Sònia Reig 

When implementing CLIL lessons we can find ourselves in front of some challenges that we will need to solve.

We can find that our students have difficulties to understand the foreign language, which is the one used during the lesson. The difficulties found will depend on how used they are to CLIL lessons. In my practicum school, for example, CLIL is only done in Arts & Crafts in CS. It started two years ago, so in Year 6 is the second year that they use this methodology. What I can see is that they need a lot of repetition in order to understand it clear, and they translate a lot the explanations into Catalan to make sure that they have understood them. It’s really useful and necessary to make lots of repetitions and also to use visual materials to complement and reinforce our explanations and make the content more clear to the students.

 

Another difficulty that we can find, that is very common, is that children don’t use English, and instead of that they use Catalan or Spanish. Children usually speak in Language 1 to each other and to the teacher. To solve that, we have to motivate them to use English, to promote support and create the need of using the language. To achieve that, we will create communication situations. We will propose tasks where they have to speak to each other, in groups. The teachers will pay attention to how they use the language and that they use it all the time, helping them when necessary. We will give them some support to help their conversations such as images or frameworks.

To improve the motivation we will also have to create interest towards the topic, the content that they have to acquire.

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Due to that CLIL lessons are carried out in a foreign language we have to take into consideration some aspects, in order to make the knowledge accessible and achievable for our students. The objective is that the students learn content and language. We have to link content learning with language learning. So they have to learn a topic while learning language. We have to find the balance between them, to not put one part aside. We have to be sure that they understand our explanations. Because of that they have to be clear and not give a chance to the doubt, being organized. We also have to have into consideration that they have to be very visual to attract student’s attention. Motivate them; they have to have interest on the content, it’s important to be linked with their daily life. We also have to provide situations where they need to communicate in English.

 

The activities that we have to include are the ones that help the students to improve the four communication skills. During the teaching unit there have to be conversation activities, so, activities that provide communication situations in order to practice the English speaking. Also activities that involve reading, we can do that with activities that require looking for information, and also writing down what they have learnt, in a process of information treatment. Watching videos is a good resource as well, to improve listening and comprehension skills.

Also is important group work, which apart of improving the communication skills helps children to improve their capacity to work with peers and help each other.

 

We have to propose situations and activities where our students have to use English, and encourage them to use it all the time, or at least as much as possible.

 

We have to provide resources and helps to our students, to approach the learning to them, to make it easier and meaningful. There is a wide range of resources, but it’s essential that all of them are helpful for the learning process, motivating the students and rousing children’s interest throw learning.

 

The assessment in CLIL lessons is a complex task; we have to focus on both, the content learning and the language acquisition, so it requires more effort when assessing. We can assess through rubrics, answered by the own students or by the teacher. By analysing the products that they do, such as compositions, presentations, etc. But we also have to analyse the process. The teacher has to observe how the pupils do their tasks and how they work in group. During the assessment we have to take into account if they have acquired the content taught but also if they are improving on the language management.