ETAS SIG Day, Basel, Switzerland

Saturday, 12th Sept, 2009

I’d been happy to accept to give a workshop at the ETAS SIG Day in Basel where Eveline Reichel, CLIL SIG coordinator for ETAS, had put together a thread of CLIL workshops for the day.

Many many thanks to Macmillan for sponsoring my attendance at this event. Thanks also for the free copies of the Science and Geography Vocabulary Practice Series and Uncovering CLIL we had to give away. Participants were also offered a voucher with a 50% discount on subscription to onestopclil.com.

Baeumlihof Gymnasium, conference venue

Title of Presentation: CLIL Task Design: Embedding Language in Tasks

Abstract

Cummins matrix of contextual support and cognitive involvement in tasks and activities is well known to many in foreign language education.  This presentation will outline specific steps to implementing Cummins' matrix in CLIL classroom practice.  These steps are based on a) clearly identified language needs for tasks and b) procedures for integrating this language into task design.  These steps can be applied to any content subject being taught through the medium of a foreign language.  Participants will be presented with materials created according to these principles, will try them out and take some of them home to keep.

Eveline Reichel gets us started

Freebie winner

Discussion around CLIL has been plentiful and broad over recent months and the focus of my workshop was what I believe to be one of the key issues in the discussion about what the CLIL approach actually is in practice in the classroom.

CLIL Task Design: Embedding Language in Tasks 

What is the language of the content curriculum and how can it be actively made available to learners while they are learning the content subject? How can be embed the language of the subject in a way and form which makes it there for learners to use while they are carrying out content tasks?

There was an underlying discussion behind the practical aspect of the workshop and that is ‘What is CLIL?’ It is my suggestion that identifying language and deciding what to do with it when you know what it is at the heart of the CLIL approach. There is discussion in current literature which suggests that CLIL ‘methodology’ covers a very broad range of factors (see Uncovering CLIL / EU sites for suggestions that CLIL is ‘any’ dual-focused approach incorporating content and a foreign language, Adrian Tennant on onestopclil where the suggestion is that an Inductive Methodology in CLIL is as important as a focus on language, Do Coyle’s 4Cs which places a stress on culture alongside content, cognition, and communication). While I agree with much of the above in general I think what is offered applies equally to education in general and NOT specifically or exclusively to CLIL contexts. In CLIL I place the stress clearly and simply on language and what you do with it within a content context (please feel free to engage with me on this issue factworld@yahoogroups.com / onestopclil discussion forum / café clil discussion group / or write to me personally by email keithpkelly@yahoo.co.uk / or you might post in factworld in facebook.com).

Freebie winner

I started by presenting Cummins’ diagram which presents content and cognitive challenge in learning.

For a long time I’ve worked with this diagram and always had the gut feeling that there is an aspect missing when applied to a CLIL situtation (NB Despite the increasing popularity of content topics in the language classroom I think of a subject teacher when I use the term CLIL, i.e. where a content subject teacher is working through the medium of a foreign language). It may be that my interpretation of the diagram is not right, but I don’t think it deals effectively with language (FL) in CLIL learning contexts. I had always envisaged language in the diagram as being part of the ‘context embedding’ axis. The problem with this is that a learner may be familiar with an area being studied, but may not have the foreign language to function (to listen, to read, talk, to write) in the topic. Instead of two axes representing context and cognitive challenge, we need three with one of the axes representing ‘more language’ / ‘less language’.

Predicting language demands

Geri Smyth (2003) suggests mapping language functions and specific demands (i.e. what exactly are the phrases, the nouns the verbs etc) alongside the age / year group, the curriculum area and the tasks being carried out. Pauline Gibbons (2002) suggests a similar technique where teachers as questions based on specific task contexts to give them information about learner language to enable teachers to better assess learner achievement. These are particularly important teacher exercises in CLIL contexts since in making predictions about what language is expected of learners in any given task context, teachers can then begin to create language support instruments to offer to learners embedded within the tasks themselves.

Is it possible to map the vocabulary from the entire curriculum?

1) Organizing vocabulary

The group discussed a random list of words from a Science topic area and their task was to identify a ‘generic’ structure to the list. My suggestion is that there is so much work to do for CLIL learners that they should be given the structures by default. There was a question from a colleague about whether or not learners should be given terminology and encouraged to create their own structures. Clearly mind and concept mapping is a very positive exercise for all learners, but this is very different from working generic structures at the beginning of a new topic. For what is a brilliant and effective mind map for Student A may mean doodly squat for Student B. Whereas generic subject specific and subject logical structures which come from the body of content itself rather than an individual’s imagination, work for the whole class and are the best place to start.

2) Supporting writing  

The group were given a sample text and shown a technique for identifying core language, organizing this language into a language support instrument which can then be given to learners embedded within a specific task.

Until publishers produce these language support instruments in their books, teachers need to develop skills in making their own.

3) Guiding reading

The group were given a sample text and shown a technique for identifying a generic structure to be given as a reading support for learners to help guide them through the text.

These are just two areas, clearly there are many more such embedding language in speaking tasks to support paired speaking, to support presentation work, embedding language in individual writing tasks through writing frames to support extended writing and many others. That is for another workshop and another article.

I always rate my workshops on the basis of how many people give me willingly their names and email addresses. Here I got all but one of them.

I should add here that they may have been desperately keen to win one of the three books Macmillan donated for our end of talk lottery rather than interested in keeping in touch with me, but time will tell when I add them to the FACTWorld list and register them with the community of teachers on onestopclil.