Investigating Content And Language Integrated Learning

This book provides a rich and unique longitudinal account of content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The chapters report on the findings from a large-scale, three-year research project undertaken at senior high school level in Sweden. The ecological perspective, with quantitative and qualitative methods, gives voice to both learners and teachers, as well as being an excellent critical example of how such longitudinal research might be carried out. Through emic and etic approaches, the book provides insights into language learning outcomes, both with regard to the target language English and the majority language Swedish; learner motivation among CLIL and non-CLIL students; effects of extramural exposure to English; issues in relation to assessment in CLIL and much more. As a whole, the book offers an unprecedented overview of learner outcomes and detailed insights into the comparison of CLIL and non-CLIL education. While it is embedded in the Swedish context, the nature of this study means that it has strong implications on an international basis.

This book contributes to the growth of interest in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), an approach to second/foreign language learning that requires the use of the target language to learn content. Within the framework of European strategies to promote multilingualism, CLIL has begun to be used extensively in a variety of language learning contexts, and at different educational systems and language programmes. This book brings together critical analyses on theoretical and implementation issues of Content and Language Integrated Learning, and empirical studies on the effectiveness of this type of instruction on learners’ language competence. The basic theoretical assumption behind this book is that through successful use of the language to learn content, learners will develop their language proficiency more effectively while they learn the academic content specified in the curricula.

This book investigates how teacher educators can facilitate the professional development of Content and Language Integrated Learning teachers, and discusses the effectiveness of such efforts and factors affecting it. It proposes theoretical models of professional development for Content and Language Integrated Learning teachers, documents empirical evidence showing the effectiveness of the models, and sheds lights on the various methodological approaches for research in the field.

This book offers new empirical insights into the current state of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) characterisation (through an innovative proposal to link CLIL to English as a Lingua Franca), implementation (via observation protocols and SWOT analyses), and research (by examining the effects of CLIL on the L1, foreign language, key competences, and content subjects taught through English). The book provides a state of the art of the CLIL arena, identifies the chief challenges that need to be addressed and signposts possible ways of overcoming these in order to continue advancing smoothly into the next decade of CLIL development. This book will be of interest to researchers, policy-makers, educational authorities, and practitioners as it will assist them in making informed decisions about how to characterise, implement, and investigate CLIL in the bi- and plurilingual programs that are more frequently introduced in monolingual contexts.

"This book explores the application of various integrated teaching models and practices in foreign language learning"--

The label CLIL stands for classrooms where a foreign language (English) is used as a medium of instruction in content subjects. This book provides a first in-depth analysis of the kind of communicative abilities which are embodied in such CLIL classrooms. It examines teacher and student talk at secondary school level from different discourse-analytic angles, taking into account the interpersonal pragmatics of classroom discourse and how school subjects are talked into being during lessons. The analysis shows how CLIL classroom interaction is strongly shaped by its institutional context, which in turn conditions the ways in which students experience, use and learn the target language. The research presented here suggests that CLIL programmes require more explicit language learning goals in order to fully exploit their potential for furthering the learners' appropriation of a foreign language as a medium of learning.

Trade schools, universities, and programs for international students have begun to experiment with Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as a viable pedagogy for instruction, as the pedagogy of CLIL increasingly gains recognition as a practical form of language and content education in Europe and beyond, and its application in instructional settings becomes more diverse. Corresponding with CLIL’s growth, this book focuses on foreign language use during peer interactions in a new CLIL setting. It particularly concentrates on how to conduct research when the focus is on learner interactions. The theoretical background, research methods, and research instruments are explained in a brief and understandable manner. This book is intended for those interested in CLIL and peer interactions and includes a framework and ideas for investigating new CLIL contexts in a practical manner allowing undergraduate and graduate students to conduct their own research in these settings.

This book explores some of the recent research undertaken on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). It offers an overview of several European contexts, describing experiences that could be extrapolated to many other communities worldwide. Contributions focus on issues related to language policy, moving from high-level policymaking to grassroots decisions, but all of them encompassing the major changes that can be recognized in education, which also evidence the shifts in society and economic life that have taken place in Europe in the last decades. These changes in language policy issues are coupled with changes in CLIL practice in the classroom. These national initiatives are displayed across a wide range of educational perspectives, portraying the diversity that is a distinctive feature of CLIL in the European educational mosaic. By providing new insights into pedagogic, methodological, and language policy issues in CLIL, and by covering some areas which have been insufficiently addressed in the literature, such as the implementation of CLIL in ‘less successful’ contexts, or learner-teacher collaboration in the classroom, this book will be of great value to researchers, stakeholders and professionals interested in CLIL and language education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.