Teaching English Toolbox
CLIL - Content and Language Integrated Learning
CLIL is one way of contextualizing foreign language teaching. It goes deeper than just topic-based teaching. As you critically analyze textbooks and prepare your lessons, think about the role of a meaningful, educational context.
Shouldn't English language lessons always belong to a content point you might do anyway in the local language of instruction, in a subject such as Religion and Culture, Sport, Science, Social Studies, Math, or even German language arts? What then, is possible to do in English (perhaps not the deep discussion, but the experiment itself or a video on the topic)?
Not every lesson has to be CLIL - but you should think about what you are teaching and why - is it worth your time because the learners will be interested and thus motivated (e.g. a modern song is mostly not CLIL (but could be if there is some deeper message)? Or can they use the language for a specific purpose at that moment (e.g. writing a "thank you" to an English speaking parent who came in and presented something - like this they learn how to structure a letter as they would in German)? CLIL is just one way of using your valuable educational time well and "kills two birds with one stone" (meaningful content and appropriate language).
- CLIL and beyond from ECML.
- Loder Buechel, L. (2002). Dialogue with my CLIL Inner Being. [internal document]
- CLIL resources from the ECML
- The Babylonia Journal of Language Education has an issue devoted to the topic of CLIL.
- Ball, P., Kelly, K., & Clegg, J. (2016). Putting CLIL into practice: Oxford handbooks for language teachers. Oxford University Press.
Teaching Thinking
Teaching language is not only about teaching children to use language structures in a variety of settings (a functional approach) but also about teaching learning in general. Tools such as those provided by Harvard's Project Zero Visible Thinking site can be helpful for a focus on thinking and simply following the newer research in general education can be applied to English Language Teaching. This section is not really a method or approach, but rather a call for making language teaching interesting by encouraging children to think - but not only about language.
Tip: Consider searching for "Beyond Bloom's" to consider Fink's Taxonomy, Webb's Depth of Knowledge, Marzano's taxonomy, the SOLO taxonomy and more! At the same time, consider how using the verbs in any of these such taxonomies in your planning can help you to make meaningful, content and critical-thinking-driven lessons.
- What is the difference between CLIL and TBL?
- Take an example of something relatively simple like animals or colors. Ask yourself what a CLIL context would be with those topics in mind.
- Think about the other subjects you would teach. If you were to teach a bit of English in those subjects and not lose valuable educational time, what could you do in English?
- What is difficult about CLIL? What are some considerations you have to keep in mind?
- What's the difference between CLIL and topic-based teaching?
- How can Bloom's taxonomy (or the SOLO or Marzano's or Fink's or Understanding by Design models) be useful in foreign language teaching for CLIL or non-CLIL approaches?
- What's the difference between "thinking about language" and "learning to think using language"?
- Take an example of a content point from another lesson (e.g. teaching the water cycle) and analyze how teaching it in English would be different than teaching it in the local language with the aim of learners understanding your content aim at the end.