Content and Language Intergrated Learning
Clive of ESL Podcards is with us again this week. He’s been working his site and enrolled in a new course. He’s learning about Content and Language Intergrated Learning (CLIL.) In the beginning Clive gives us a quick run down of what CLIL is.
Clive and Mark take a look at their experiences team teaching. Some of their experiences have been positive and some haven’t been so positive. However, these experiences are all with other languages teachers. This is where CLIL differs.
CLIL uses one language teacher and one subject teacher. The subject teacher is the content pro and the language teacher is the language/linguistic pro. Together they work to teach content and improve language skills. The goal of the lesson isn’t a linguist goal, but a content goal.
Other parts covered include:
- positive and negative aspects
- using multiple intelligences
Discuss CLIL or ask questions over on the ESL Teacher Talk forums. We’d be glad to keep the show going!
Check out Clive’s site ESLpodcards for listening resources for teachers with accompanying worksheets and transcripts.
Game of the week: Bounce Around
This is a simple board game that can be used for practice or for review. The game can be adapted to any level or any linguistic target. It can be used with elementary school students to adults, large classes, small classes and it’s great for one-on-one. All you need is a board, markers for the students and a die.
You can make a board with all text, mixed text and images or all images. That board maker is available at Tools for Educators.com. If you have more questions or would like to see everything written out, as well as read some of the variations, you can check MES-English for the Bounce Around game write-up.
Thanks for listening!
April 11th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Hi guys,
I’ve just caught onto the podcast and quite enjoyed listening to it as I went through my student’s blogs. I’m currently working for the Ministry of Education in South Korea and I train public school teachers. I was quite interested to hear about CLIL as the Ministry here has been throwing the idea around.
I’m wondering what you think about having to have a native English speaking in the class for those content lessons. Is it possible to do this with a non-native speaker? I also would love to hear what you think about any available texts for teachers.
Regards,
Nicole Long
Korea National University of Education
May 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Excellent topic and podcast!
While I have only been able to teach one course this way, the results were quite satisfying.
Several international undergraduate students enrolled in a summer program at UCLA and took their first credit courses. The course, The History of American Movies, meet twice a week from 1-5 PM MW. Our small class of 8 students meet 9-12 on those same mornings, and we went over the readings and the movies in greater depth. This sheltered approach provided a safety net for the former ESL students who were more than a bit nervous about enrolling in mainstream college courses in Los Angeles. The international class included students from Japan, Korea, France, and Israel. We learned a great deal, and all the students received a B or higher in their first American university course.
This unorthodox teaching approach can create wonderful classroom experiences, even if the instructors disagree a bit. Further, this type of teaching could help dramatically reduce the drop-out rate for former ESL students in mainstream college and university courses.
As ever, your podcasts provide practical information for both ESL teachers and language learners.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Nicole - Sorry it took so long to get back to you.
It doesn’t matter whether the language teacher is a native speaker or not. If the content teacher is a confident language teacher as well, then you don’t even need two teachers. Many non-native teachers are teaching English. The teacher just needs to be proficient in the language to be a proper model for the language and to get the information across to the students. After all, the main point of the lesson is the content. If the content teacher isn’t getting the content across, then we really have a problem.
The reason for having the language teacher in there to assist the content teacher is that often the content teacher isn’t competent in handling language related issues and vis versa. If one can do both jobs, then you’d only really need the one teacher.
Eric - Thanks for the nice comments. It’s good to hear that people like the show and think it’s helpful. Most of the time we’re just talking to the dark …