportable, then even if the material did exist, we would still need to adapt it to our own context anyway. Then, we are left with one more interesting challenge: creativity. 4. CLIL in Mexico. Perspectives in the near future in English Teaching in Mexico. Mexico has taken slow steps to move into new alternatives for improving its general teaching methodologies. Just this year competences have been set into elementary schools. Traditional teaching has been used for many years, and it is causing subject teachers to feel uncomfortable with the change and somewhat reluctant to it. However, language teachers have been caught right in the middle of this situation, they are aware of these competences because communicative teaching has been in the market for a long time now, but they have been quite restricted mostly due to traditional institutional syllabi and customs. Some private bilingual schools have begun experimenting with CLIL mostly requested by language teachers motivation to move into the globalization perceived needs.

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

At this point in time I believe the only subjects that are being widely accepted by most private school policies are Social and Natural Sciences. In Mexico some of the afore mentioned schools have tried to use CLIL for teaching Math and Social Studies, which has led to failure because children could not make the proper transfer of concepts to present the governments final term elementary exam. Children might have known the concept, but were not able to understand (transfer) the terminology when presented to them in their mother tongue. Then this leaves us with the fact that Mathematics is not a subject to be taught in an L2 at this time in this country, and curricula should explicitly reflect the model prescribed within the policy without harming learners progress in line with protecting national identity and national integrity. Teachers with inadequate English or even non-existent English skills have been hired to teach English in elementary public schools just to cover the future need of having bilingual children and give them the future opportunity to negotiate with our northern neighbor. In my opinion, this has been an inappropriate decision where time is being taken off core skills for useless reasons. Nevertheless, students in private bilingual schools at least move up to some higher levels of fluency & accuracy.

5. Conclusions There is no doubt that learning a language and learning through a language are concurrent processes, but implementing CLIL requires a rethink of the traditional concepts of the language classroom and the language teacher and the countrys political context. The immediate obstacles seem to be: Opposition to language teaching by subject teachers, subject teachers may be unwilling to take on the responsibility of using L2. Most current CLIL programmes are experimental. There are few sound researchbased empirical studies, while CLIL-type bilingual programmes are mainly seen to be marketable products in the private sector in Mexico.

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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

The lack of CLIL teacher-training programmes suggest that the majority of teachers working on bilingual programmes may be ill-equipped to do the job adequately. Teacher training is still insufficient to keep up with the need of L2 subject teachers in the European CLIL environment. Until CLIL training for teachers and materials issues are resolved, the immediate future remains with parallel rather than integrated content and language learning. CLIL is not so much a revolutionary proposal for language teaching as a new orientation within the CLIL paradigm. Equally, as has been reported, the benefits of the approach are supported by both extensive research on theoretical foundations and the outcomes reported by numerous designers and implementers of successful experiences in a multiplicity of settings, institutions and levels of instruction. Teachers have to plan the appropriate curricula, design the syllabus, and fully develop new classroom materials which encompass the assumptions of the approach. This endeavor may involve strenuous hours of laborious effort and may spark mixed authors, however, encourage teachers to experiment by creating innovative contentbased proposals that better suit the particular needs, concerns and preferences of their learners population. The effort is utterly worthwhile. As for Mexico, I believe an eclectic approach to language teaching should continue. For elementary school CLIL can be used to teach subjects such as: Social Studies, Science, music,computers, etc. Some subjects which are considered core studies shall prevail in L1 to avoid future confusion among the students concepts such as Math and Local Mexican History. The language teacher is not threatened to disappear, but rather is being presented with a challenge to specialize himself in subject teaching. Finally, until the school policies are in favour of moving into a more student-centred syllabi, we will not be able give a big impulse to CLIL.

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CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING - Assignment

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Marsh, David, http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/elc/bulletin/9/en/marsh.html, accessed Nov. 20th, 2009. 2. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Discourse in Content and Language Integrated Learning, John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2007. 3. Marsh, David, Vivre ensemble en Europe au XXIeme sicle: CLIL, A framework for Implementing Plurilingual Education Originating from Models of Bilingual Education, Council of Europe Publishing, 1998. 4. Hegwolf, Andrea, Goethe Institute Madrid (http://www.goethe.de/ges/spa/dos/ifs/cda/en2770288.htm, accessed November 22nd,2009.)

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