Developing CLIL: Towards a theory of practice.

In this entry I introduce to you the last obligatory reading we had in the subject of Didàctica de la Llengua Anglesa, and this article written by Do Coyle talks, as you can imagine, about CLIL. Just to put you in situation, last year when I worked for the first time with the concept of CLIL i assumed by mistake that CLIL was just doing a subject in a foreign language with the purpose to improve your skills in the language principally and then in the contents of that subject, but after reading this article and after all the debate we’ve done in class allow me to introduce to you what CLIL really is.

In the article we understand CLIL as a way of integrating a language into the teaching of a content but with the idea of improving your skills equally in both areas, meaning that what you’re doing in a foreign language is not content that you have done before in your own language but it’s a way of working the new content with the purpose of learning it while you’re learning the foreign language. CLIL is not about translating the contents but it is about working the contents in a language with the purpose of becoming this new knowledge more interesting to the student and the teacher.

As we can see in the text the purpose of CLIL doesn’t stop just with that, the benefits of producing a high quality CLIL implies that raises the learner’s linguistic competence and confidence, raises the teacher’s and learner’s expectations, develops risk-taking and problem-solving skills in the learners, increase the vocabulary learning skills and grammatical awareness, motivate and encourage the student’s independence, takes the students beyond limited foreign language topics, improve L1 literacy, encourages oral spontaneity if students are enabled to learn through the language rather than in the language, develops study skills, concentration, etc. Generates positive attitudes and address gender issues in motivation and put cultural awareness back on the agenda. Why? Because a CLIL project is a flexible project that should adapt to any kind of content but also can adapt to any kind of activity just to make sure that we, as teachers, can adapt to every child’s necessities (taking into account the multiple intelligences).

To do all this we need a perfect coordination of the teachers of the subject and the language. Therefore not only the students must practice CLIL but teachers must study how to create and implement CLIL using modern pedagogy tools but also increasing their foreign language knowledge (content of the language but also the cultural aspects). In this way, the Generalitat de Catalunya has been doing in the past few years some courses to teachers just to prepare them to introduce CLIL in the Catalan classes.

CLIL is integrated into the 4Cs framework: content, communication, cognition and culture which means that: learners create their own knowledge, during this process interaction is essential and therefore language too (language is basic in the learning process to execute the cognition process) and intercultural awareness is fundamental to CLIL.

So with CLIL we use language to learn effectively, because language is not only a basic tool to communicate but also helps us to make a scheme of the new content. Nonetheless while applying CLIL in a class we must realise that to learn new language content we must have some bases that help us understand the new contents in language that we are receiving because if we pretend to interact and create our own knowledge, first of all we must understand what is being said.

So with that being said I think that this phrase could summarise what CLIL means:

“From this perspective, CLIL involves learning to use the language appropriately whilst using language to learn effectively”.

I hope that as I do now, you understand with my help a little better what CLIL really means and if you have any doubts, please let me know.

Enjoy your day! And be careful with you CLIL projects!