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Does CLIL work for Japanese secondary school students?: Potential for the ‘weak’ version of CLIL

CLIL in Japan: Beyond the European context26 March 2014, Sophia University

Makoto Ikeda (makoto-i@sophia.ac.jp)

Two types of CLIL

Bentley (2009)

Dale and Tanner (2012)

Total

immersion

Partial

immersion

Subject

courses

Language classes

based on thematic units

Language classes with

greater use of content

Strong/hard CLIL

Content-oriented

Weak/soft CLIL

Language-oriented

Ball (2009)

Partial

immersion

Subject-led

(modular)

Language-led

Subject lessons taught

by CLIL subject teachers

Language lessons taught

by CLIL language teachers

Working definition

‘Weak/soft’ CLIL is a type of content and language integrated instruction taught by trained CLIL language teachersto help learners develop their target language competency as a primary aimand their subject/theme/topic knowledge as a secondary aim.

Research context

School: Wako Kokusai High School in Saitama

Participants: 80 students (16-17 years old; 62 female and 18 male students; B1 on CEFR)

Teachers: Two experienced CLIL language teachers (Japanese) and ALTs (native speakers)

Content: Global issues (e.g. war and peace)

Period: 35 weeks from April 2012 to March 2013 (62.5 hours for two groups and 72.5 hours for the other two.)

Research questions

(1) Do the students perceive any CLILfeatures which are distinct from normalEnglish lessons?

(2) Does their language proficiency developas a result of CLIL lessons?

Instruments

(1) Course evaluation questionnaire10 multiple-choice and 1 open-ended questions

(2) Essay writing tests (pre-test and post-test)Criterion Online Writing Evaluation Service

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Result (1): CLIL lessons = high density Student’s comment

I learnt about the world situation that I hadn’t known at all [Content/Culture]. I enjoyed the lessons particularly because I thought about the topics deeply using my head [Cognition], discussed with my friends [Communication/Culture] and gave presentations in groups [Communication/Culture].

Result (2) = Some developemt in writing More words, more vocaburary types but more errors

Category Scale Test Mean SD t-value

Holistic score Criterion score Pre-testPost-test

2.032.72

0.730.77

-8.10**

Fluency Number of words Pre-testPost-test

153.67196.38

53.2463.99

-6.47**

Accuracy Number of errors Pre-testPost-test

15.0319.61

8.3010.04

-3.55**

Number of errorsper sentence

Pre-testPost-test

1.071.29

0.430.54

-2.98**

Complexity Number of word types Pre-testPost-test

83.3897.33

21.0924.86

-4.86**

Percentage of Base list 1words Pre-testPost-test

83.9280.88

5.145.33

3.76**

Percentage of Base list 2words Pre-testPost-test

4.785.16

2.482.48

-1.07

Percentage of Base list 3words Pre-testPost-test

3.003.39

1.791.37

-1.75

Percentage of other words Pre-testPost-test

8.3010.58

4.124.75

-3.40*

Findings

(1) The students noticed there were distinctCLIL characteristics in the course that weredifferent from other English lessons.

(2) The learners’ overall written English proficiencydeveloped, particularly in terms of fluency andcomplexity.

NB These language learning gains cannot be totallyattributable to the CLIL lessons, as the participantsalso learnt English outside the CLIL classroom.

Conclusions

A ‘weak’ form of CLIL does work for Japanese secondary school students.

The ‘soft’ version of CLIL should be recognisedas an adapted, contextualised breed while, at the same time, its authentic, universal model (i.e. ‘hard’ CLIL) is pursued as the norm.

Effective CLIL lessons can be conducted by teachers who are adequately and amply trained in CLIL theories and skills.