This week’s session brought together two realities, not necessarily similar but discussing the same bottom ground. How can that be?
We have spoken about the methodology CLIL more than once. Discussing its origin in 1994 and progressively coming along in many European countries, the approach is student-centred, task-based and action-oriented. Its objective is to teach content to a language-driven end in a non-linguistic subject. The non linguistic subjects can range from Geography to Physical Education all in L2. The focused language is usually English, having been the lingua franca for some time.
The different realities concern a school in Spain who has implemented this approach for almost 15 years. This approach was introduced as an incentive due to low enrollment and high scholastic dispersion. A school which offers this type of methodology can only improve its prestige and achieve greater academic school and student success.
On the other hand, always in Europe, we saw another school in France that unfortunately was not as open minded, where CLIL had not been introduced even though the proposal had been attempted more times.
We can claim that Europe, sadly, is not all that united as far as scholastic policies are concerned. Let’s go back to the school in Spain. After 15 years or so of content language implementation, the school enrollment did go up classifying it one of the most important schools in that region. Student motivation, student interest, student academic success all soared.
CLIL, with its unique and essential acronyms: BICS, CALPS, LOTS, HOTS, Bloom’s taxonomy, Coyle’s Cognition, Content, Communication and Culture all can be seen to increase plurilingualism and multiculturalism, putting its emphasis on the student and his or her learning skills. These learning skills that can be put into practice in a way that arouses the students’ interests. Brainstorming, guessing outcomes, different types of activities to evaluate comprehension, what do you think questions, experiments, debates, role-play, show ‘n tell presentations all contribute to a successful CLIL lesson. The boring traditional method of frontal lesson teaching has been overcome with innovative tools that, in turn, give way to excellent critical thinking skills that help students remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and ultimately create.
Whether it being a lesson, a term, a semester or school years, students in the 21st century have everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose.
We, as teachers, headmasters, students, as Europeans, should take example.
Author:
Teresa Platì - JUMP Trainer
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