English-medium education is on the agenda

I was happy to be asked to give a presentation at the TESOL Arabia conference in Dubai recently.  Thanks to Macmillan for making it possible for me to be there.

There are a growing number of initiatives in the Middle East where English is used as the medium of instruction for delivering the curriculum.  This can be seen in primary, junior and secondary in the state systems, but also in vocational courses.  English is very much seen as the way ahead (for better or for worse).  For this reason, it's important that debate is had about good practice, good resources, good management, realistic aims and putting the learners first rather than last in the process.

Macmillan Rep Ali, packs a bag for a visitor to the stand

There was a lot of interest in onestopclil.com

I say clever because it drew attention to the talks Macmillan were sponsoring and to the books and website themselves, which is what the idea was for.

Plus, I think it's great when the publishers have things to give away to teachers.

Macmillan as usual were generous with materials and donated 3 sets of CLIL books and 3 free subscriptions to onestopclil.com.

At the Macmillan stand there was also a 15% discount to the onestopclil site for teachers at TESOL.

50% discount for those attending my workshop and able to pay oneline with a credit card. Get in touch with me if you were at the workshop and would like the code for this discount.

There were over 50 participants at the end of day workshop.  Time was short but interaction was lively with the group made up largely of teachers working with students who study through the medium of English, or language teachers in schools where children are studying through English. 

I always enjoy meeting colleagues with this profile because, like or hate what I have to say, there is always energetic engagement in debate with them.  As it was, the audience were very interested in 'embedding language in tasks' among other similar things, and that is pretty much all I talk about!

This area of integrating content and language is crucial in countries of the Middle East where governments are introducing English-medium education and bringing in resources, teachers, curriculum guidelines from mother-tongue contexts.  It's particularly in this context where language within the curriculum is most important, because it's so easy to be misled into thinking that teaching your subject to students studying your language is simply a matter of transferring what you do at home to the new context.  In fact, thinking about what this actually means is at the heart of CLIL, this is what starts teachers thinking about CLIL methodology. It's about knowing what language is involved, and then knowing what to do with / about it.

How acid rain is formed (www.scienceacross.org)

Language samples

Germany

Grade 9 - 13 year olds

Chemistry

How acid rain is formed

T1 Here we go

S1 Gases are released from car exhausts and factories and they went up to the clouds there they react with uhm water in the clouds and fall down as acid rain and the acid rain runs off the hills, and leaching of the sea, or rivers and affects the chemistry of salts in the river.

T2 Very good

T1 yes, that was nice, thank you very much, perhaps we have the second group of two to do that again, that was good, was perfect, uhm, well, uhm, Benedict, would you please go over to the front to show what is being read by, uhm, Irina (?)

S2 Uhm, the gases are released from cars or factories and arise into the sky.  There, they are, they react with the water in the clouds and then they fall down, it falls down as acid rain.  It runs off, it runs off the hillside and is leaching into the river and there it affects the water and soil chemistry.

T1 Thank you very much.

CLIL methodology is about predicting what that language would be, and then providing (it's this provision which is the tricky bit) it to the learners to help them speak or write in their own way using language available.