Integrating Content and Language - Where are we now?

Interactive talk presented at the CEBS Conference, Bad Hofgastein, Oct 22-24th, 2009

Conference Report here

I've not done a presentation report in this way before but several colleagues have asked if they can have whole presentations. I'm happy to pass material on, especially when it's informative in nature like this presentation is. It's particularly important right now to keep debating what CLIL is offering, and what it isn't. Where it's working and where it isn't working and why.

The complete PPT is available for download here (8mb).

There is a lot of debate going on at the moment. My feeling is that CLIL is about the content curriculum and that you have to start there for it really to be called CLIL. Having said that, there are plenty of language teachers doing what they call CLIL and if they are focussing on procedures, concepts, and language which originates somewhere in the curriculum for the subject area they are interested in, then in my book, that's CLIL. Otherwise, it's something else.

I presented the FACTWorld site simply because it is one place to look for links to much of this debate. I don't claim to compete with Manuel's ning listed above (I don't think anybody could!). It's also a carrot to dangle and invite colleagues to join the factworld egroup at yahoogroups.com.

Macmillan's onestopclil website is gathering momentum. At the end of its first year the site has developed into a unique resource and still one of a kind in terms of its provision of information, resources and networking opportunities for teachers interested in integrating content and language.

I mentioned Manuel's forum above but interestingly there are a number of places to look in Spain for examples of successful practice in integrating content and language. There are blogs on all of these links within the FACTWorld site, but the projects speak for themselves. For me, it's the infrastructure that's been created in each of these contexts that has led to success. By infrastructure, I mean a combination of bottom-up drive and top-down support.

I should point out the publication that is available from the Asturian project, coordinated by Gilberto and team in Oviedo.

The Basque trilingual website is now well known. If you haven't been there yet, go and take a look now. I take my hat off to what they've achieved and are still developing.

The modest looking site contains resources for content and language integration across Spanish, Basque and English and across the whole of the school age range.

Click any link and you'll find archives of resources.

Topic focused, with embedded language support and based on the content curriculum.

There are word documents with content resources such as these fact files based on the solar system.

Another gem in Spain is the bilingual schools network. Teresa Reilly presented at the Milan CLIL conference in 2009 that the first cohort of students had graduated and that a control group sat IGCSE and achieved a 90% + pass rate. Richard Johnstone is writing an evaluation of the project due out at the end of 2009.

There is growing interest in content and language integration all over the world. The International Baccalaureate programme is popular in both the private and state sectors of education in many countries. The IB World magazine dedicated its January issue to language. I see this as a tremendous step in terms of CLIL provision. 

It's a tremendous step because IB have produced a language policy for its institution. The reason behind this is the growing number of students with greater diversity of language needs who are doing IB courses. Bravo to them! It's about time!

You can access the archive of IB World at the IB website and read an article by Jim Cummins, who I'm glad to see is contributing to IB's developing a whole institutional language policy.

Working mainly in state schools, I'm always interested to see one adopt IB. An example is the Dizdvaro school in Lithuania.

We can look for many stories of teaching the content curriculum through the medium of foreign languages in Asia.

Most famously, the current government of Malaysia has announced its decision to scrap English-medium Science and Maths education nationally from 2012. We have to ask what the reasons are for this decision. Some of them are clear, namely the English-medium system failing large numbers of learners. It's a discussion I'd like to get into, perhaps we should address it in Cafe CLIL. One question which has to be asked is 'Which language can replace English?'

Almost within the same breath, the government of the Philippines (excuse the typo!) announces that it is adopting UNESCO guidelines for bilingual education. This states in short that the government will introduce education which pays attention first and foremost to the home language of its learners and offer English, or other language on the basis of this first home language development.

I've never been to Singapore, but I know they have legislation which protects citizens' rights to having a bilingual education including one of the three recognized national 'local' languages plus English. They must be doing something right if TIMMS international educational surveys are anything to go by.

It is a set back for the great work that has gone on in Malaysia. It's a shame that the government hasn't seen it sensible to offer a compromise where the success stories get to continue with their hard won achievements. This is the ETEMS site, one of the major achievements of the programme.

The Supreme Education Council of Qatar has begun a process of offering Science and Maths throughout the system through the medium of English. The first, pilot, year of this process was 2008-2009. Eventually, the country will have standards in place which require schools to recruit teachers with minimum levels of English, who sit exams to show levels of language, who undergo training, all of them for integrating content and language in their subjects. Watch this space!

The Emirates is also quietly developing English medium education, mainly through Science and Maths. There are large scale projects in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

I know personally of one scoping project for English-medium education in Oman (because I carried it out), but haven't heard news of any implementation since this took place.

If you look to North America you can find links to many projects dealing with the education of children for whom English is largely not the language spoken at home. Such learners are referred to as English Language Learners. Dr Ofelia Garcia criticizes this title as it 'removes the focus from the home language solely to English' (this is my paraphrase of what Dr Garcia talked about at a conference in Brazil in 2009, link given below).

More positively the process of educating these young people produces some really creative and impressive resources as well as a lot of ideas for colleagues in similar circumstances. I wrote a review of this book for Maths teachers working with non-native English speakers in America and you can read it on onestopclil.com.

There are many links to many projects through this site in Texas, let us know if you come across anything of particular use, interest.

I mention Brazil because I was lucky to see Jim Cummins and Ofelia Garcia give keynote speeches at this conference.

... and because at the conference the organizers reported that the private sector provision of bilingual education had grown at each of the conference meetings so far.

I have to say that in putting this presentation together, I realize how lucky I am in doing what I do!

Let us have your news of any developments in CLIL in your region so we can add them to the site and share with others.

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27.10.09