CONTENT AND LANGUAGE

Integrated Learning: some concerns

Patricia Arnaiz Castro Departamento de Didácticas Especiales. ULPGC

RATIONALE

FL Content

• Dalton-Puffer, C. (2002). «Content and language integrated learning in Austrian schools: applied linguistics takes a look». VIEWS 11 (1&2), 4-26.

Austria

• Dalton-Puffer, C. & Nikula, T. (2006). «Pragmatics on content-based instruction: teacher and students directives in Finnish and Austrian classrooms». Applied Linguistics 27 (2), 241-267.

Finland

• Swain, M. (1996). «Integrating language and content teaching through collaborative tasks». The Canadian Modern Language Review 58 (1): 44-63.

Canada

Development in cognitive abilities

Benefits

CLIL

UC

CE

S

S

REFLECTIONS

- CLIL: problem-free?- - Content-related issues- - Language-related issues- - Students’ interest and

motivation- - Teachers’ motivation and

mastery of the language

STUDENTS GET TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

CLIL, PROBLEM-FREE?

«CLIL is so complex a task that it can malfunction»

(Mehisto, 2008: 108)

CLIL, content-related issues

«Common sense seems to say that students studying

in a L2 cannot possibly learn the same amount of

content as students studying in their first

language» (Mehisto, 2008: 20)

• Hong Kong high school students were very disadvantaged by instruction in English in geography, history, science and maths.

Marsh et al.

(2000)

Yip et al. (2003)

• In Anatolia, Turkey, the authorities stopped maths and science being given in English because of complaints about the university entrance exams.

Kirkgoz

(2007)

Content-related issues

Language-related issues

- Content-trained teachers often give greater focus to content learning to the neglect of language

- Teachers are so often concerned about the depth and coverage of the content that language learning goals become hidden

• Hong KongHoare

(2003); Kong

(2004)

• AustriaDalton-Puffer (2007)

• PennsylvaniaPessoa et al. (2007)

Language-related issues

language content

challenging

LANGUAGE-RELATED ISSUES

Does content focus give more purpose to FL learning ?

Students‘ interest and motivation

interest

knowledge

Students‘ interest and motivation

No particular logical reason why a

student should prefer to study maths

through a FL, or study the FL with the

content being maths (Carrel & Wise,

1998)

Students‘ interest and motivation

Students‘ interest and motivation

Academic content may not stimulate more oral

interaction on the part of students (Dalton-Puffer,

2007), but actually less if the subject matter is novel.

Students‘ interest and motivation

If the content is conceptually complex, the FL medium will make it even more complex to assimilate, and the content

in turn could complicate the foreign language learning process (Seikkula-

Leino, 2007)

Teachers‘ motivation levels

FL capacicty required to teach interactively to the levels

required

Effective follow-up of the implementation of the

programme

Conclusions

Careful analysis of results in previous research

Reflection

Use evidence for the implementation of the programmes

Conclusions

Key role of focus on form (Swain 1995, 2000, 2005)

Evidence for significant concern for meaning and not form (Pérez

Vidal, 2007)Meaning and form

oriented instruction

(Deleyser 2002, 2007; Pérez Vidal,

2007)

More empirical research to find

the best possible learning

outcomes

Conclusions