Bahrain

Bahrain Content and Language Integrated Learning

The British Council organised a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) fact-finding mission to Bahrain (http://www.britishcouncil.org/me-zbahrain-contact-us.htm), Sunday 25th to Tuesday 27th February 2007.  

The visit was part of the regional project for improving the teaching of English and building networks of English language teachers.  Within this remit there is a lot of interest in the region in CLIL among the English language teaching community and a number of initiatives in the content teaching community which would benefit from such a visit.

Bahrain Content and Language Integrated Learning

The British Council organised a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) fact-finding mission to Bahrain (http://www.britishcouncil.org/me-zbahrain-contact-us.htm), Sunday 25th to Tuesday 27th February 2007.   The visit was part of the regional project for improving the teaching of English and building networks of English language teachers.  Within this remit there is a lot of interest in the region in CLIL among the English language teaching community and a number of initiatives in the content teaching community which would benefit from such a visit.

Anne Wiseman (anne.wiseman@britishcouncil.org.bh), BC ELT Projects Manager, coordinated my visit to the region and Eilidh Hamilton (eilidh.hamilton@britishcouncil.org.bh), Senior Teacher Teacher Training, hosted my visit to Bahrain.

Min Ed School Teachers

Monday, 26th Feb, 2007.  A seminar was set up for MOE teachers.  There were 15 participants of which two were advisors from the Ministry of Education.  The seminar presented important questions to the group on integrating content with a foreign language, in this case English.  There was a lot of interest from the group, especially in terms of CLIL from an ELT perspective, resources and the Science Across the World programme.

The Ministry of Education here is investigating ELT CLIL and is piloting two language course books at the moment which may lead to developing more content input into language teaching in Bahrain.

BC TC Ts

There was a seminar organised for a small group of teachers from the British Council Teaching Centre in Bahrain.  The teachers were interested in the issues related to integrating content and language.  There was particular interest in Science Across the World and what this programme can offer to language teachers looking to bring more content into their language teaching.  These colleagues like the Science Year CD resources very much (www.sycd.co.uk). 

Outcomes and suggestions

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There is interest globally from teaching centre teachers in Science Across the World.  I will make contacts with the Director of Science Across, Marianne Cutler, to suggest that we promote the programme specifically at the YLS level in British Council TCs for its potential in offering communication between groups of learners in different TCs around the world.  There was also some discussion of integrating BC activities with language work along the lines of the Climate Change CLIL initiative run by BC Poland. 

BC Poland have commissioned the Fields Studies Council UK to write English-medium climate change materials for secondary schools in Poland. The colleagues here will look into how these resources may be used in Bahrain and the region.  This makes a lot of sense and is a good example of joined-up thinking.  It’s great to see colleagues actually sharing really good materials and ideas rather than reinventing wheels again and again.

Good luck to colleagues in Bahrain, welcome to the FACTWorld family!!!