Transcript What is CLIL? (1)

Vaasa University of Applied Science
Foreign Language-Medium Studies in
Tertiary Education. Opportunity for
Language Attainment and Gateway to
European Mobility
Content and Language Integrated
Learning in Tertiary Education
Heini-Marja Järvinen, University of Turku
September 10-11, 2007
Contents
 Is CLILL a viable option for improving tertiary-
level students’ language skills?
What’s an
orbit?
What’s a
planet?
What’s
elliptical?
Language is a problem in languagemedium instruction
 Tella, Räsänen & Vähäpassi (eds) 1999: Teaching through a
foreign language: from tool to empowering mediator
 national, external evaluation of 15 polytechnic & university
level English-medium programmes
 Räsänen, 2000: Learning and teaching through English at the
University of Jyväskylä
 Part of an international evaluation of quality of teaching,
international & Finnish students & teaching staff at the U of
Jyväskylä
 Hellekjär & Westergaard, 2002: An exploratory survey of content
learning through English at Scandinavian universities
 Questionnaires to Scandinavian universities, 2 Shools of
Economics and Business, one polytechnic
 20 returns from Norway, 10 from Denmark, 12 from Sweden
and 10 from Finland
Findings
 The use and role of language of instruction was not
considered, it was downplayed, even ignored.
 Both staff and (undergraduate) students have
language problems
 Students had problems in




understanding lectures
academic spoken skills
academic writing
study skills
 Lecturers had problems with oral fluency
Definition of content and language
integrated learning (CLIL)
 CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or
parts of subjects, are taught through a foreign
language with dual-focussed aims, namely
the learning of content, and the simultaneous
learning of a foreign language. (David Marsh)
 Students’ language skills can be improved by
 Offering separate courses in content-specific and
academic English and study skills in


speaking for academic purposes
academic writing
 Offering CLIL courses with
 a special focus on language in content instruction
(content teacher)
 content and language teacher collaborating (sheltered
courses)
What are some characteristics of CLIL
and CLILL in particular?
Well, Kepler was not a CLIL teacher…
orbit
Content and language integrated teaching rely on making content
comprehensible in many ways, e.g. visual. Let’s look at the
language component next …
Language enhancement in CLIL
 Comprehensible input seems to be important for
comprehension skills.
 Challenging spoken and written output may be
necessary for further development of language
proficiency.
 Interaction with peers & in groups can create
dynamic ZPDs & offers opportunities for negotiation
of meaning and form
 Content-specific language is necessary for content
learning (CALP)
 So are general & content-specific thinking skills &
related language, content-specific discourse,
vocabulary & concepts
Content in higher education is typically context
reduced and cognitively demanding (Quadrant 4)
What the content teacher can do
Teacher Talk vs. Student Talk
 Adjust teacher talk
 Allow Ss more time to speak
 Elicit student talk
 Provide more thinking time
Sometimes the teacher knows the
answers…
T: Who is the greatest composer?
S: Beethoven
T: Wrong. Bach.
T: Name me one Russian composer.
S: Tchaikovsky.
T: Wrong. Rimsky-Korsakov.
(Quoted in Edwards & Westgate 1994)
Open-ended questions to trigger higherorder thinking
 What is the difference between … and ….?
 Explain why…
 What would happen, if…
 What’s another example of…?
 How could ….be used to….?
 What is the counter argument for?
 What are the causes of…? How do you
know?
Giving and receiving feedback
 Explicit correction
 Elicitation
 Clarification request
 Metalinguistic clues
 Recasts
 Repetition
 Lyster & Ranta 1997
T:36%
T:23%
S:0 %
S:43%
T:11%
T:14%
T:10%
S:20%
S:26%
S:0 %
T:6%
S:11%
Activating background information:
the role of advance organizers
 Activating background knowledge triggers
hypothesis formation, predicting and
inferencing.
 The following words are among the key
words in a text we are going to study:
 anvil, hammer, stirrup
 What do you think the text is about?
stirrup
hammer
anvil
Use of visual aids
 Realia, graphs, charts, photos, objects,
 Authentic material, illustrations, maps,
demonstrations, photos, video clips
 Outlines
 Time lines
 Flow charts
 Mapping
 Graphs
 Venn Diagrams
Graphic organisers
 Graphic organisers provide a structure for the
presentation of the content.
 ’Gapped’ graphic organisers can be used as advance
organizers, note-taking devices and tests, for
example.
 Graphic organisers help structuring the content and
processing the content in different ways
 Turning graphic organisers into oral or written
language is a way of producing challenging output.
Semantic webs
Cause and effect
One cause-several
effects
A fishbone cause-effect diagram
(multiple, complex causes)
Cognitive academic needs
Thinking skills - speech acts, text formats
General skills:
 identify – classify/define – describe – explain –
conclude/argue – evaluate,
Specific skills (Physics):
 defining – classifying – making inductions/stating
laws – describing states and processes –
 working with graphs, diagrams, tables, etc. –
interpreting – writing reports. (Mohan, Abuja, Thűrmann)
Questions to elicit higher-order
thinking
 What is the difference between photosyntesis
and respiration? (comparison/contrast)
 Explain why antibiotics cannot cure common
colds? (analysis)
 What would happen if water boiled at 60
degrees Celsius? (prediction/hypothesizing)
 How would you argue that the Earth is not
flat? (rebuttal to argument)
 What are the causes of the tides? How do
you know? (analysis of cause and effect)
Words, words,
 the importance of words
A taxonomy of the words in science
Level 1: Naming words
1.1 Familiar objects, new names (synonyms)
1.2 New objects, new names
1.3 Names of chemical elements
1.4 Other nomenclature
Level 2: Process words
2.1 Capable of ostensible definition (e.g., being shown)
2.2 Not capable of ostensible definition
Level 3: Concept words
3.1 Derived from experience (sensory concepts)
3.2 With dual meanings, i.e. everyday and scientific: for example. ’work’.
3.3 Theoretical constructs (total abstractions, idealisations and postulated
entities)
Level 4: Mathematical ’words’ and symbols
Wellington & Osborne 2001: 20
Commonly used but difficult words in
science
Pickersill & Lock (1991) used multiple choice tests to gauge
the meanings of 30 non-technical words. 108 males & 89
females, aged 14 – 15. No gender differences were found.
Below are the words that showed to be the most difficult.
abundant
contract
adjacent
convention
concept
converse
conception
disintegrate
diversity
emit
factor
incident
liberate
linear
negligible
retard
tabulate
valid
spontaneous stimulate
From Pickersgill & Lock 1991
Interaction of all kinds is important
Discussion
Cooperative group work
Task-based learning
Discussion
Collaborative concept mapping
Critical reasoning in science
Constructing an argument
Which of the following arguments is the best piece of
evidence that matter is made up of particles and why?
a.Air in a syringe can be squeezed.
b.All the crystals of any pure substance have the same
shape.
c. Water in a puddle disappears.
d.Paper can be torn into very small pieces.
Using DARTs for discussion
DART= directed activities related to text)
A muddled sentence DART
An atom cannot be broken down chemically.
An element is made up of one pure substance.
A
A
An
Both
B
atom/s
element/s
compound/s
molecule/s
mixture/s
C
cannot
is
is the
and
can
D
E
F
G
made up of
element/s
not
be
smallest
broken
one
a
particle
two or more
are
pure
type/s of
of a/an
atoms
down
pure
chemically.
element.
molecule.
particle/s.
atom/s.
compound.
physically.
substances.
Language teacher
 Vocabulary – concepts
 Textual: Nominalisations and noun-verb
combinations in legal English, EN-participles
in Chemistry texts, nominals in academic
writing, verb forms in medical texts
 Discourse & genre: problem-solution
patterns, rhetorical patterns, move-structures
in professional genres, disciplinary variation
 Social: language and ideology, cross-cultural
and intercultural aspects of language use
Word tree
Word inferencing
Thank you