Activity 1.7

1. What is CLIL? 

The term CLIL was coined by David Marsh, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (1994): "CLIL refers to situations where subjects, or parts of subjects, are taught through a foreign language with dual-focused aims, namely the learning of content and the simultaneous learning of a foreign language."

2.  Is there any difference between immersion and CLIL teaching?

One is embedded under the other. Immersion teaching is located within the concept of CLIL teaching. CLIL could be understood as the category whereas Immersion would be a strategy within the overall CLIL concept.

3. If so, what are the main differences? 

The final objective of immersion programmes is that the studentsbecome proficient in both the L1 and the L2, without any detriment to the acquisition of academic knowledge.

The language the students are taught in must be new to them, so that its learning resembles the L1 acquisition process.

The teaching staff must be bilingual, both to be able to implement the programme with the greatest guarantee of success and to ensure that throughout the school day all school activities can be smoothly carried out in the L2.

Bilingual Group in a Plurilingual Society?

   
 What is curious and distinguishing about our group is the fact that we are all bilingual students. Of course, we have all brought different personal identity funds into our team, however we have got well known advantages of being bilingual. Among languages we speak there are English, German, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian and Valencia. Despite of such a variety of languages we still consider our mother tongue to be our L1. Why? Probably because circumstances we live in still allow each of us to enjoy the use of the first language. Having said that, I do believe there are always some situations when we can subconsciously switch into L2 because some relevant knowledge is coded by means of it and this might typically be a very specific notion or reference.

    Speaking about society we live in I would say it’s a bilingual one in case we are talking about Valencian Community having in mind Spanish and Valencian languages. However, it’s a plurilingual one if we look at it through the European Union Lens. We perfectly know that more than two languages can be official languages in some countries or their regions (Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland). That’s why plurilingual education has been highly promoted recently. Obviously, we are going to encourage bilingualism in our classroom because we think it plays a vital role in helping students to get to know and to understand different cultures. Therefore, it’s a task of a teacher to create a positive environment where no language will get a higher status, on the contrary, different languages must harmoniously complement one another.

Education

I think I am right if I speak on behalf of my classmates and say that we have never had such collaborative and cooperative lectures before. True as it is that firstly we were puzzled by the novelty of the methodology, and confused because we had never faced such teaching before, I must admit that after a couple of sessions one gets to like it: the learning atmosphere, the freedom of speech, the companionship, the close teacher-sudent relationship that makes you feel as taken into account, etc. The last one is hugely important since students are not mere empty receivers of information nor working robots, we have anxieties, we have opinions, we have ideas, we have many things to bring into the class context, in fact, we are the class context, we just need a safe environment to open ourselves up to the teaching process and, definitely, a methodology including both the teacher and the students' goals is bound to succeed. So here is the point, if you feel you matter, the content will matter to you, after all, we are persons, and persons need to be relied on in order to outperform. Let me recall something, when we were due to present the ppt we prepared about Bakhtin, we were quite nervious. We have always been expected to perform clockwise, but it was not until you said that we couldn't bring any sheets to the scaffold, that we had to rely on ourselves, and that we could do it perfectly, that we realized that, indeed, we are able of a lot more than we think, we just need to feel confident. So confidence, a close teacher-student bond, a cooperative atmosphere, and being taken into account are some of the deficiencies of our current Educational System that must be tackled the sooner the better. We are forming future workers, but we are persons above all standards.

To see:

"How to espace Education's death valley" by Ken Robinson

To read:

"Out of the box learning" by Cambridge University: how to improve the quality of Education if we stop considering ability as stable and attainable.

 "Teacher: a Friend, a Philosopher and a Gudie" by Debasis Pati: "In their childhood years apart from their mothers, children spend maximum time with their teachers."

Recommended film:

"The Forbidden Education"