Saturday Morning CLIL with Keith Kelly Where are we now? keithpkelly@yahoo.co.uk

Saturday Morning CLIL with Keith Kelly

Where are we now?

keithpkelly@yahoo.co.uk

CLIL Surveys

• Is there a worldwide or Europe survey on the outcomes of the CLIL approach?

Basque – trilingual, generally OK (B1 x 3)

and Ikastolas Private Schools

Asturias – 140 schools, state system, non-selective and growing

Spain – David Lasargabaster

Malaysia – 7000 on the streets in March 09

Bilinguals

• Italians

• French

• Swiss

Italian - French

Cognition

Argumentation

Text Logic

Knowing What and How

CLIL Future?

• Language demands for teachers of content (pre-Uni levels of FL)

• Uni pre-service course integration

• Changing role of ELTs (literacy, EAL)

• Better policy at school levels out of necessity

• More books, more resources in shops

• Subject teachers at language conferences

EAL UK – Content Functions

EAL UK – Content Language

EAL UK – Geog1 OUP

CLIL or not?

• Can CLIL become a threat in countries where the native language is not strong? Could CLIL eventually lead to the loss of those languages?

• What about the role of language teachers in the future of CLIL? Will they be able to work on it or is it going to be a content teachers’ domain?

• Can we try and define what content is? CLIL vs ESP?

CLIL threat to other languages

• Can CLIL become a threat in countries where the native language is not strong? Could CLIL eventually lead to the loss of those languages?

• Where there is good policy, minority languages are given support and equality to majority languages.

• Good CLIL practice surely is the best defence a minority language can have.

• Other factors lead to disappearance of languages, not CLIL.

• Bad CLIL practice will drive itself extinct before any minority languages it is seen to threaten.

CLIL threat to ELTs

• What about the role of language teachers in the future of CLIL?

– Working more closely with the content curriculum– Changing perception language learning– Language learning as needs analysis– Not less language teachers, different language

teachers

Language for learning prep

• Study Group UK (Bellerbys and Embassy Schools)

CLIL - a content teachers’ domain?

• Absolutely not!

• Content belongs to content teachers but good teaching belongs to the good teacher

• Take what you can get from the content curriculum, it’s all good!

A Definition of Content

• Can we try and define what content is? CLIL vs ESP?– Identity crisis as a result of exposure to CLIL– Vygotsky: start from the learner, plus

interaction– Knowing about the content, the skills and the

language– Knowing about how tasks work in class– Knowing about task design

Is Literature CLIL?

• If we perform a Shakespearean play, would that be considered CLIL?– If the learners’ needs are identified and

supported within the context (the language) of the content (the play) and scaffolded in tasks which guide input and support output, then yes it reflects a CLIL approach.

– But, why call it CLIL?

ICT in English – is that CLIL?

• What if I teach ICT in English? Would that be CLIL or ICT being a language itself, it can’t be considered real CLIL?

• The specificity of the language of a subject doesn’t exclude it from any approach.

• There is growing interest in CLIL from ESP, EAP, why is that?

Storytelling – is that CLIL?

• If we work on narrative texts such as the fairy tale for primary school, would that be a CLIL?

– The storybook approach ‘Ellis and Brewster’ – why call it CLIL?

Is CLIL cognitively damaging?

• Are we sure that in CLIL contexts the content is acquired as it would be in the native language? Is there any evidence of it?– No, not sure. But this has to be qualified …

(Basque, Scandinavian, Dutch, German, Bulgarian-German)

– Middle East, Africa• Good MT education first

What is CLIL?

• A springboard for discussing and defining good educational practice

• An identity challenge for many teachers

• ELT-perspective v Content-perspective

• Content:– Doing the subject in a foreign language

• ELT:– Start with content, language comes next

Swiss ELT-CLIL – ‘Voices’