Bulgaria - CLIL for Professional and Vocational Schools

CLIL for Business, Economics, Marketing and Finance
 
I've carried out a number of events recently for teachers in small groups, in some cases with teachers just from a single host school. The content has been predominantly focused on the subject areas of Business Studies, Economics, Marketing, Finance and a number of others, but this has made me investigate these subject areas in detail and prepare a programme based on activities and resources from these subject areas. The schools are indication of recent growth in provision of curriculum teaching through English and the focus here is largely on professional and economic curriculum subjects, which, when you think about it is very sensible. Young people leaving school, or more commonly in these cases, go to work in an apprenticeship and return to school 2 or 3 days per week, more and more need English for the workplace.

I've brought together the schools I visited here firstly because they are all related, and secondly for ease of reference. Lower down the page, you will find two other things. You'll find the content I offered during the workshops and you'll also find the references to CLIL materials and activities for professional and vocational school subjects (business studies and economics, but many others).
 
- Grammar School for Economics and Tourism, Velingrad, Bulgaria



The tourism industry is definitely a strength in Bulgaria and the school offering subjects through English feeds this factor.

Colleagues from Professional Grammar School for Economics and Tourism in Velingrad.

- The Reuterschule, Kassel, Germany


The school has students returning from apprenticeships for upper school English-medium education in business studies, chemistry, physics and likely other subjects in the future if the 'bili' project takes hold and the school is able to find teachers.

- Lycee Jean Piaget, Neuchatel, Switzerland



The school offers learning through English and German foreign / second languages and the focus is a broad range of subjects including Biology, Maths, History, Sport, Arts, Geography, Philosophy, Economics.

- Berufsbildungszentrum Olten, Switzerland


A fascinating group with a direct professional skills focus as many students in the 'CLIL' classes are studying for social and health care professions amongst others and so study Chemistry, Maths, Technology, Philosophy, Psychology and they also study design, finance and insurance among many other subjects. This is a new initiative for these teachers and students and will be interesting to watch!
 
In short, the above is a clear sign of education systems incorporating an English-medium dimension, at least in these contexts but I would suggest in Europe more widely and this all certainly mirrors developments in Austria in recent years in the HTL (Technical High Schools) in providing an upper school education through English.
 

3D CLIL - Exploring the three dimensions of CLIL (concepts, procedures and language), considering the balancing of these dimensions in any given lesson.
01 Subject-Specific Vocabulary - Identifying, organizing, activating subject-specific vocabulary; looking at similarities and differences of SSV with other aspects of language in the CLIL classroom.
Themes and activities:
Accounting wordsearch
Population Pyramid cloze text
Job Specifications crossword
 
02 General-Academic Language - Making visible this invisible aspect of the language of learning; embedding GAL in CLIL activities
Themes and activities:
The Language of Business Meetings (sorting phrases according to purpose)
Company Graphs (movement language in graphs)
PEST Analysis (key language)
BCG Growth-Share Matrix (language for characteristics of growth)
Linear Equations in Accountancy (describing linear and non-linear equations)
 
 
03 Guiding Input - Working with Media: Looking at the wide range of media input used in the CLIL classroom (PPT, video, animation, images, live talk, realia, posters); identifying content structure in media content; exploiting content structure to create instruments for guiding input; embedding language within content structures with a view to supporting output
Themes and activities:
Purchasing Process - using a flow chart to guide students through a description of a process
Product Life Cycle - describing product life cycle graphs
Marketing Mix - characteristics of the 4Ps (using an introductory video to identify 4Ps)
Project Contexts - using a mindmap to sort key principles related to projects
Simple Interest - creating board games for calculating simple interest
Secondary Economic Activity - Matching descriptions to steps in the process of secondary economic activity
 
 
04 Guiding Input - Working with Text: Looking at a range of text activities through word-level, sentence-level; text-level; supra-text level activities; shared reading and discussion; writing activities based on content structure found in text to promote discussion through shared reading in pairs/threes
Themes and activities:
Company Graphs - matching text descriptors to branch graphs
Stakeholder Management - Matching cells with text in three columns to create accurate descriptions
Criminal Law - Jigsaw reading for gathering key information on roles and duties of participants in criminal trial
Insurance - Dominoes game for matching terms with definitions
Job Specifications - Sorting texts into categories for job candidate
Project Management - Defining 'project' versus 'business as usual' by sorting descriptors
 
Supporting Output - Writing in CLIL: considering the provision of a variety of writing support (substitution tables, sentence starters, word lists, gapped texts, writing frames); creating substitution tables for specific content writing; group writing
Themes and activities:
Company Progress - Describing causes and effects on progress with substitution tables
Advertising and Public Relations - Writing sentences about marketing and PR from 3 table columns then checking what is written by reading text
Marketing - Comparing marketing practices past and present with a writing frame
Project Management - producing text paragraph by completing jumbled sentences into a logical whole
 
Supporting Output - Speaking in CLIL: examining speaking activities in terms of fluency and / or accuracy; paired/group speaking activities; developing information-gap speaking into content materials; getting everyone talking in class
Themes and activities:
Company Progress - Paired information gap speaking using gapped text (same text but different gaps)
Financial Accounting - Basic information to do with financial accounting arranged into 3 things you know and 3 things you want to know for an 'information search'
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Growth-Share-Matrix - Describe and draw (one student describes a graph, the other reproduces it by listening and drawing)
Company Organization - Brainstorm in groups the structure with mindmap, present to class
Insurance - Use 'spot the difference' images of car crash to create info gap speaking
Marketing - create a question loop of basic facts and ideas to do with marketing, students ask and answer questions to find all the missing information
Product Life Cycle - do a describe and draw to produce a product life cycle graph (one student describes, the other draws)
Sales Contracts - pairs rearrange parts into a dialogue and then act it out
 
Networking and follow-up - colleagues working in teams; finding and creating matierals and storing them; connecting with groups in other countries; developing a 'department' identity for CLIL in school; creating a biblio of books in school
Themes and activities:
Purchasing Process - using a flow chart to guide students through a description of a process
Product Life Cycle - describing product life cycle graphs (movement language in graphs)
Marketing Mix - characteristics of the 4Ps (using an introductory video to identify 4Ps)
Project Contexts - using a mindmap to sort key principles related to projects
Simple Interest - creating board games for calculating simple interest
Secondary Economic Activity - Matching descriptions to steps in the process of secondary economic activity