Integration of Theory and Practice in CLIL [1 ed.] 9789401210614, 9789042038141

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Integration of theory and practice in CLIL

Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication

28 Series Editors

Wolfgang Herrlitz Paul van den Hoven

Integration of theory and practice in CLIL

Edited by

Ruth Breeze Carmen Llamas Saíz Concepción Martínez Pasamar Cristina Tabernero Sala

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014

Cover photo: www.dreamstime.com The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3814-1 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1061-4 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2014 Printed in The Netherlands

Contents

Introduction

vii

Part one: Integration in theory: Conceptual approaches 1. Teaching (in) the foreign language in a CLIL context: Towards a new approach Ana Halbach

1

2. The roots of CLIL: Language as the key to learning in the primary classroom Aoife Ahern

15

3. Strategic instruction in primary education: A pathway to successful learning in content-based contexts Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe and Victoria Zenotz

37

4. Evaluating a CLIL student: Where to find the CLIL advantage Jill Surmont, Piet van de Craen, Esli Struys and Thomas Somers

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Part two: Integration in practice: The classroom perspective 5. Prospective CLIL and non-CLIL students’ interest in English (classes): A quasi-experimental study on German sixth-graders Dominik Rumlich

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6. Addressing our students’ needs: Combined task-based and project-based methodology in second language and CLIL courses Ignacio Pérez-Ibáñez

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7. Learning processes in CLIL: Opening the door to innovation Felipe Jiménez, Agata Muszyńska and Maite Romero 8. Content versus language teacher: How are CLIL students affected? David Lasagabaster

111

123

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9. Identifying student needs in English-medium university courses Ruth Breeze

143

10. CLIL at university: Transversal integration of English language and content in the curriculum Javier Barbero and Jesús Ángel González

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Directory of CLIL projects and resources

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Index

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Introduction Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has now become a feature of education in Europe right through the education system from primary school to university. In theory, such programmes involve an attempt to integrate language learning with content learning, usually by careful coordination of both types of input, or by focusing on the acquisition of skills needed to cope with both areas. However, the pressures operating in the education system mean that it is not always easy to integrate aspects that have traditionally belonged to different areas of the curriculum, and that the evaluation processes applied tend to centre on one area or another, rather than on both. Currently it is not easy to determine the extent to which language learning is integrated with content learning in school and university contexts, and there is little consensus as to how such integration is to be achieved, or how the outcomes of such programmes should be measured. In this sense, a further type of integration is required: that of bringing the practice of CLIL into closer contact with the theory, in order to explore how language and content can be taught in harmony together. To achieve this, it is necessary to establish the role that is played by other fundamental aspects of the learning process, including learner and teacher perspectives, affective factors, learning strategies, task design and general pedagogical approaches. Only when all these aspects are taken into account will it be possible to determine how language and content can best be integrated in real educational programmes, and to reach a deeper understanding of the theoretical basis for CLIL that can underpin effective classroom practice. The first part of this book provides a variety of theoretical approaches to the question of integration in CLIL, addressing the key skills and competences that are taught and learned in CLIL classrooms, and the role of the professionals (content teachers and language teachers) in achieving an integrated syllabus. In the first chapter, Halbach focuses on the role of the foreign language in CLIL and the type of cooperation between language and subject specialists that is vital for CLIL to be successful. She shows how integration requires adaptation on both sides, and explains ways in which subject and language specialists can work in harmony. In chapter two, Ahern returns to the roots of CLIL and considers the role of spoken and written language across the curriculum, stressing the vital importance of subjectspecific literacies. She explains the central role of genre-based pedagogy, and illustrates how teachers can exploit the benefits of this approach in the CLIL classroom. Then, Ruiz de Zarobe and Zenotz examine the beneficial effects of integrating strategy training into CLIL programmes in order to enhance student learning of both language and content. They focus especially on reading strategies in the primary classroom, showing how strategy-based

viii learning helps students in CLIL contexts. In chapter four, Surmont, van de Craen, Struys and Somers provide a review of recent empirical research into the cognitive effects of learning through CLIL, and endeavour to answer the crucial question as to where the CLIL advantage is to be sought. They report striking findings not only in language education, but also in areas such as mathematics and abstract problem-solving. The second part of the book takes specific cases and experimental studies conducted at different educational levels, and analyses them in the light of theoretical considerations. Rumlich explores CLIL practice in the German context, and discusses how student motivation differs in CLIL and non-CLIL groups, even in years 5 and 6 before the CLIL programmes have begun. He discusses the possible reasons for this, and the consequences in terms of motivation for both sets of students. Next, Pérez-Ibáñez discusses the differences between Task Based Learning and Project Based Learning, identifing areas of commonality and divergence, and showing how they can usefully be combined in Spanish-language CLIL courses in the US high school setting. In chapter seven, Jiménez, Muszyńska and Romero describe innovative teaching experiences in Spanish high schools, showing how CLIL activities can be designed to promote transversal literacy skills and extend the students’ active use of a range of language functions. Chapter eight moves into higher education, as Lasagabaster examines the differential effect on university students of having a teacher who focuses only on content or one who tries to integrate content and language in the classroom. After this, Breeze looks at university content courses delivered in English, and explores how students’ levels of listening competence affect their self-perceived coping ability and possibly influence their academic performance. On the basis of her results, she draws up a set of recommendations for content lecturers involved in teaching courses in a second language. Finally, in chapter ten, Barbero and González describe how they built on empirical research concerning CLIL at primary and secondary level in order to design university-level CLIL courses in history and civil engineering. They explain how they addressed the problems that arose, and describe the support they provide for content lecturers. The final section in the book contains a brief overview of current CLIL projects. It is our hope that by reconsidering the principles of CLIL and reflecting on innovative practice, this book will help teachers and organisers in the ongoing task of building a sound framework for integrating content and language at different levels of education. It is clear that a major task of integration needs to be undertaken: not just integrating content with language (or language with content), but also situating both of these elements into the wider framework of education, taking in transversal issues such as motivation, literacy skills, and cognitive or strategic competences. Perhaps one of the most striking effects of implementing CLIL in real contexts has

ix been the way that this process has prompted teachers to revisit the principles that underlie their teaching, in a true endeavour to improve their professional practice and enhance the quality of their students’ learning. For it is quite true to say that in changing the language of the classroom, we have changed much more than simply the vehicle of communication. When CLIL programmes are implemented, teachers are challenged to refocus their objectives and rethink their classroom methodology. Above all, they have to return to the basics of what the role of language is in the teaching-learning process, and come to a deeper understanding of the complex processes by which children acquire new language and new knowledge at the same time. The outcome of this process is likely to provide immense benefits, in terms not only of the target language competences that are acquired, but also the strategies, thinking skills and metacognitive abilities that are encouraged through the CLIL process. However, if CLIL programmes are to yield all the advantages that have been promised, the teachers and organisers who are responsible for them must engage in an ongoing task of professional development in order to ensure that language and content are properly integrated, within innovative learning programmes that open new perspectives for the next generation of school and university students. By way of an ending to this introduction, we would sincerely like to thank all the authors who have made this book possible, as well as our colleagues who have contributed in different ways over the last few years to the Master’s Degree in Language Teaching, and to the events and publications in the area of CLIL here at the University of Navarra. It is our hope that this book will contribute to the ongoing debates and discussions surrounding CLIL in different settings across the world.

Part one Integration in theory: Conceptual approaches

Chapter one Teaching (in) the foreign language in a CLIL context: Towards a new approach Ana Halbach, Universidad de Alcalá CLIL projects have been gaining momentum over the past decades, with many studies evaluating the impact of this teaching mode on students’ language levels, their content subject learning and on teachers’ beliefs. However, the foreign language itself, which in principle is at the centre of a teaching approach that uses this language as a vehicle for classroom exchange and interaction, has often not been taken into account when studying the effect of CLIL programs. In this chapter Halbach analyzes the way a CLIL programme impacts on the teaching of the foreign language, by looking at the implications of learning in a foreign language for the main actors: students, language teachers and content-subject teachers. Through this analysis she shows that, if CLIL teaching is to be successful, the role of the foreign language and the approach to teaching it will have to be reconceptualized.

1 Introduction For the past decade or so, CLIL programmes have found their way into the educational system in Spain (Ruiz de Zarobe & Lasagabaster 2010, p. ix), and nowadays play an important role in all phases of education, from infant education to university. During this period of time a great number of studies on the effect of CLIL on students’ language levels have been carried out (see, for example, studies collected in Ruiz de Zarobe & Jiménez Catalán 2009 or Aragón Méndez 2006), some methodological proposals have been put forward (Dalton-Puffer 2006; Halbach 2008), and specific aspects such as the necessary teacher training (see, for example, studies collected in Lasagabaster & Ruiz de Zarobe 2010) or the teachers’ conceptualization of what it means to teach in a bilingual setting (Pena & Porto 2008) have been studied. Conspicuously absent from this discussion, or focused on from an eminently linguistic point of view (e.g. Llinares, Morton & Whittaker 2012), is the foreign language itself and how its role changes in a CLIL context. And yet studying the approach to teaching the foreign language in CLIL contexts is important, as one of the main advantages of CLIL is that the language becomes a tool for communication and this has important implications for how it needs to be dealt with. Often, however, the attention of both researchers and teachers centres more on the necessary methodological change in the teaching of content subjects than on the way the teaching of the foreign language needs to change. In the present chapter I will try to highlight the challenges inherent in this change of approach and how they can be dealt with. To do so I will focus my attention on three of the main actors of

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bilingual education, namely the students, the foreign language teachers and the content teachers.

2 Students in bilingual education programmes and the foreign language One of the important problems of English language teaching in Spain has always been that, even though being able to communicate in a foreign language rates high among the priorities of Spanish people, it has so far been impossible to develop this ability to a satisfactory level, even though language lessons start at the level of infant or primary education. As has been analysed elsewhere (Halbach in press), the reasons for this difficulty are varied, but prominently among them stands the fact that language teaching is focused on teaching about the language rather than on using it, so much so that many students coming to university to study English maintain that up to this moment they had never had the chance of speaking in English (Halbach 2002). This focus on the language as an object of study changes radically in a CLIL context where the foreign language becomes a working tool and a means for communication about other contents. Students need the language to be able to follow their content lessons and participate in them successfully, and this in turn means that their approach to, and motivation for, studying the foreign language changes drastically (for a more detailed description of the implications of this change see Navés 2009, p. 25-26).  This change also has implications for the students’ attitude towards the foreign language, as apart from the fact that they perceive it as a tool for communication, students approach it in a more intuitive and less intellectual way. This can be seen in the fact that students in bilingual education programmes stop taking the mother tongue as the starting point for both their learning and use of the foreign language, and start to function directly in the foreign language. This is reflected, for example, in the comments made by students on a bilingual degree in teacher training offered by the Escuela Universitaria Cardenal Cisneros (Alcalá de Henares, Spain) who, in answer to the questions asked by a reporter from the local newspaper, explained: “I understand the subjects and see that I am making progress. I am no longer obsessed with translating because you end up understanding the content and the language in which it is explained” and “that is why it is great: I have already got used to studying in English instead of first writing the text in Spanish and then translating it into English”1. Thus the starting point of all communication is no longer the L1. 1

Diario de Alcalá, 15 March 2011, available from:

Teaching (in) the foreign language

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Related to this ability to function exclusively in the FL, rather than using the L1 as a starting point, the students learn how to make do with the language they have, and develop communication and learning strategies that allow them to use more English (or other FL) than they actually know (Coyle 2007, p. 553). This means that students have to develop strategies for guessing the meaning of unknown words, use the visual information that appears alongside a text to aid understanding, draw more heavily on their background knowledge in order to be able to understand texts, and so on. If one’s tools are limited, one has to develop mechanisms to be able to compensate for this “limitation”, and these very mechanisms make it possible for students to increase their ability to understand and produce, not only in their foreign language but, given the appropriate process of transfer, also in the L1.

3 Foreign language teachers and CLIL projects When CLIL projects are set up in schools it is quite common to see that the greatest resistance comes from the language teachers themselves, both mother tongue teachers and foreign language teachers. In the first case this can be understood because mother tongue teachers often feel that their language will be relegated to a secondary position, and in the latter case teachers feel their job loses prestige, as suddenly all teachers, no matter what their training is in, become entitled to teach the foreign language. This would indicate that teaching a foreign language was something everybody could do and that did not require any specialized training. This difficulty is also linked to a feeling, on the side of the language teachers, that they are no longer “in control” of the students’ process of language learning, as they no longer determine the input and therefore the learning opportunities students are exposed to. The fact that students in bilingual programmes have the benefit of such a large amount of input for so many hours a day, and that this language responds to the needs of the content subject, does away with the careful grammatical sequencing our language teaching has traditionally been guided by for many generations. Suddenly the students will learn the simple present before being able to use all the present tenses without making mistakes, or will start using the passive voice before all the past tenses have been taught, because in their content learning they have been exposed to these verb forms, and have to use them.  As if this were not enough, students also develop a different attitude towards the foreign language, and are no longer willing to study it as they would in more traditional settings, but rather will want to use the language, even beyond what they have actually learnt. Students need more language, they need to develop communication and learning strategies, and will therefore, explicitly or covertly, demand help in developing these strategies from their language teachers. If to this we add that quite probably the content subject

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teacher will approach the language teacher, telling him/her that the students are not able to define properly, or that with their present language level they are unable to write a proper lab report, it becomes clear that language teachers are in a difficult position. From the outside it looks as if nothing much has changed, as they are still in charge of teaching the language, but the status and importance of the language has changed radically in the school context. This means that the language teacher has to adapt to this new approach to teaching (and using) the language, or, failing this, will see that his/her teaching becomes meaningless for the students. However, change does not need to be negative, and in fact, “the extra exposure to the language methods used, and attitudes of learners towards the language, can enhance language teaching for the benefit of all. This offers an opportunity for language teachers to regenerate their profession” (Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010, p. 12). The language teacher is now in a position to work with longer and more interesting texts, can reasonably ask students to produce more language, and can, in general, give the language lessons more of a “literacy development” nature. In these classes language will stop being a problem to be solved or an object of study to become a tool for communication instead, which can be explored in all its meaning-making potential (see Halbach 2011). Thus, foreign language teaching will be able to look at mother tongue teaching for aims, techniques and methods to be used in their lessons.

4 The content subject teacher and the language gap Probably the one actor for whom the change involved in participating in a bilingual project is most obvious is the content subject teacher. However, many specialists in the field of bilingual education coincide in pointing out that there is a danger that the change of language may only have a very superficial effect on the teaching, or that pedagogical opportunities will be lost since nothing is changed except the language of instruction. In this case, bilingual teaching equals teaching through a foreign language rather than in it (Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010, p. 27). It is therefore vital that the content subject teacher develop an awareness of the role played by the foreign language in his/her teaching.  When teaching in students’ mother tongue, content subject teachers tend not to think too much about the linguistic tools students need to be able to work with and focus on the contents. It would seem that the necessary language skills can be taken for granted. And yet reality differs from this, and we often find that students struggle when writing more specialized text types such as laboratory reports or historical recounts. This observation led to the development of the Language across the Curriculum movement which claimed that all teachers are language teachers, independently of the subject

Teaching (in) the foreign language

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they actually teach, and that therefore the responsibility for helping develop the students’ language skills is a shared one. In spite of this, it is probably safe to say that normally content subject teachers do not pay a great deal of attention to the language required by their subjects (see Coyle 2011, p. 51ff). However, this situation must change when students start learning contents through a language that is not their mother tongue, as in their classroom practice teachers have to ensure that students (1) are able to understand the explanations given and texts read, (2) have the necessary linguistic resources to be able to express what they know and think about the topics dealt with and (3) do not get stuck in their language development in a phenomenon called “immersion interlanguage” (Lyster 1987, p. 14) which has been observed widely in the Canadian immersion programmes that are often used as models for bilingual education programmes in general. Teachers can no longer take the language for granted, but rather have to add to their already long list of tasks that of contributing to the development of the students’ language. This means that, during the planning stage of their lessons, teachers have to try to foresee possible difficulties the students may face, which need to be dealt with. This increased language awareness has, in turn, consequences for the way teaching is approached generally. Thus the very fact that the planning process includes a reflection on the possible linguistic difficulties the students may face means that the learner becomes a more prominent part of the teaching process. On the other hand, this increased learner-centredness is also a consequence of the fact that using the foreign language for learning contents also requires the teaching to be based less on long texts or explanations, and instead involves the learner more. As the language of classroom interaction is not the students’ mother tongue, access to knowledge should not be mediated only by this language, but needs to be supported by other ways of knowledge building, such as experimentation. Where this is not possible – or desirable – access to knowledge has to be scaffolded through other means such as conscious activation of background knowledge, division of texts into smaller parts, graphic representation of the structure of texts (Clegg 1999) or directing students’ attention to the central elements of the text (Walqui 2007). These strategies are not exclusive to bilingual education but rather constitute techniques that are widely used in all kinds of successful teaching. In bilingual programmes, however, where students’ understanding needs to be supported in a special way, this becomes even more important. As regards the language students need to be able to produce, it is not only a question of being able to understand and use the technical vocabulary of the subject discipline, but rather that students must be able to discuss and reason around the topics of their content subject, and that they thus use the language to create meaning. Through this use of language for meaning construction students gradually become able to produce the subject-specific spoken or

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written discourse that schooling ought to develop (Clegg 2007). Among these subject-specific discourse types are procedural recounts or reports in the natural sciences, or period studies or historical accounts in history, for example (see Llinares, Morton & Whittaker 2012). Here we often get into a problem of competencies, as the content subject teacher is not a specialist in the foreign language, and therefore does not necessarily have the methodological knowledge to help students develop their language and literacy skills. Furthermore, many content subject teachers feel that they have no time to dedicate to teaching the language, since the curriculum of their subject is already overloaded. This difficulty can only really be solved if attention is paid to a crucial, but often neglected, element of bilingual education: the integration of content and language and the cooperation between the teachers of the different disciplines.

5 Integration in bilingual education Most of the bilingual projects in our contexts can be grouped under the label of CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Learning. This concept has as one of its main components the word “integration”. Many studies coincide in pointing out that it is precisely in this “integration” that the potential of CLIL resides, as it brings about a synergy that makes this kind of programme more than the sum of its parts. However, they also point out that this integration is frequently not materialized in a systematic and meaningful way in these projects (Bach 2005, p. 12-13). This is partly due to the fact that, at the conceptual level, integration is often seen to take place only in the content subjects, where, ideally, the foreign language is integrated with the content to be learnt. This limited view of integration leaves out the synergistic relation of the foreign language classes with the content subject teaching, and thus misses out on the potential which the coordinated work of language and content teachers has to offer. If the “integration” inherent in CLIL is also seen to involve the language teacher in that both language and content subject teachers work together in promoting students’ language proficiency and literacy skills, the results are likely to be much more positive than if everyone pulls the cart in their own direction.   If we first look at integration inside the content subjects, it is important for the content-subject teachers to foresee the language their students will need in order to successfully participate in the teaching activities, and to make this language available to them through short activities, classroom displays or other visuals. It is important to make sure students have the necessary linguistic means to interact as otherwise the limitation inherent in having to communicate in a foreign language could lead to frustration in students who may know more than they can express. Switching to the mother tongue to avoid this frustration could also be a solution here, but one that should be

Teaching (in) the foreign language

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used sparingly as it limits the students’ “communicative need” and also may lead to relaxing the expectations on both the teachers’ and the students’ side. What is needed, then, is for content subject teachers to develop the appropriate language awareness and planning skills that allow them to foresee students’ possible language needs and provide the necessary language input to deal with them. In the area of vocabulary these language awareness and planning skills are relatively straightforward, as in both L1 and FL teaching the content subject teacher will have to take decisions regarding the terminology students have to learn. Identifying language and discourse functions, however, is less simple, especially for a content subject teacher who has not necessarily developed language awareness, and for whom having to think about language in the context of content teaching may constitute a relative novelty. To identify the language needs of the content subject it may therefore be useful to start from categories content teachers are familiar with, and are used to using in their planning of the subjects. Thus, language functions could be identified starting from the familiar planning categories of knowledge and skills or competences. Once these have been identified it becomes relatively easy to match them with the linguistic functions that express them. Thus, if the object of a teaching sequence is to develop the ability to interpret statistical data, for example, the student will have to be able to: (1) describe statistical figures (2) explain the meaning of statistical figures Therefore, the linguistic functions needed are: (1) describe (2) formulate hypotheses In this case the relationships are very straightforward, but if we think of a more complex activity, such as conducting a survey and presenting its results, the necessary competences could be the following: (1) plan the survey (2) design a questionnaire (3) collect the data (4) evaluate the data (5) prepare the presentation of results (6) present the results In this case, the students will have to be able to use the following linguistic functions: (1) express an opinion (competences 1, 2 and 5) (2) express agreement and disagreement (competences 1, 2 and 5) (3) ask for information (competences 2 and 3) (4) describe (competences 4, 5 and 6) (5) formulate hypotheses (competence 4)

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Here the same language function will be useful for working on various competences or skills, and one skill or competence will involve the use of more than one language function, but by identifying the former it still is relatively easy to identify the latter, even for a teacher who has not necessarily received a great deal of linguistic training.  The discourse functions, or text types, that have to be developed are more easily identifiable, as they often constitute the end-product of a given unit of work, which frequently summarizes the contents and skills developed in the course of the work done. Thus, the presentation of the results obtained in a small-scale survey, as was mentioned in the example earlier, may well constitute the end-point of a unit on conducting research in the social sciences. The fact that discourse functions are relatively easy to identify even by a nonlanguage specialist should not, however, be taken to mean that their development is equally easy. In fact, the development of subject-specific literacy skills has recently come into focus through various European Projects2, and is probably the area where the need for the second type of integration, that of the content subject with the language subject, becomes most crucial, as it seems unrealistic to leave the literacy development – even the subject-specific literacy development – completely in the hands of the content-subject specialists who have neither time nor training for this. While the more subject-specific, “disciplinary” literacy will have to be developed in the content subjects, the “intermediate literacy” (Shanahan & Shanahan 2008), on which the former is based, will have to be developed by the foreign language specialist as an integral part of the language lessons. As was pointed out above, due to the change in the approach to foreign languages inherent in CLIL teaching, language teachers can and should work more on texts, both for understanding and for production. It would, therefore, be possible that the content-subject teacher, when planning the subject, could identify the types of text the students are going to have to produce. The language teacher, from a more general literacy perspective, could then work on similar, non-specialist text types, for example a general narrative when the content subject teacher needs students to produce historical accounts. In the course of this work, the language teacher could focus on the structure of the text, the necessary language functions and the typical textual elements such 2

This is the case of the European Commission project on ‘Language and School Subjects. Linguistic dimensions of knowledge building in school curricula’ and the ECML-project ‘Literacies through Content and Language Integrated Learning: effective learning across subjects and languages’. It is hoped that all these efforts manage to make a smooth transition into classrooms, and thus achieve the aim of raising teachers’ awareness of the importance of literacy development in content subject teaching as well as providing them with the necessary means for including it in their teaching practice.

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as discourse markers, verb forms, etc., that the content-subject teacher will need to draw on for the development of students’ disciplinary literacy. In many contexts this kind of work will constitute a novelty, as normally foreign language classes, at least in Spanish secondary schools, work at the sentence level, and only few texts are written, normally limited to the letters and short essays students need to produce for the university entrance exams. Language teachers will thus work on lines that are more similar to the “literacy development” that is normally focused on in mother tongue teaching in the English-speaking world (see Fernández & Halbach 2007 for an explanation of the different approaches to teaching literacy in Spain and in the English-speaking world). If foreign language teachers do this work, a lot is gained for the content subject teachers who can fall back on students’ general literacy skills to build the more subject-specific literacy required in their fields (see Llinares & Whittacker 2009 and Llinares, Morton & Whittacker 2012). In a schematic way, this coordination could be represented in the diagram displayed on the following page. The development of the subject-specific text-types will quite probably be prepared and worked towards in the language classes, even though it is the task of the content-subject teacher to then build on this general (intermediate) literacy to develop the more specific (disciplinary) literacy of their subjects. The development of the language functions necessary to interact with the concepts worked on in the content subject classes will, on the other hand, be a shared responsibility of all the teachers, independently of whether they are language or content specialists. 

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Content unit

Knowledge

Vocabulary, terminology Discourse functions (Disciplinary literacy)

CONTENT

Skills and competences

Language functions

Discourse functions (Intermediate literacy)

LANGUAGE

Figure 1. Coordination between content and language teaching. However, even if students can profit from this kind of coordinated work between teachers, and even though what is learnt in one subject is clearly applicable to another, we cannot assume that students will make this transfer automatically. It is necessary to make the transferability and the importance of what is learnt in one subject for the others salient until, after a time, students become able to make this transfer more automatic (Bransford et al. 2000, p. 104). There have been some attempts in this direction, such as, for example, the work carried out by Rodríguez Vidal (2011) in a secondary school in Tres Cantos (Madrid). This teacher-researcher managed to considerably improve students’ writing of a lab report by working in the language lessons on the structure of different text-types and by highlighting once and again that texts need to have a structure and ideas must be grouped in paragraphs of more than one sentence.

Teaching (in) the foreign language 11

6 Coordination between teachers While much of the coordination between content and language teachers can be carried out at the planning stage, no teaching is 100% predictable, and, likewise, the language necessary for teaching and learning cannot be predicted with absolute certainty. It is also unrealistic to think that teachers will be able to identify all students’ language needs accurately beforehand so that a lot of coordination will still be necessary as teaching progresses. It is therefore of great importance to find ways in which the coordination between content and language teacher can be articulated that are both effective and realistic in terms of time and workload.  At a very simple level, to be able to work on linguistic aspects that are causing difficulties in the content-subject classes, one could make use of the language assistant, a figure often present – and underused – in bilingual programmes. This assistant, normally a native speaker, can improvise short sequences of focus on form in the content classes themselves in response to a problem identified there. It would also be possible for the form-focused sequences to be prepared in advance to a class as a response to difficulties observed in prior lessons, or that the difficulties observed in the content class would be dealt with in the language lesson. In this case, the language assistant could liaise between content and language teacher by informing the latter of the language-related difficulties observed in the content lessons. This way of working on the language form would be, in a way, parallel to the focus on form sequences in task-based learning where the attention to the language always takes a real need as its starting point (see also Thornbury 1999). However, with the language assistant not always being available to liaise, and different subjects needing similar language functions, it might occur that several teachers spend valuable teaching time on introducing the same language functions. On the opposite side, it may also well be that only certain language functions are used in the content-subject lessons and therefore students’ linguistic abilities are not developed far enough, or that the language functions used remain at a fairly simple level and therefore do not guarantee that students move beyond a certain language level. All these difficulties make it necessary to create simple coordination mechanisms among teachers that are not too time consuming as to prove impracticable. In a university-level bilingual project which I know very well, the teachers have created a table for each group of students and term in which all teachers, both language and content-subject specialists, write the linguistic functions they have dealt with in class. This helps the rest of the teachers to identify which linguistic functions still need to be worked on and which they can build on. This table is posted on a shared virtual space to which all teachers have access, and where they can also upload the actual classroom materials they

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have used. This, again, helps the rest of the teachers evaluate if more work is needed on a specific language function and ensure a linguistic progression in students who are asked to use increasingly complex language functions as they progress through their degree. If one of the lecturers has, for example, worked on comparing in week three and a second one has used the same language functions in week five, reviewing the language functions used the first time round, this would allow a third teacher to introduce more complex language of comparisons in week seven, and maybe even start working on more academic ways of comparing. After this consideration of ways in which schools can make coordination possible and ensure that students get the necessary language support, it needs to be pointed out that the language aid we offer to students should always be taken as linguistic “scaffolding”, i.e. “the temporary, but essential […] mentor’s assistance as the learner advances in knowledge and understanding” (Maybin, Mercer & Stierer 1992). This means that we do not have to help students out with all the language functions permanently, but rather that what is needed one day in terms of scaffolding may not be necessary on the next.

7 Conclusion As has been seen up to this point, setting up a bilingual project has as a consequence the change in the approach and perception of language by the three main protagonists of teaching: the students, the language teachers and the content subject specialists. In this changed approach to the foreign language resides an important part of the potential of bilingual education as a catalyst for increased language learning, but also for ensuring more efficient and better teaching of content subjects, in which understanding is not taken for granted, as often happens in mother-tongue teaching. Rather, there can be an increased awareness that language contributes to creating meaning and knowledge, as well as to expressing it (Wiesmes 2009, p. 44). To make this possible, it is essential that content subject teaching and foreign language teaching go hand-in-hand to guarantee that a synergy is created that results in a greater benefit for learning than just the sum of its parts. This will only occur, however, if teachers involved in bilingual education programmes change their way of teaching, accommodating to a new approach while recognizing the value of the foreign language, and if the institutions responsible for their training help them along the way (Wiesmes 2009, p. 45).

References Aragón Méndez, MM 2006, ‘Las ciencias experimentales y la enseñanza bilingüe’, Revista Eureka sobre enseñanza y divulgación de las ciencias, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 152-175.

Teaching (in) the foreign language 13 Bach, G 2005, ‘Bilingualer Unterricht: Lernen – Lehren – Forschen’ in Bilingualer Unterricht, eds G Bach & S Niemeier, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 9-22. Bransford, JD, Brown, AL & Cocking, RR 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind and School, National Academy Press, Washington DC. Clegg, J 1999, ‘Task Design in the Bilingual Secondary School’ in Learning through a Foreign Language: Models, Methods, and Outcomes, ed J Masih, Centre for Information on Language Teaching Research, London, pp. 117-132. ——— 2007, ‘Analysing the language demands of lessons taught in a second language’, Revista española de lingüística aplicada, vol. 1, pp. 113128. Coyle, D 2007, ‘Content and Language Integrated Learning: Towards a Connected Research Agenda for CLIL Pedagogies’, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 543-562. ——— 2011, ‘Post-method Pedagogies: Using a Second or Other Language as a Learning Tool in CLIL Settings’, in Content and Foreign Language Integrated Learning, eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe, JM Sierra and F Gallardo, Peter Lang, Bern, pp. 49-74. Coyle, D, Hood, P & Marsh, D 2010, CLIL. Content and Language Integrated Learning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Dalton-Puffer, C 2006, ‘Questions as strategies’, in Current trends in the development and teaching of the four language skills, eds E Usó Juan & F Martínez, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 187-213. Fernández, R & Halbach, A 2007, ‘Biliteracy in Spanish Primary Schools: A Clash of Cultures?’ in Multiliteracies, eds D Elsner, L Küster & B Viebrock, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 231-240. Halbach, A 2002, ‘Developing Secondary Student’s communicative competence: politics and reality’, Revista ELIA, Estudios de lingüística inglesa comparada, vol. 3, pp. 49-68. ——— 2008, ‘Una metodología para la enseñanza bilingüe en la etapa de Primaria’, Revista de Educación, vol. 346, pp. 455-466. ——— 2011, ‘Same but different: La enseñanza de la lengua extranjera en el proyecto bilingüe’ in CD Retos de la educación bilingüe, eds T Hernández & A Halbach, Ministerio de Educación, Madrid. ——— in press, ‘Spain’ in Manual of Language Acquisition, ed C Fäcke, de Gruyter, Berlin. Llinares, A & Whittacker, R 2009, ‘Teaching and learning history in secondary CLIL classrooms: from speaking to writing’ in CLIL across Educational Levels, eds E Dafouz & M Guerrini, Santillana, Madrid, pp. 73-88.

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Llinares, A, Morton, T & Whittaker, R 2012, The Roles of Language in CLIL, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lyster, R 1987, ‘Speaking immersion’, The Canadian Modern Language Review, vol. 47, pp. 158-176. Maybin, J, Mercer, N & Stierer, B 1992, ‘“Scaffolding” Learning in the Classroom’ in Thinking Voices. The Work of the National Curriculum Project, ed K Norman, Hodder & Stoughton, London. Navés, T 2009, ‘Effective Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Programmes’, in Content and Language Integrated Learning. Evidence from Research in Europe, eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe & R M Jiménez Catalán, Multilingual Matters, Bristol, pp. 22-40. Pena, C & Porto, M D 2008, ‘Teachers’ beliefs in a CLIL education project’, Porta Linguarum, vol. 10, pp. 151-161. Rodríguez Vidal, R 2011, Cross Curricular Work on Language and Text Discourse. Master’s thesis, Universidad de Alcalá. Available from

Ruiz de Zarobe, Y & Jiménez Catalán, RM (eds) 2009, Content and Language Integrated Learning. Evidence from Research in Europe, Multilingual Matters, Bristol. Ruiz de Zarobe, Y & Lasagabaster, D 2010, ‘Introduction’ in CLIL in Spain, eds D Lasagabaster & Y Ruiz de Zarobe, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. ix-xvii. Shanahan, T & Shanahan, C 2008, ‘Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy’, Harvard Educational Review, vol. 78, no.1, pp. 40-59. Thornbury, S 1999, How to Teach Grammar, Pearson, Harlow. Walqui, A 2007, ‘Scaffolding Instruction for English Language Learners’ in Bilingual Education. An Introductory Reader, eds O García & C Baker, Multilingual Matters, Clevendon. Wiesmes, R. 2009, ‘Developing Theories of Practices in CLIL: CLIL as Postmethod Pedagogies?’, in Content and Language Integrated Learning. Evidence from Research in Europe, eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe & R M Jiménez Catalán, Multilingual Matters, Bristol, pp. 41-59.

Chapter two The roots of CLIL: Language as the key to learning in the primary classroom Aoife Ahern, Universidad Complutense de Madrid This paper offers a series of reflections and suggestions in relation to CLIL programmes for young learners, in particular within primary schools. It begins with a discussion about the trends in modern foreign language teaching methodologies that can be seen as having contributed to the emergence of CLIL and its popularity. It is suggested that CLIL has emerged from a progression that began with the conception that language is separable from processes of meaning-making and the approaches focusing on language forms rather than communication, and led to the explicit acknowledgement that content and language are inseparable, and thereby, the consensus that all learning is content and language integrated learning. Another factor that has contributed to the development of CLIL is the focus on the importance of language in the content areas, subject-specific literacies and genre-based pedagogy. These movements have pointed towards paying greater attention to language and how it is used in the classroom as a key to raising children’s learning achievements. Finally, some of the practical proposals that have come from these perspectives are exemplified as ideas for bringing into the classroom a fuller and more explicit integration of language and content, placing subject-specific language use clearly in the learners’ spotlight.

1 Introduction Content and Language Integrated Learning, CLIL, has become a major feature of the language teaching and learning landscape in Europe over recent years. It is seen as a success world-wide, since it has also been embraced and implemented in many other regions and continents to some degree. CLIL programmes are currently implemented in Europe mainly at the level of primary education and above, although several countries offer them even at pre-primary levels (Eurydice 2006). In spite of many practitioners and researchers having shown clear benefits of CLIL programmes, and the establishment of some coherent and useful theoretical underpinnings, certain questions that have arisen in debates about CLIL are still in need of further study and clarification. Specifically, from the point of view of language acquisition, why, and to what degree, is integrating content with language teaching in the young learners’ classroom beneficial? Or, from the perspective of prioritising the learning and understanding of content (that is, the school subject-matter learnt through the second language in CLIL), what conditions must be met in integrating language and content teaching in order to ensure that it will raise children’s educational achievement?

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It will be seen that these questions arise from several areas of deeper, longerstanding tensions. Firstly, related to the conceptualisation of language and modern foreign language (MFL) teaching, the tension between content and form; and secondly, on a broader scale in relation to the importance of language knowledge and use for learning within any discipline, the tension between viewing learning as the process of acquiring proficiency in a variety of language genres, as opposed to in other kinds of content knowledge. In looking at ways of resolving that tension, some ways forward in the enhancement of CLIL theoretical foundations for the young learners’ classroom will be suggested.

2 CLIL: whence and whither? 2.1 CLIL as an approach to language teaching In order to understand why languages are taught as they are, it is worthwhile to consider what principles form the basis of teaching techniques and approaches. Questions such as what language actually is, and why people should want to learn foreign languages, may be taken for granted; however, of course, their answers determine the beliefs and expectations of what language learning should and does consist of. These beliefs and expectations, in turn, are key elements not only for the acceptance and interest in one or another approach to teaching and learning, but also affect the potential for success of any given approach. On the other hand, over time, both the principles and the way they are put into practice change and evolve. Part of the reason for CLIL’s popularity can be seen in relation to a longstanding tension between focus on content and focus on form in modern language teaching approaches and methods: should learning be focused mainly on how we speak and write, or on what we are able to communicate? In other words, as stated by Mohan & van Naerssen (1997)1, a very common but false assumption about language learning is that language is essentially form – rather than form and meaning – and is “applied” in communication in order to express meaning. That is, this view entails ignoring that form and meaning are essentially intertwined and that meaning is created in discourse, thereby leading to important consequences on the view of how languages are learnt and how to teach them effectively (Mohan 1977). CLIL aspires to resolve this tension, although to be successful in doing so, there is a need for developing a stronger awareness of this purpose. Whether the linguistic form, the how, is given higher or lower priority in teaching depends on a variety of factors, many of them based more on 1

Also cited in Coyle (2006).

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sociological circumstances than on linguistic concerns. In this sense, it is worth recalling that from a historical perspective, CLIL is hardly a new phenomenon. In many diglossic linguistic contexts, the language of the classroom is foreign to the young learner who begins school with a vernacular where a “higher” language variety is the language of schooling (Graddol 2006, p. 85). In other situations, heritages languages are being revived thanks to school programmes delivered in a national language to children who may have minimal contact with this language outside the classroom, such as in Irish and Scottish Gaelic schools. In this sense, CLIL is situated on a continuum where a more or less foreign language is integrated to a lesser or greater degree into the teaching of the school curriculum degree (Lyster & Ballinger 2011). In a number of settings, for many of the learners, the school’s working language is not considered foreign. But the defining feature is that use of a certain language, or a certain variety of language, is both what is learnt, and the means by which it is learnt (Marsh 2002; Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010). However, CLIL relies on language learning being integrated into the learning of subject matter, and thereby, a systematic understanding of the principles behind language teaching and learning is required for CLIL practitioners to work effectively (Dalton-Puffer et al. 2010). In this sense, it is worth considering how foreign or second language teaching and learning has evolved and the reasons behind the changes that have taken place over time. A key element in this trajectory has been the attempt to enhance the knowledge of language forms. This led to a divorce between, on one hand, the forms that had to be studied, memorised, practised and demonstrated, and on the other, the use of the forms for authentic communicative purposes. In a certain sense, CLIL's popularity can be seen as a counter-reaction to this division. Until the twentieth century, much of language teaching within the modern age was devoted to classical studies. In such contexts the fundamental purpose of learning languages was quite unrelated to practical, communicative use, focusing rather on enriching students' understanding of their society's cultural heritage. But hand in hand with an array of changes in society that developed alongside advances in transport and communication technologies, language learning began to be seen as a means of looking forward, towards enhancing all kinds of exchange across regions and cultures, including commerce but also, more importantly, ideas and information (Crystal 1997; McKay 2002; Graddol 2006). As society's views on the purpose of language learning evolved, the need for including modern foreign languages within the curriculum for primary schools began to be seen as a priority in western societies. Meanwhile, studies were devoted to identifying the keys to successful language learning, looking into areas such as the development of effective

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teaching techniques and the factors that might determine such effectiveness. Although the emphasis was placed on optimising language learning in adults, researchers found that the key example of achievement in becoming a proficient speaker of a language was to be found in the natural and effort-free development of the young child's command of complex grammatical rules and an ample range of vocabulary. This process became the focus attention as a model of how people of any age should be able to develop proficiency in a foreign language, forming the basis of various teaching approaches.2 Influential theorists like Gouin (1892, in Bryam & Hu 2000, p. 281) began to construct language teaching methods intended to help the adult learner recreate the first language acquisition process in order to learn second languages (Richards & Rodgers 2001; van Essen 2002; Cook 2010). Thus, the development of language acquisition as a field of scientific research led to the organisation of methods and approaches based on focusing on language itself, the how, the manner in which learners become proficient in a language. For instance, Skinner's behaviourist views (Skinner 1957), which purported that language is behaviour – and therefore is learnt in the same way as other human behaviour, through a sequence of stimulus-response-reinforcement – became the basis for the development of the Audio-lingual method.3 However, another method of language teaching, Total Physical Response (Asher 1966, 1972), which has had a longer lasting influence on language teaching to young learners, was also based on behaviourist principles. In this case, by incorporating movement into language teaching, in a certain sense TPR took a time-tested technique used in may different contexts for teaching spoken language skills in the form of action rhymes, songs and games, and used as its central axis the intuition behind why this kind of technique works. In some senses, support for this method can be found in later research on the importance of affect for learning in general (Immordino-Yang & Damasio 2007; Schutz & Pekrun 2007), and for first and second language acquisition (Arnold 1999; Tomasello 2003) in particular. Finally, no discussion on the background that has given rise to the popularity of CLIL can ignore the influence of Stephen Krashen’s proposals, such as the Input Hypothesis and the Monitor Model (Krashen, 1985), as well as Krashen & Terrell’s Natural Approach (1983). Krashen’s emphasis on the distinction between acquisition and learning, and on the relevance of acquisition, as opposed to learning, for the development of second language competence, can be seen as a turning point in the evolution of MFL teaching. Krashen presented a clear case for the connection between meaning and form, and for the essential role of focusing on meaning for language acquisition, 2

For instance, Gouin’s principles for Situational Language Teaching in the late 19th century (see Richards & Rodgers 2001). 3 For an overview of the evolution and key elements the development of different foreign language teaching methods, see Decoo (2001).

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incorporating argumentation from both theoretical linguistics and educational practices. The central role of meaningful, comprehensible input for successful language acquisition, highlighted by Krashen, is now generally assumed within the majority of theories of second language acquisition and a basic theoretical tenet for bilingual education, immersion education and CLIL. Thus, from the perspective of the continuum between focus on form and focus on content – “the how and the what” – mentioned above, TPR and the Natural Approach represented a move away from pure form-centred teaching, represented for example in Audiolingualism, towards the direction of integrating content. Further progress in the same direction was made with communicative approaches to language teaching and learning; within the context of primary schooling, positive results that were disseminated after the spread of Canadian immersion programmes and of task-based language learning (such as in the Bangalore project) also influenced the establishment young learners’ CLIL programmes around Europe (Roldán Tapia 2012). The main element that characterised the advantages of these MFL teaching approaches and which CLIL has adopted is that of a truly authentic context for communication. Within CLIL classrooms, communication about the subject matter comes to the fore; the academic content constitutes a genuine context for building meaning and motivation for using the L2. As pointed out at the start of this section, one of the most noteworthy causes for the changes in language teaching approaches has been that of the evolving perspectives related to the purpose of learning languages (Grenfell 2002). However, there are several other perspectives that offer insight into the factors that have contributed to laying the foundations for the spread of CLIL. Graddol (2006), for instance, emphasises that the popularity of CLIL can be clearly attributed to the social changes tied to globalisation: a phenomenon that has strengthened the power of world languages, detached them from national identities and questioned the concept of the native speaker as a model of language attainment. CLIL, he claims, can be seen as both a catalyst and a symptom of these socio-linguistic changes, particularly when implemented with young learners. The fact that language learning is becoming so much more widespread and available to an increasingly widened span of social groups through its integration in everyday lessons entails that speaking at least one MFL is becoming accepted on a global scale as a basic skill. The implementation of CLIL programmes with young learners thus entails a clear commitment to creating societies that will take for granted a command of at least one additional language, generally English. Furthermore, and as a consequence, the view of these languages as foreign is rapidly losing force, whilst the need to acquire a command of languages for international communication comes to the fore, entailing a shift in language learning

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objectives and assessment techniques, as shown in European documents and policy literature such as the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001). Policy-makers around Europe have found CLIL to offer a chance of rapidly increasing the population’s proficiency in second languages. In this sense, CLIL seems to be the opportunity for a way forward. However, from a critical perspective, many stakeholders have expressed their concern for possible negative effects on the learning of the subject matters taught through second languages in CLIL settings. In particular, there is concern that the use of an L2 for content teaching will lead to weaker understanding of the subject-matter being taught through it, and that more vulnerable students may find themselves affected by a strong emphasis on the use of already limited resources, both human and material, for L2 learning, resulting in a decreasing capacity for providing these students with extra support and reinforcement. In the next sections, some practical suggestions that may be useful to prevent or lessen possible disadvantages like these will be offered.

2.2 CLIL from the perspective of “content” The “form versus content” tension is also present from the perspective of the other curriculum areas – in addition to language-related ones – in education. The need to develop educational approaches to enhance learning in subject areas like science, mathematics and the arts led to examining the role of language in these fields from a variety of points of view. Educators and researchers have highlighted the fact that language is the means that makes it possible to learn most of the content taught within other disciplines and school subjects. In other words, as put forth above, content and language integrated learning became a priority long before the birth of CLIL regardless of whether the language involved was the first, second or an additional language. Thus, movements which arose in the United Kingdom and the United States of America from the 1970s have gradually spread an awareness in education of the need for a higher degree of visibility of the role of language in order to make learning effective (Britton 1970; Barnes 1971; Bullock Committee 1975). A store of existing knowledge and expertise in this area represents an area for further development and exploitation within today’s CLIL programmes and within CLIL teacher education courses. Since the 1970s, emphasis began to be placed on writing as a tool for learning – Emig (1977), for instance, highlighted how writing leads to the development of heuristic, strategic and cognitive organizational skills (Hirvela 2011, p. 39) – teachers and educational researchers in have become involved in movements such as Writing to Learn (Tynjala, Mason & Lonka 2001), Reading to Learn (Rose 2007) and Writing Across the Curriculum (Bazerman et al. 2005). Alongside the focus on the importance of writing, many authors have pointed out the

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role of reading, of speaking or of classroom dialogue in constructing meaning, exploring a variety of ways to enhance the use of language in order to optimise learning, thinking and understanding within different fields of knowledge dealt with in schools. To sum up, all of these movements can be thought of as different focuses on language across the content areas of the school curriculum; in order to discuss their relevance and application to CLIL programmes, they will herein be referred to as Languages Across the Curriculum approaches. These movements have brought to light the fact that each school subject area requires specific literacy skills: in order to understand mathematics, science, history, or literature, learners need to develop familiarity with the particular sets of conventions, embodied in textual genres, for language use pertaining to each of these fields: children are exposed to recounts, information reports, explanations and arguments, for instance, and each of these text types is characterised by its purpose and by certain characteristic structural properties. On the other hand, as schema theory (see Carrell & Eisterhold 1998) proposes, comprehension of written or spoken texts requires access to knowledge of many kinds, in addition to linguistic knowledge. The ability to identify structure in text constitutes an essential pre-requisite for efficient understanding, and forms the basis of a wide range of strategies that can be taught and practised in the classroom, and which are particularly useful for the CLIL classroom for enhancing the integration of content and language learning. A great many studies have tested techniques for helping children to develop awareness of how to identify different genres, how to understand an increasing variety of texts, and how to use this understanding to produce such texts. These skills and the strategies that apply them are crucial building blocks that make up the foundations of increasingly specific knowledge within each content area, and I would suggest, form an essential part of the learning that ought to be developed during the primary school years. Several areas of work from this field are worth mentioning here; some examples from the developments related to text genres, and to the development of constructive dialogue for learning, will be put forth in the following sections.

3 Discourse in the content areas One of the directions for enhancing CLIL teaching is to take into account some of the useful descriptions and classifications of the purposes for which language is used within different content areas, as part of the general aim of making language visible within any kind of content work. These classifications are also very useful for grading language in order to establish

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adequate learning objectives across the spectrum of the developmental stages of children during their school years. On the other hand, as research in the cognitive sciences has also shown over decades, (Clarke & Silberstein 1977; Sperber & Wilson 1986), as language is used to build and convey knowledge and information, the learner – listener, reader – contributes a very large proportion of what is understood from any given text. Understanding utterances, for example when we listen to a teacher speak, or read a text, has clearly been shown to involve the use of previously acquired knowledge, in the form of ideas, attitudes and beliefs. When listening and reading, we constantly form hypothesis about the content and form of the messages we are interpreting. By strengthening learners’ background knowledge, their ability to apply strategies such as predicting content based on the identifying the kind of discourse being used and on the concepts and topic of the text will be enhanced. In this regard, the schema model of reading (Carrell 1983) describes how the reader’s existing knowledge is stored as structures, known as schemata, which are accessed during the processing of language. A useful distinction within this model opposes formal schemata, related to rhetorical structures that characterise different genres of text, to content schemata, related to the content area of the text. Within the CLIL classroom, it will be seen that placing special emphasis on developing background knowledge of both kinds, as well as introducing explicit discussion of comprehension strategies that are used when accessing this knowledge, would be especially worthwhile. As regards the identification of formal schemata, numerous approaches can be found in the literature to developing useful ways to classify discourse genres. For instance, in her studies on the effects of textual organization on readers’ ability to remember information from texts, Meyer and her associates (Meyer 1981; Meyer & Rice 1982) recognise five different expository text organization patterns: collection (list), causation (cause and effect), response (problem and solution), comparison (comparison and contrast) and description (attribution) (Carrell & Eisterhold 1998). Similarly, Mohan (1977)4, upheld a simple classification of discourse classes, consisting of description, sequence, generalization and decision-making. And in Mohan (1979: 179), the discourse classes are provided in a table showing further specific categories into which they can be broken down, as shown in Figure 1 below:

4

The classification is based on even earlier work by Lawrence (1972).

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more specific more general Description

individual description

comparison and contrast

classification

Sequence

chronological order

cause and effect

laws

Decision-making

decisions

alternative proposals

policy

problems and solutions

general recommendations

Figure 1: Classification of discourse classes This classification can also be related to the natural sequence for language acquisition, beginning with the ability to refer to concrete, visible aspects of situations and leading eventually to increasingly abstract uses of language and reference to less specific or tangible aspects. Thus, it could serve as a starting point for establishing a gradation of language use in order to design activities and tasks in the CLIL classroom. As a simple example, learners in the first years of primary school might work on some properties of description to produce their own creative adaptations of a nursery rhyme. Supposing learners had used the action rhyme The Elephant as part of a project on animals: The elephant moves like this and like that It’s very big and it’s very fat It has no fingers and it has no toes, But oh, my goodness, what a nose! After using the rhyme for acting out activities and becoming able to understand and say the rhyme out loud, the teacher could lead a discussion highlighting the information provided as part of the genre of description: “…We can say how an animal moves, speak about the size of the animal – which words describe the size of the elephant? – and the body parts that it has or does not have – which body parts have we mentioned? Finally we can

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mention a very important or amazing body part of the animal.” The teacher could ask children to think about or find information related to other relevant animals and provide written prompts taken from The Elephant in order to help children create new descriptions that might also be used to act out the animal characteristics.5 The discourse classes mentioned above are, evidently, a simplification and do not include fictional and narrative texts. In recent years, much more detailed analyses and classifications of textual genres have been elaborated within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, which has undergone significant expansion in its application to pedagogical practices in recent years, especially in the form of the Reading to Learn model (see, for instance, Martin & Christie 2007). Furthermore, when dealing with discourse classes in an MFL, as occurs in CLIL lessons, further complications may be confronted such as differences between the L1 and the L2 in the rhetorical structures that characterise the various classes of discourse. However, the simple classification shown here is intended as an example of a starting point that content teachers in CLIL programmes might make use of, in particular for primary school teaching.

4 Strategies and sequences for developing CLIL literacies Many specific proposals for classroom activities to develop subject-specific literacies have been developed as part of the Reading to Learn model (Rose 2007), based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework, such as the studies in Martin & Christie (2007) among others.6 Considering that success in the efficient and effective learning of content relies on the ability to understand and produce texts which follow the conventions particular to each area of the school curriculum, these kinds of activities are especially relevant to CLIL learners, who need to acquire such abilities in more than one language. Fortunately, as suggested in models of bi- or multi-lingualism such as Cummins’ (2000) common underlying proficiency model (see also DíazRico & Weed 2010), explicit work on language comprehension and genre identification strategies for one of the students’ languages will benefit their proficiency in general for the other language used at school. This has also been found in various assessments of CLIL programmes (Dobson, Pérez Murillo & Johnstone 2010; Dalton-Puffer, Nikula & Smit 2010), i.e., there is 5

For examples of the cognitive processes of constructing meaning through the causeeffect discourse class, applicable to older learners, see Mohan & van Naerssen (1997). 6 A wealth of related resources and studies are available online at the Reading to Learn website and the European Project on Teacher Learning for European Literacy Education, respectively at: and

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preliminary evidence that CLIL learners not only do better than peers from non-CLIL groups in the L2 used for content teaching, but in addition their L1 skills tend to be better than those of the non-CLIL students. In order to ensure such findings will be reproduced through the increase of CLIL programmes beginning in primary schools, the following suggestions outline some specific measures for developing explicit teaching of strategy use for reading, and for developing subject-specific literacies. In Coffin (2006, pp. 11-14),7 a series of practical steps, based on the Reading to Learn model, for developing subject area reading and writing skills is provided that could be particularly useful for the upper primary school years, and can also be easily adapted for even younger students. A set of three stages is proposed for leading learners towards a critical orientation and ability to control the specific genre or text type pertaining to any particular content area. These steps focus on developing content knowledge and linking it to the identification and analysis of the text type being dealt with. 1) Deconstruction: in this stage, a ‘target genre’ which is relevant to the content area and which has been identified previously as a literacy goal, is jointly analysed or deconstructed by the teacher and students. The main purpose in this stage is also to introduce a subject topic or a theme to the students, while activating and extending relevant knowledge that will be useful for understanding the texts. The text will be a clear example of the ‘target genre’ and its structure and key language features will be focused on. Among the activities proposed in Coffin (2006, p. 12) are: • Predicting content and purpose from the title of the text or from key words; • Providing students with labels of each stage (structural part) of the genre and asking them to match labels with stages in the text; • Cutting the text into fragments and asking students to order them and name each stage; • Erasing language features such as time or cause words/phrases and asking students to work out the missing words; • Reading and summarising the text in point form. 2) Joint construction: this stage focuses on the teacher and students writing a text using the organization and language features of the target genre focused on in the previous phase. For this purpose, the students may need to gather information from different sources. They can be given headings and subheadings for organizing the information that they find, such as in Figure 2 7

See further practical points regarding the teaching of explanatory text in the leaflet by the South Australian Literacy Secretariat, available online from:

Futher materials from this framework are available at:

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(below). So when preparing a sequential explanation of the life cycle of frogs, the first section will consist of a summary of the process to be explained, providing information about the context where frogs grow, for instance; followed by a logical sequence of stages in the frog life cycle in which topic words introduce each stage and time or place circumstances are used to develop the text. In sequential explanations there is no conclusion but a reference may be made to the beginning of the cycle once again. Orientation: What? Where? When? Sequence of stages in the life cycle Eggs Tadpoles Complete development Reproduction and end of life cycle Beginning of a new life cycle Figure 2: Headings for life-cycle task During the joint construction phase, the teacher guides students towards creating a text that is the closest possible approximation to the target genre. Sometimes the teacher will reword suggestions from the students for this purpose, offering alternatives of more specific vocabulary or more appropriate sentence structure. Among Coffin’s (2006, p. 14) suggestions for specific tasks during this phase are the following: • The parts of the text are shared out so that groups of students prepare one part each, then it is joined together using OHP or interactive whiteboard technology; • The text is constructed in whole-class collaboration and scribed by the teacher using technology; • The first draft is constructed, fragments are underlined for improvement and copies are distributed for individual students or groups to improve; • An outline of the text is provided using the notes prepared with the teacher’s guidelines. 3) Independent construction: Students may continue finding information related to the topic during this stage and it is used to create, either individually or in small groups, another piece of writing in the target genre;

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i.e. a sequential explanation of a different natural phenomenon or another animal’s life cycle. Thanks to the work in the previous stages, students should be prepared to succeed at this time and will gain important experience in writing independently. The following are some of the kinds of tasks (also based on Coffin 2006, p. 14) that might be included in this stage: • Students write a draft text; • Consulting with peers and/or teacher on ways to improve the text; • Revision using suggestions to improve the text; • Checking formal aspects, punctuation, spelling and handwriting; • Publishing for a wider audience if applicable; • Use of a checklist or assessment rubrics for students to revise their own work with. As can be observed, these three phases allow ample scope for helping learners develop a clear sense of the features of the text type under consideration. Meanwhile, the students’ knowledge about the topic is also being built up; both of these aspects will contribute to the schemata that enable students to achieve increasingly deep understanding from the texts they are exposed to. If carried out in an L2, the skills that are worked on through these activities will also contribute to understanding and knowledge that can be accessed and used in L1 reading and writing. Likewise, research based on other models of the interaction between language and learning has also built up evidence of effective classroom practices that may well be relevant and useful to CLIL primary school teaching. As mentioned previously, schema theory (Anderson & Pearson 1984) has been used as a basis for devising and organizing a variety of classroom techniques that can be used to help learners in diverse circumstances to develop strategies that enhance their comprehension skills (Pearson & Dole 1987; Dole, Brown & Trathen 1996). For instance, Dole, Brown & Trathen (1996) find evidence of the effectiveness of a series of activities that can be used to develop student engagement and understanding of narrative texts.8 In particular, strategy instruction is tested with at-risk students, in order to prepare them for independent reading. As opposed to traditional approaches to pre-reading activities, in which teachers discuss vocabulary and the content of a text that students will read, strategy instruction consists of making abstract thought processes explicit. The intention behind this kind of instruction, rather than focusing purely on maximising the comprehension of a particular text, is the transfer of reading strategies into the students’ own independent reading, as well as ensuring that the students become aware that they will gradually assume responsibility for using the strategies themselves.

8

See also Ahern (2011).

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In the study just mentioned, for instance, instruction was provided to children about “[…] how to use their knowledge of text structure strategically. This included how to make predictions about an upcoming selection, how to identify main characters, how to identify the story’s central problem, and how to identify a problem’s resolution.” (Dole, Brown & Trathen 1996, p. 70). Strategy instruction of this kind is very often delivered in the form of “think-aloud” sessions dedicated to joint reading and discussion of a text, similar to the proposal for text-deconstruction in Reading to Learn model described above. During reading, children used written headings provided by the teacher for organizing brief notes from stories, in order to create a written “story map” containing the most important information as follows: • Who? • Problem? • How did the problem turn out? In sum, as the examples suggest, explicit strategy instruction can be a very valuable tool for CLIL programmes, not only due to the importance of strengthening students’ awareness of text types in the L2, which will also help L1 comprehension and writing skills as suggested earlier. Students who develop content learning in an L2 may also require this kind of attention to strategies and explicit instruction for another reason: the background knowledge schemata, or scripts (Schank & Abelson 1977), that are accessed in order to construct meaning through interaction with a text, whether it is written or spoken, may often be culture-dependent. Thus, as has been called for in the most prominent frameworks for CLIL teaching principles (Coyle 1999; Coyle, Hood & Marsh 2010), the kinds of activities suggested here would be very appropriate for the introduction of culture-specific knowledge, preferably for both the L1 and the L2 culture. The basic tenet common to both the Reading to Learn model and the proposals for strategy instruction is that there are clearly proven benefits of providing explicit teaching and discussion of different types of texts, as well as of how to use “tools” such as knowledge about the text type and about the topic in constructing an interpretation. The objective is to help students identify the tools that can be used as resources in independent reading and writing. Eventually, listening and speaking skills would also benefit from this kind of work in the sense that it develops language awareness in general, and that strategies like those suggested for reading comprehension can be related to those that are useful in listening.

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5 Spoken interaction in the CLIL classroom A final area that can be considered here in which primary CLIL classrooms could take advantage of increasing language awareness in order to simultaneously enhance content learning is that of spoken interaction. Much has been written about the limiting effects of classroom interaction such as the overuse of patterns such as initiation-response-feedback (IRF) (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975). Research that has attempted to identify how to empower teachers and students to optimise the use of dialogue in the classroom includes that which has brought about the Thinking Together Project in the United Kingdom.9 This Project’s framework is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural view of spoken interaction as a means for creating meaning and building learning, knowledge and understanding. In Barnes & Todd (1995), Mercer (2000) and many other studies by this group, using analyses of real instances of classroom conversations, a set of central features of Exploratory Talk, or educationally effective spoken language, is described. Exploratory Talk is mainly characterised by an open and hypothetical stance used in conversations in which children share, challenge and explain their ideas with each other. In Dawes (2004), these features are summed up as follows: “In Exploratory Talk participants engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas. • Relevant knowledge is shared. • Suggestions are actively sought by questioning and challenge. • Contributions are treated with respect. • Opinions, ideas and suggestions offered for joint consideration should be supported by reasons. In Exploratory Talk, knowledge is made publicly accountable and reasoning is visible in the talk.” [Emphasis in original text]. Within the Project, a series of suggestions and proposals have been made available for use by teachers to help children identify and practice Exploratory Talk for peer interaction and collaboration in small group work, particularly for problem-solving, negotiation and decision-making. The use of the Thinking Together Project’s proposals has been shown to have positive effects not only on children’s ability to use dialogue constructively in the classroom, but also on reasoning skills, as demonstrated on improvement in results on non-verbal reasoning task tests in correlation with the use of programmes for developing and sustaining the use of exploratory talk. To date the publications have not discussed the use of L2 in bilingual or CLIL

9

A list of references is available from:

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programmes, although a pilot study has been carried out in a Spanish CLIL primary school.10 In sum, proposals like those put forth in the Thinking Together Project represent another promising direction in which CLIL classrooms can improve the visibility of language for learning both the language skills and the knowledge of content. By explicit teaching of how to develop educationally constructive dialogue, children develop general communicative skills that can enhance their language and content knowledge in any language that they use.

6 Conclusion The overall efficiency of CLIL has been shown in a variety of studies (Muñoz & Navés 2007; Lasagabaster 2008; Ruiz de Zarobe 2008; Ruiz de Zarobe & Jiménez Catalán 2009; Navés 2009), and in particular, the advantages of CLIL for general language awareness and motivation towards the use of second languages have been demonstrated widely (Marsh 2002; Coyle 2006; Lasagabaster 2009; Coyle et al. 2010). Nevertheless, the fact that many of the teachers involved in CLIL programmes are content specialists, rather than language specialists, as well as the areas in which less language learning progress has been found, suggest that there is still a need to insist on the importance of incorporating clear and practical models for the integration of language skills in these programmes. Primary schooling is where the foundations are laid in learning, and requires a systematic development of language resources that will provide access to knowledge in the first and the second languages of CLIL pupils. Therefore, without a clear awareness of this role of language development and an explicit formulation in educational planning and legislation for CLIL primary schools, disappointing results may be brought about. The Languages Across the Curriculum movements, Thinking Together and other research and proposals for reinforcing language use in order to develop learning and thinking skills across the content areas offer a wealth of possibilities for developing stronger integration of languages and content in these programmes. Given the rich variety of resources and proposals, elaborated over decades of study on enhancing learning through the reinforcement of language skills, it would seem that integrating tried and tested frameworks for classroom practices related to what has been called genre-based pedagogy, as well as explicit objectives for cross-linguistic development of subject specific literacies, is not only an area of great potential within CLIL programmes for young learners. It can be seen as an absolute necessity that would help guarantee that these programmes offer rich learning experiences to the children that are studying through CLIL and will do so in future, catering to 10

Ahern & Cruz del Saz (2011).

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the needs of the increasingly diverse student population, in terms of their home language-use situations, socio-economic background, and potential learning difficulties or advantages, so as to come closer to the goal of making CLIL beneficial for every student.

References Ahern, A 2011, ‘Writing to learn English as a Foreign Language in teacher education’, Lenguaje y Textos, vol. 33, pp. 61-66. Ahern, A & Cruz del Saz, E 2011, ‘Thinking Together in CLIL: socioconstructivist intervention for improving the quality of children’s talk for collaborative work in L2’, paper presented at International Symposium on Bilingualism, vol. 8, University of Oslo. Anderson, RC & Pearson, PD 1984, ‘A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading’ in Handbook of Reading Research, ed PD Pearson, Longman, New York, pp. 255-292. Arnold, J 1999, Affect in Language Learning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Asher, J 1966, ‘The Learning Strategy of the Total Physical Response: A Review’, Modern Language Journal, vol. 50, pp. 79-84. ——— 1972, ‘Children's first language as a model for second language learning’, Modern Language Journal, vol. 56, pp. 133-139. Barnes, D 1971, ‘Language and learning in the classroom’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 27-38. Barnes, D & Todd, F 1977, Communication and Learning in Small Groups, Routledge, London. Bazerman, C, Little, J, Bethel, L, Chavkin, T, Fouquette, D & Garufis, J 2005, Reference Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum, Parlor Press, West Lafayette. Britton, J 1970, Language and Learning, Allen Lane, London. Bryam, M & Hu, A (eds) 2000, Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, Routledge, Oxford & New York. Bullock Committee 1975, The Bullock Report: A Language for Life, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London. Carrell, PL 1983, ‘Some Issues in Studying the Role of Schemata, or Background Knowledge, in Second Language Comprehension’, Reading in a Foreign Language, vol. 1, pp. 81-92. Carrell, PL & Eisterhold, JC 1998, ‘Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy’, in Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading, eds PL Carrell, J Devine & DE Eskey, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 73-92. Christie, F & Derewianka, B 2008, School Discourse: Learning to Write Across the Years of Schooling, Continuum, London & New York.

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Clarke, MA & Silberstein, S 1977, ‘Toward a realization of psycholinguistic principles in the ESL reading class’, Language Learning, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 135-154. Coyle, D 2006, ‘Content and Language Integrated Learning. Motivating Learners and Teachers’, Scottish Languages Review, vol. 13, pp. 118. Coyle, D, Hood, P & Marsh, D 2010, CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Coffin, C 2006, ‘Mapping subject-specific literacies’, NALDIC Quarterly vol. 3, pp. 13-26. Cook, V 2010, ‘The relationship between first and second language learning revisited’, in Continuum Companion to Second Language Acquisition, ed. E Macaro, Continuum, London, pp. 137-158. Council of Europe 2001, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Crystal, D 1997, English as a Global Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cummins, J 1984, Bilingual Education and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy, College Hill, San Diego. ——— 2000, Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon. Dalton-Puffer, C, Nikula, T & Smit, U 2010, ‘Language use and language learning in CLIL: Current findings and contentious issues’, in Language Use and Language Learning in CLIL Classrooms, eds C Dalton-Puffer, T Nikula & U Smit, John Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, pp. 279-293. Dawes, L 2004, ‘Talk and learning in classroom science’, International Journal of Science Education, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 677-695. Decoo, W 2001, ‘On the mortality of language teaching methods’, James Barker lecture, Brigham Young University. Available from:

Díaz-Rico, LT & Weed, KZ 2010, The crosscultural, language, and academic development handbook: A complete K-12 reference guide (4th ed), Allyn & Bacon, Boston. Dobson, R, Pérez Murillo MD & Johstone R 2010, Bilingual Project Spain. Evaluation Report, British Council Spain, Madrid. Dole, JA, Brown, KJ & Trathen, W 1996 ‘The effects of strategy instruction on the comprehension performance of at-risk students’, Reading Research Quarterly, vol 31, pp. 62-88. Emig, J 1977, ‘Writing as a Mode of Learning’, College Composition and Communication, vol. 28, pp. 122-128.

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Eurydice 2006, Content and Language Integrated Learning at School in Europe, European Commission, Brussels. Finocchiaro, M & Brumfit, C 1983, The Functional-Notional Approach. From Theory to Practice, Oxford University Press, New York. Gouin, F 1892, The Art of Teaching and Studying Language, Philip and Son, London (1880, Exposé d’une nouvelle méthode linguistique. L’art d’enseigner et d’étudier les langues, Fischbacher, Paris). Graddol, D 2006, English Next, British Council, Plymouth. Grenfell, M (ed) 2002, Modern Languages across the Curriculum, Routledge, London. Hirvela, A 2011, ‘Writing in content areas’, in Learning-to-Write and Writing-to-Learn in an Additional Language, ed R Manchón, John Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, pp. 37-61. Immordino-Yang, MH & Damasio, AR 2007, ‘We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education’, Mind, Brain and Education, vol. 1, pp. 3-10. Krashen, S 1985, The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications, Longman, New York. Krashen, S & Terrell, T 1983, The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom, Prentice-Hall, New York. Lasagabaster, D 2008, ‘Foreign Language Competence in Content and Language Integrated Courses’, The Open Applied Linguistics Journal, vol. 1, pp. 31-42. Lasagabaster, D 2009, ‘Language attitudes in CLIL and traditional EFL classes’, International CLIL Research Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 416. Lyster, R & Ballinger, S 2011, ‘Content-based language teaching: Convergent concerns across divergent contexts’, Language Teaching Research, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 279-288. Marsh, D 2002, Content and Language Integrated Learning: The European Dimension – Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential, European Commission, Brussels. Martin, JR & Christie, F (eds) 2007, Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy: Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives, Continuum London. McKay, SL 2002, Teaching English as an International Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mercer, N 2000, Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together, Routledge, London. Mercer, N & Littleton, K 2007, Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking, Routledge, London.

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Meyer, B 1981, ‘Basic research on prose comprehension: a critical review’, in Comprehension and the competent reader: Inter-speciality perspectives, eds D Fisher & C Peters, Praeger, New York, pp. 8-35 Meyer, B & Rice, G 1982, ‘The interaction of reader strategies and the organization of text’, Text, vol. 2, pp. 155-192. Mohan, B 1977, ‘Towards a situational curriculum’, On TESOL 1977, TESOL, Washington. ——— 1979, ‘Relating Language Teaching and Content Teaching’, TESOL Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 171-182. Mohan, B & van Naerssen, M 1997, ‘Understanding Cause-Effect. Learning through language’, Forum, vol. 35, 4., p. 22. Muñoz, C & Navés, T 2007, ‘Windows on CLIL in Spain’, in Windows on CLIL, eds A Maljers, D Marsh & D Wolff, ECML, Graz. Navés, T 2009, ‘Effective CLIL programmes’, in CLIL : Evidence from Research in Europe, eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe & RM Jiménez Catalán, Multilingual Matters, Bristol. Pearson, PD & Dole, JA 1987, ‘Explicit comprehension instruction: A review of the research and a new conceptualization of instruction’, Elementary School Journal, vol. 88, pp. 153-176. Richards, J & Rodgers, J 2001, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Roldán Tapia, A 2012, ‘The shaping of Spanish CLIL’, Encuentro Journal, vol. 21. Available from:

Rose, D 2007, ‘A reading-based model of schooling’, Pesquisas em Discurso Pedagógico, vol. 4, no. 2. Available from:

Ruiz de Zarobe, Y 2008, ‘CLIL and Foreign Language Learning: A Longitudinal Study in the Basque Country’, International CLIL Research Journal, vol. 1, pp. 60-74. Ruiz de Zarobe, Y & Jiménez Catalán, RM (eds) 2009, CLIL: Evidence from Research in Europe, Multilingual Matters, Bristol. Schank, RC & Abelson, RP 1977, Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale. Schleppegrell, MJ 2001, ‘Linguistic features of the language of Schooling’, Linguistics and Education, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 431-459. ——— 2004, The Language of Schooling: A functional linguistics perspective, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah. Schutz, PA & Pekrun, R (eds) 2007, Emotion in Education, Academic Press, San Diego.

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Sinclair, J & Coulthard, M 1975, Towards an Analysis of Discourse: the English used by Teachers and Pupils, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Skinner, BF 1957, Verbal Behavior, Copley Publishing Group, Acton. Sperber, D & Wilson, D 1986, Relevance: Communication and Cognitition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Tomasello, M 2003, Constructing a Language: a Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Tynjala, P, Mason, L & Lonka K (eds) 2001, Writing as a Learning Tool, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht. Van Essen, A 2002, ‘A historical perspective’, in Modern Languages across the Curriculum, ed M Grenfell, Routledge, London.

Chapter three Strategic instruction in primary education: A pathway to successful learning in content-based contexts Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe, Universidad del País Vasco Victoria Zenotz, Universidad Pública de Navarra Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) emerged in the 1990s as a timely solution to upgrade foreign language proficiency in Europe and to eventually achieve plurilingualism in a context where many of the educational programmes did not seem to have provided the desired results in terms of language learning outcomes. However, CLIL programmes do not only aim at developing the linguistic competence of students (using languages to learn, while learning to use the languages) but also try to increase their sustainable learning dimension by means of developing methods, intercultural skills and, quite importantly, learning strategies (Marsh, Maljers & Hartiala, 2001). This paper examines how strategic instruction can provide the specific techniques that are needed for successful language learning in CLIL settings (Chamot 2001). More precisely we will analyse how reading strategic instruction can increase metalinguistic awareness and thus, improve the students’ receptive competence with the eventual aim of helping them to learn better.

1 Introduction Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) emerged in the 1990s as a timely solution to upgrade foreign language proficiency in Europe and to eventually achieve plurilingualism in a context where many of the educational programmes did not seem to have provided the desired results in terms of language learning outcomes. However, CLIL programmes do not only aim at developing the linguistic competence of students (using languages to learn, while learning to use the languages) but also try to increase their sustainable learning dimension by means of developing methods, intercultural skills and, quite importantly, learning strategies (Marsh, Maljers & Hartiala 2001). Learning strategies defined as activities that assist in enhancing learning and student performance (Chamot & O'Malley 1994) become key elements in CLIL, as does strategic training instruction (Chamot & O'Malley 1994; O'Malley & Chamot 1990). Nevertheless, although some studies suggest that learners in CLIL programmes are particularly strong in strategic competence to compensate for their lack of linguistic resources (Lorenzo & Moore 2010), there is an evident scarcity of research on how CLIL programmes enable students to overcome the barriers in the learning process itself by using strategic information.

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These difficulties are even more evident when we deal with reading abilities in a second language that require ‘a complex integration of cognitive processes (e.g., memory, attention, speed, automaticity), background knowledge, language knowledge, and an array of component skills and strategies specific for reading comprehension’ (Jiang & Grabe 2011, p. 4). Jiang and Grabe (2011) further differentiate between reading skills and reading strategies: the first ones refer to linguistic abilities that are gradually acquired, while strategies are the attempts that readers consciously make to enable reading comprehension, but they also acknowledge the constant debate about the similarities and differences between both concepts. The complexity of reading can further be demonstrated when we try to identify the key component skills of reading that have been described over the years and that range from word recognition or vocabulary knowledge, to morphology, syntax and discourse knowledge. Many of the studies about second language reading strategies have examined the effects of explicit strategy training on reading comprehension across various educational and geographical contexts. However, there is still very little research on young learners in primary education (with notable exceptions, such as Macaro & Erler 2008), and virtually no intervention studies in CLIL contexts. In order to fill this gap, this longitudinal study will aim at examining if and how strategic instruction can provide the specific techniques that are needed for successful language learning in CLIL settings (Chamot 2001). More precisely we will analyse how reading strategic instruction can increase metalinguistic awareness and thus, improve the students’ receptive competence with the eventual aim of helping them to learn better.

2 Reading skills and strategy instruction It is widely accepted that reading involves a basic set of skills that young children need to be equipped with in order to accomplish the basics of literacy and to master other literacy-related tasks throughout their school years. The importance of reading skills has been attested and assessed internationally in different ways. One of the most widely-recognized assessments is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey tests, a standardized test designed specifically to compare student achievement across international contexts. In these surveys, reading skills, apart from mathematical and scientific literacy in terms of general competencies, are assessed to know how students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life challenges. The incorporation of reading in the assessment shows the importance of this skill as a general competence to be mastered along the school curriculum.

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The development of reading skills and abilities is further emphasized by Shanahan and Shanahan (2008), who illustrate the development of reading literacy progresses using the image of a pyramid, with the increasing specialization of literacy. The base of the pyramid represents the basic literacy skills: literacy skills such as decoding and knowledge of highfrequency words that underlie all reading tasks. Higher up we find intermediate literacy skills: literacy skills common to many tasks, including generic comprehension strategies, common word meanings, and basic fluency. Progressing higher in the pyramid means learning more sophisticated skills and routines, and at the top we find disciplinary literacy skills: literacy skills specialized to history, science, mathematics, literature, or other subject matter. According to these authors, disciplinary literacy involves learning less generalizable skills, hence the difficulty implied. This pyramid illustrates the increasing specialization of reading skills, and the assumption that basic literacy skills are fully developed in the early grades.

Figure 1: The increasing specialization of literacy development (adapted with permission from Shanahan & Shanahan 2008). Together with the development of reading skills and abilities, ‘various reading comprehension responses and strategies come into play as well. For example, students develop the cognitive endurance to maintain attention to more extended discourse, to monitor their own comprehension, and to use various fix-up procedures if comprehension is not occurring (e.g., rereading, requesting help, looking words up in the dictionary)…’ (Shanahan & Shanahan 2008, pp. 44-45). That is, they use a whole array of strategies that may be available to them to increase comprehension. But how do they acquire these routines? There is evidence (Pressley 2006) that students are not likely to learn these comprehension strategies unconsciously, but require

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strategy training to help them solve comprehension problems and develop their reading ability both in the L1 and the L2. Much of the research in relation to strategy training (Anderson 1991; Sheory & Mokhtari 2001; Phakiti 2003; Zenotz 2012, among others) has shown a positive correlation between reading strategy instruction and reading performance. Taylor, Stevens and Asher (2006) and Jiang and Grabe (2011) present a compendium of empirical studies on L2 strategy development and strategic reading and show that in general terms there is a positive effect of explicit strategy training on reading comprehension and performance across various contexts. ‘Based on the evidence reviewed involving strategy training, it is reasonable to assert that reading strategy use improves comprehension and leads to improved instructional outcomes in both the L1 and L2 contexts (Jiang & Grabe 2011, p. 20). Grabe and Stoller (2011) further provide a list of reading strategies which can be used before, during or after reading to help learners become better strategic learners. These include previewing, predicting, posing questions and finding answers, using your background knowledge, making inferences, paying attention to the text structure, guessing meaning from the context, and so on. Many of these are the strategies that will be used in our research for the instructional intervention undertaken. These authors also highlight the need for a consistent use of strategy interventions, where modelling, scaffolding, extensive practice and gradual automaticity of the strategies become paramount. Before closing this literature review, we consider essential to tackle the concept of critical reading and literacy, which will also be of interest in our research. Specialists in critical reading and critical literacy (Fairclough 1989; New London Group 2000; Palincsar & David 1991) consider that different mechanisms are used by authors in order to influence readers. Moreover second and foreign language readers are easier to manipulate because of their lower language level and their total or partial lack of cultural skills (Wallace 2003). Critical literacy, which approaches literacy from a social perspective, would be a way of confronting this issue through a literacy proposal, which is defined as: ‘the ability to clarify purpose, make use of relevant background knowledge, focus on major content, critically evaluate content, draw and test inferences and monitor comprehension’ (Palincsar & David 1991, p. 124). According to Endres (2001) critical literacy does not consider language just like a set of explicit messages, but takes into account those hidden which can only be interpreted when analysed from a social perspective. Thus the critical reader takes an active role by questioning both the implicit and explicit information. All this will be taken into consideration for the strategy trainings of our study, as the following section will present. Taking into account these considerations, our study will aim to answer three research questions:

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Can reading strategy instruction improve the reading competence of students in a CLIL context? Can reading strategy instruction improve the critical reading competence of students in a CLIL context? Do the effects of reading strategy instruction on the reading competence of students in a CLIL context last in the long run?

3 The study 3.1 Context of study This chapter presents a longitudinal study conducted in a school in the Basque Country, which is part of the Trilingual Framework implemented by the Department of Education of the Basque autonomous community in the last years to promote foreign language competence in the three languages: Basque, Spanish and the foreign language, usually English. The Trilingual Framework has been introduced in a number of schools of the Basque Autonomous Community in the 4th Year of primary education (10-11 years) and the 1st year of secondary education (12-13 years), both in public and private schools of the community. According to this Trilingual Framework, the curriculum can be designed by each educational centre according to the specific needs of the school, but at least 6 weekly hours (20% of the teaching hours) must be taught in each of the three languages. As regards CLIL subjects, any non-language subject can be taught in the foreign language, and subjects change among schools, although they tend to be more often from the social sciences and creative subjects such as music, arts and crafts and physical education. In our school context the distribution of the three languages was as follows: English, physical education, arts and crafts, and science were taught through English, Basque, music, religion and tutorials were carried out in Basque, and the rest of subjects (Spanish and mathematics) were undertaken in Spanish. Therefore, there was a balanced distribution of the instruction time in the three languages in the curriculum The study involved a cohort of two intact classes that were followed longitudinally during two academic years: two homogeneous groups of 25 students who were in their 5th year and 6th year of primary education (10-11 and 11-12 years of age). The sample population was stable through the twoyear period, and therefore there were no changes in gender.

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Figure 2: Gender CG and EG years 1 and 2 A group of 25 students were the experimental group (EG) and another group of 25 students functioned as the control group (CG). The students’ first language was overwhelmingly Spanish, but they had all been learning Basque and English since they were 4 years of age.

3.2 Tasks and procedure This study is part of a larger longitudinal project which involves a pre- and post-test design. For the study presented here both the CG and the EG were asked to complete a metacognitive reading test which was designed by the researchers to assess learners’ reading skills and strategies. In order to design the test, we followed Carrell, Pharis and Liberto (1989), who stated that standard reading tests, and in particular multiple choice tests, may not be sensitive enough to measure strategic reading accurately, therefore a metacognitive test was designed to fulfil this aim. Our test consisted of 25 open-ended questions concerned with reading skills such as ‘skimming’, ‘scanning’ and ‘detailed reading’. Yet, the use of certain strategies such as ‘predicting’, ‘guessing from the context’, and ‘observing the layout of the text’ was also tested. The test had two parts: the first 12 items were prereading/fast reading activities and the last 13 were post-reading questions. The procedure was the following: the learners were given the text and after 1.30 minutes to go through the text as they thought most convenient they had to hand it in to answer the first 12 questions without resorting to it again. Then they were given the text again and had to answer the next 13 questions consulting the text. The maximum score was 25 and Cronbach’s Alpha reliability was .82.

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The test was implemented in four different moments (test 1, test 2, test 3 and test 4). Before starting the training procedure in March 2011 (test 1) and after finishing it in June 2011 (test 2) in the first school year 2010-2011, and before starting the training procedure in March 2012 (test 3) and after finishing it in June 2012 (test 4) in the second school year 2011-2012. With the aim of complementing these results and testing critical reading, a second test was designed by the researchers for the second school year. It is called ‘critical reading test’ as it focuses not only on factual information, but also on the students capacity to analyse critically the information they encounter. The skills required are also ‘skimming’, ‘scanning’ but particularly, ‘detailed reading’. Strategies such as readers’ capacity to ‘discover the author’s intentions’ or ‘tell true from false’ are also considered as well as learners’ metacognitive awareness. It is a 15 open-question test and Cronbach’s Alpha reliability is .73. Both the CG and the EP completed the metacognitive reading test both in the pre- and post-tests, and otherwise received the usual curriculum for the 5th and 6th year of primary education. The experimental group, however, also followed a training procedure. This training intervention consisted of seven sessions which spanned through three months each year of the academic courses 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. These trainings were based on the model proposed by Macaro (2001), a programme which advocates initial awareness raising, exploration of strategies available to learners, modelling by teacher and students, scaffolded practice and gradual removal of scaffolding. The final goal of this strategy intervention is for students to automatize strategy use in reading comprehension, and therefore become more strategic and competent readers, as one of the basic tenets of CLIL puts forward. The strategies that were introduced were the strategies which were considered more adequate for that age group and the skill involved. They included task-based learning strategies, using Chamot (2001)’s taxonomy, and focused on how students can use their own resources to learn most effectively (‘use what you know’). The students focused their attention on their own resources, which emphasized their responsibility for their own learning. Some of the strategies in the first year training include: • ‘Activate background knowledge’. Students activate what they already know about a given topic in order to understand the new information more clearly. • ‘Make predictions’. Students figure out what they can expect in a task, based on their background knowledge and information about the task at hand. • ‘Guess from the context’. Students make guesses about the meaning of a text based on the information provided by the text itself: pictures, headlines, and so on.

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•

‘Observe the layout of the text’. Students get a better feel for the text by observing the layout of the text. In the second year training the focus was on critical literacy and critical reading, thus some of the strategies are the following: • ‘Identify the main ideas’. Students discover the most important ideas and use tags with keywords to express them. • ‘Tell fact from opinion’. Students distinguish factual information from attitudes and beliefs. • ‘Discover the author’s intentions’. Students realise what the writer aimed at when creating the text. • ‘Tell true from false’. By using some of the critical strategies above, students are capable of discerning authentic from biased information. For the training procedure, the teacher/researcher explained explicitly each of the strategies to know how and when to use them and to increase the students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. The teacher/researcher further provided examples of strategy use and discussed how these strategies could be used effectively to increase reading comprehension. Once the students had practised the strategies with the help of the teacher/researcher, the scaffolding was progressively reduced so that students could become more independent learners (Pressley 2006). The strategies were trained individually first and then in combination to make the training procedure more effective (Wharton-McDonald & Swiger 2009). All training material was devised by two researchers, who also carried out the interventions in the regular classes at school.

4 Results and discussion 4.1 Research question 1: Can reading strategy instruction improve the reading competence of students in CLIL contexts? The first research question was concerned with whether reading strategy instruction would improve the reading competence in a CLIL context. This first research question had been partially answered in Ruiz de Zarobe and Zenotz (under review). The results then, as those presented here, showed how there were no statistically significant differences between the initial (Test 1) and the final (Test 2) results obtained by students in the metacognitive 1 reading test in year 1 (2010-2011), as Table 1 presents.

1

In order to unify the different test results all scores presented in the results and discussion chapter are expressed out of 10.

Strategic instruction in primary education Test 1

Scores

45

Test 2

CG

EG

CG

EG

Mean

Mean

Mean

Mean

(SD)

(SD)

(SD)

(SD)

4.52

3.91

6.05

7.02

(2.34)

(1.69)

(2.03)

(1.69)

Differences between

-1.34

-1.31

groups Z (p)

(.17)

(.18)

Table 1. Initial and final results, control and experimental groups, in the metacognitive reading test (year 1). As no significant differences were encountered between the CG and the EG in both Test 1 (p= .17) and Test 2 (p= .18), we were then interested in exploring if both groups had progressed in a similar way. In order to do so, we carried out two non-parametric tests: on the one hand the Wilcoxon test, to measure the differences within groups (the same group at two different times: Test 1 and Test 2) and, on the other, the Mann-Whitney U test to study the differences between groups (comparing the CG and EG). The results are presented in table 2.

Progression CG Differences within groups (Wilcoxon)

Differences between groups (Mann-Whitney U)

EG

Z (p)

Z (p)

-3.13 (.00)

-4.01 (.00)

Mean (SD) 1.41 (1.61)

Mean (SD) 3.30 (1.51) Z (p) 92 (.00)

Table 2. Progression, control and experimental groups, in the metacognitive reading test (year 1).

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The test shows there are statistically significant differences in the inner evolution of both the control (p=.00) and experimental group (p=.00), and that is why we proceeded to study if that growth was similar in both groups. For this reason we created a variable for each group with the difference between Test 2 and Test 1. Then we used the U Mann-Whitney test to check if there were differences between both groups in their progression. Our results suggest that there were statistical differences (p=.00) in favour of the experimental group. In other words, the results show that the metacognitive strategic training in the first school year had had a positive effect on the reading competence of students.

4.2 Research question 2: Can reading strategy instruction improve the critical reading competence of students in a CLIL context? Once the positive relationship between the training procedure and reading competence had been supported, our second goal was to see if reading strategy instruction also had a positive effect on critical reading competence, the second test that had been implemented during the academic year 20112012, together with the metacognitive reading test. With the aim of answering this question the results obtained in the initial critical reading test (CR1) and the final critical reading test (CR2) were compared.

CR1 CG

Scores

Differences between groups

Z (p)

CR2 EG

CG

EG

Mean

Mean

Mean

Mean

(SD)

(SD)

(SD)

(SD)

3.50

3.02

3.94

4.37

(1.65)

(1.54)

(1.34)

(2.20)

-.96 (.33)

-83 (.40)

Table 3. Initial and final results, control and experimental groups, in the critical reading test.

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Our results show that, although the initial scores were higher in the CG, there were no statistical differences between the CG and the EG (p=.33). However, the final results portray a different perspective, with higher scores in the EG, yet the U Mann Whitney test shows no statistical differences (p=.40) between groups either. The next step was to examine the manner in which both groups had evolved, as we did for research question 1. Progression

Differences within groups (Wilcoxon)

CG

EG

Z (p)

Z (p)

-1.52 (.12)

-3.70 (-00)

Table 4. Progression, control and experimental groups, in the critical reading test. The table above shows differences in the inner evolution of the experimental group (p=.00), whereas the control group displayed no statistical progression (p=.12). It appears from these results that the reading strategy intervention had a positive effect on the critical reading competence of the students.

4.3 Research question 3. Do the effects of reading strategy instruction on the reading competence of students in a CLIL context last in the long run? Our third research question involved the longitudinal evaluation of the results in terms of the reading competence of students, something that has been clearly under-represented in the literature so far, at least in CLIL contexts. To answer this research question we carried out the same metacognitive reading test in four different times: test 1, test 2, test 3, test 4. As mentioned above, test 1 was administered before the training procedure of the first year (March 2011), and test 2 after the training (June 2011) that same year. The same process was repeated the second year for test 3 (March 2012) and test 4 (June 2012). In table 5 we can find the mean scores along the two academic years.

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Test 1 (year 1) Test 2 (year 1) Test 3 (year 2) Test 4 (year 2)

EG

Differences

Mean (SD)

Mean (SD)

Z (p)

4.52

3.91

-1.34

(2.03)

(1.69)

(.17)

6.05

7.02

-1.31

(2.34)

(1.69)

(.18)

5.99

6.56

-.87

(1.89)

(1.37)

(.38)

6.79

6.90

-.15

(1.94)

(1.74)

(.87)

Table 5. Longitudinal results, control and experimental groups, in the metacognitive reading test. As we can see on the table, except in test 1, the experimental group always had better scores than the control group. Yet, there were no initial differences between the control and the experimental groups in the metacognitive reading test, and no significant differences were either encountered in the subsequent post-tests carried out in the following two years. Therefore, we proceeded to analyse if there were any differences in the way the groups had progressed. Results in every test tended to be higher than in the previous one in both groups with the exception of the evolution between test 2 and test 3 where both groups showed a certain regression. That may have been due to the lapse of time between tests (June 2011-March 2012), which was considerably higher than in the other cases. However, when we compared test 1 and test 4, the progression was clear for both groups, particularly for the experimental one. In order to examine if there were statistical differences in the way both groups had evolved, we used the Wilcoxon test. The progression is shown between consecutive tests, but also between the initial and final test to account for the possible longitudinal difference.

Strategic instruction in primary education CG

EG

Z (p)

Z (p)

Test 1 and 2 (year 1)

-3.13

-4.01

(.00)

(.00)

Test 2 and 3 (year 1-2)

-.11

-1.99

(.91)

(.04)

Test 3 and 4 (year 2)

-2.86

-2.16

(.00)

(.03)

Test 1 and 4 (year 1-2)

-4.02

-4.20

(.00)

(.00)

49

Table 6. Differences within control and experimental groups, in the metacognitive reading test. According to the Wilcoxon test there were statistically significant differences within each group in all test comparisons, except the test 2 and 3 progression in the control group (p=.91). As both groups had statistical differences in the Wilcoxon test, we further examined this progression to see if they had evolved in the same way. For this reason we created a variable for each group with the difference between each of the different tests above. Then we used the Mann-Whitney U test to check if there were differences between both groups in relation to the way they had progressed. As we can see below in Table 7, according to the MannWhitney U test, the only significant differences between groups are the ones between test 1 and test 2 (p .00) in favour of the experimental group.

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Test 1 and 2 (year 1)

1.41 (1.61)

Test 2 and 3 (year 1-2)

-.04 (1.38)

Test 3 and 4 (year 2)

.81 (1.20)

Test 1 and 4 (year 1-2)

2.17 (1.58)

EG

Differences

Mean (SD)

Z (p)

3.30

-3.40

(1.51)

(.00)

-.59

-1.28

(1.29)

(.19)

.57

-.45

(1.16)

(.64)

3.07

-1.5

(1.89)

(.12)

Table 7. Longitudinal results, C and E groups, in metacognitive reading test. In order to further analyse these results we examined the scores of both groups in each of the parts of the metacognitive reading test: pre-reading/fast reading and post-reading tasks in the initial and final moments of the testing. Pre-reading GC

Test 1

Test 1-4 Diff. within groups Z (p) Test 1-4 Diff. between groups

Post-reading GC

GE

Diff. between groups

Mean (SD)

Mean (SD)

Z (p)

Mean (SD)

Mean (SD)

Z (p)

4.41

3.13

-2.50

4.63

4.69

-.02

(1.67)

(.01)

(2.92)

(2.45)

(.97)

7.46

-1.40

6.95

6.33

-1.63

(2.03)

(1.93)

(.16)

(2.19)

(1.75)

(.10)

-3.79 (.00)

-3.98 (.00)

-3.57 (.00)

-3.55 (.00)

2.01 (1.88)

4.32 (2.70)

2.32 (2.44)

1.60 (1.79)

(1.72) Test 4

GE

Diff. between groups

6.61

-3.08 (.00)

-.21 (.83)

Table 8. Longitudinal results, control and experimental groups, in the metacognitive reading subtests.

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We had stated before that although the initial scores for the experimental group were lower, there were no initial differences in test 1. Yet, we can see that the initial scores in pre-reading were statistically lower (p=.01) in the experimental group, whereas those of the post-reading were higher. Regarding the final results, the situation is very different as it is the control group the one with higher scores in the post-reading tasks and the experimental one in the pre-reading ones. In reference to the way in which each of the groups progressed, as we can see on table 8, the Wilcoxon test showed statistical differences in all cases, but only the higher scores in the pre-reading/fast reading tasks of the experimental group were statistically significant (p=.00). We can summarise the evolution between the four different testing moments by saying that there was a better progression in the experimental group between test 1 and 2, both in the pre-test and post-test before and after the first training, with statistical differences between them. Furthermore, there was a negative progression in the pre-test of the second school year (test 3), which was statistically significant in the case of the experimental group. Yet, this situation evolved in the comparison between test 3 and test 4, where both groups progressed positively, with statistically significant differences both in the CG and the EG. The final situation (test 4) shows higher scores for the experimental group, but without statistical differences. Finally, when comparing the initial and final tests (test 1 and test 4) there are statistical differences in the inner progression of both groups, this progression being better in the experimental group. In sum, in relation to our research question 3, we can state that the positive results initially obtained (test 1- test 2) are partially maintained longitudinally: there is a regression in both the CG and the EG in between academic years, and a positive progression for both groups in the longitudinal evaluation of the results, being somewhat better in the experimental group.

5 Conclusions This study sought to investigate the effect of reading strategy instruction in a group of young learners following a CLIL programme during two academic years. For the purpose of the study, we had two groups of students, one who acted as the control group and another one as the experimental group. This second group received some training procedure longitudinally. The training programme was similar during both academic years, although it was also expanded during the second year to account for other reading competences such as critical literacy and critical reading. Our results seem to support the view that strategy instruction has a positive result in reading competence (Anderson 1991; Sheory & Mokhtari 2001;

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Phakiti 2003). There appears to be little doubt of an overall positive impact of the strategy instruction on the experimental group in two of our research questions. The strategy procedure had a direct effect on the metacognitive reading competence of the students in the CLIL context (research question 1) and on the critical reading competence of the intervention students (research question 2). In relation to the longitudinal evaluation of the results (research question 3), there seems to be a positive progression for both groups longitudinally, being somehow better in the case of the experimental group. However, we should treat these results with some caution: we have seen how there is regression in both groups between time 2 and time 3, which is partly due to the relative ample span of time between tests along both academic years. Despite this regression, the progression between tests shows an overall positive impact, although not always with statistical significance. In sum, our study shows a positive effect of explicit strategy instruction to a reasonable extent. It further provides support for the body of evidence which suggests a relationship between language learners’ reading strategy use and reading comprehension (Jiang & Grabe 2011), particularly in the case of younger learners, a population which has been under-represented in the relevant literature (Chamot 2005; Macaro & Erler 2008). Finally, the study provides new evidence for reading strategy use and competence in contentbased instructional settings (Ruiz de Zarobe 2011), a context where high expectations are created over the learning dimension of instruction. Acknowledgement The authors acknowledge support of the grant FFI2012-31811 awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the grant IT-311-10 awarded by the Basque Government, and the funding from the University of the Basque Country, grant UFI11/06.

References Anderson, NJ 1991, ‘Individual differences in strategy use in second language reading and testing’, Modern Language Journal, vol. 75, pp. 460-72. Carrell, PL, Pharis, BG & Liberto, JC 1989, ‘Metacognitive strategy training for ESL Reading’, TESOL Quarterly, vol. 23, pp. 647-678. Chamot, AU 2001, ‘Teaching learning strategies in immersion classrooms’, The elementary immersion learning strategies resource guide (2nd ed.). Available from:

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Chamot, AU 2005, ‘Language learning strategy instruction: Current issues and research’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, vol. 25, pp. 112-130. Chamot, AU & O’Malley, M 1994, The CALLA Handbook, Addison-Wesley, Reading. Endres, B 2001, ‘A critical read on critical literacy: From critique to dialogue as an ideal for literacy education’, Educational Theory, vol. 51, pp. 401-413. Fairclough, N 1989, Language and power, Longman, London. Grabe, W & Stoller, F 2011, Teaching and researching reading (2nd ed.), Pearson Education, New York. Jiang, X & Grabe, W 2011, ‘Skills and strategies in foreign language reading’, in La Lectura en lengua extranjera, eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe & L Ruiz de Zarobe, Portal Education, London, pp. 2–31. Lorenzo, F & Moore, P 2010, ‘On the natural emergence of language structures in CLIL: Towards a theory of European educational bilingualism’, in Language use and language learning in CLIL classrooms, eds C Dalton-Puffer, T Nikula & U Smit, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 23–38. Macaro, E 2001, Learning strategies in second and foreign language classrooms, Continuum, London. Macaro, E & Erler, L 2008, ‘Raising the achievement of young-beginner readers of French through strategy instruction’, Applied Linguistics, vol. 29, pp. 90-119. Marsh D, Maljers, A & Hartiala, AK 2001, Profiling European CLIL classrooms. Languages open doors, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä. New London Group 2000, ‘A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures’ in Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures, eds B Cope & M Kalantzis, Routledge, London, pp. 9-38. O'Malley, JM & Chamot, AU 1990, Learning strategies in second language acquisition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Palincsar, A & David, Y 1991, ‘Promoting literacy through classroom dialogue’ in Literacy for a diverse society: Perspectives, practices, and policies, ed E Hiebert, Teachers College Press, New York, pp. 122-140. Phakiti, A 2003, ‘A closer look at the relationship of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use to EFL reading achievement test performance’, Language Testing, vol. 20, pp. 26-56. Pressley, M 2006, Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd ed), Guilford Press, New York. Ruiz de Zarobe, Y 2011, ‘La lectura en el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos en lengua extranjera’, in La lectura en lengua extranjera,

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eds Y Ruiz de Zarobe & L Ruiz de Zarobe, Portal Education, London, pp. 220-245. Ruiz de Zarobe, Y & Zenotz V (under review) ‘Reading strategies and CLIL: the effect of training in formal instruction’, Language Learning Journal. Shanahan, T & Shanahan, C 2008, ‘Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy’, Harvard Educational Review, vol. 78, no 1, pp. 40-59. Sheorey, R & K. Mokhtari, K 2001, ‘Differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and non-native readers’, System, vol. 29, pp. 431-449. Taylor, A, Stevens, J & Asher, J W 2006, ‘The effects of explicit reading strategy training on L2 reading comprehension’ in Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching, eds J Norris & L Ortega, John Benjamins, Philadelphia, pp. 213-244. Wallace, C 2003, Critical reading in language education, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke. Wharton-McDonald, R & Swiger, S 2009, ‘Developing higher order comprehension in the middle grades’, Handbook of research on reading comprehension, eds S Israel & G Duffy, Routledge, New York, pp. 510-530. Zenotz, V 2012, ‘Awareness development for online reading’, Language Awareness, vol. 21, no. 1-2, pp. 85-100.

Chapter four Evaluating a CLIL student: Where to find the CLIL advantage Jill Surmont, Piet Van de Craen, Esli Struys and Thomas Somers Vrije Universiteit Brussel In this paper, the authors show that evaluating a CLIL student should not stop at evaluating language competence. CLIL approaches the natural way of learning, as it provides both implicit and explicit learning – which is often not the case in traditional education – and therefore it creates cognitive advantages that traditionally schooled peers do not have. The authors prove that these cognitive advantages can be noted in courses like mathematics and that it is very likely that the brain is positively influenced by CLIL education. Through this, the authors show that when evaluating CLIL students, the evaluator has to look at the larger picture and not focus on language results only.

1 Introduction It was often formerly thought that bilingualism had a negative impact on cognitive development. Research by, for example, Anastasi & Cordova (1953) or Darcy (1963) showed that bilinguals were outperformed by monolinguals. It was generally accepted that bilingualism was detrimental for the cognitive development of a child and that monolingualism should be the ideal. However, the seminal research of Peal and Lambert (1962) initiated a revolution by showing that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on multifarious tasks. Although much has changed since then, many societal stakeholders are still convinced that being raised in a monolingual environment is more advantageous for a child, and that opportunities for bilingual education should be restricted to a minimum (Bollen & Baten 2010). Yet the evidence that such claims are untrue is growing exponentially up to the point where the question has changed from “is bilingualism detrimental for a child’s development” to “on which levels can the positive influence of bi/multilingualism be noted?”. Europe has been promoting multilingual education officially since 1995. The European Commission stated that every country should aim for trilingualism at the age of eighteen, meaning that besides the mother tongue(s), people should be proficient in at least two other languages (White Paper 1995). The best way to reach this goal is to introduce multilingual education, as it is clear that traditional language education is unable to ensure the necessary level of proficiency. The latest Eurobarometer shows that 46% of all the Europeans are unable to communicate in another language than their mother tongue

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(Special Eurobarometer 2012). Based on the results of immersion programmes in Canada, the European Commission is promoting Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as an alternative to traditional language education. Multilingualism, multiculturalism, intercultural competences and globalization are buzzwords nowadays, but they bring up many questions concerning the consequences of introducing CLIL into the curriculum. The aim of this paper is not only to summarise the results of CLIL related to language competence, but also to explain and show why CLIL is more than a language learning approach. We will explain how CLIL stimulates cognitive and brain development and how it creates a different – better – type of learner, meaning that the CLIL advantage should not only be looked for at the language proficiency level.

2 The language advantages of CLIL CLIL is different from traditional language learning because it combines language learning with content learning. The target language is immediately exploited and used in a meaningful environment, lowering (and even removing) any barriers students may have to use the target language (cf. Coyle et al. 2010). The focus is not on the language itself, but on communication about the content. The language is therefore not the goal but the means of communication, and students have to use the language in authentic situations where the language usage is pragmatic and functional (Gatbonton & Segalowitz 2005). This implies that students practice more in and with the target language. Research has shown that in a CLIL class, more interaction between student and teacher takes place than in a traditional class (Nikula 2010; Blom 2013). Because learning the target language is not the main (or only) goal, the pressure on using the language correctly is lower. This does not mean that errors go unnoticed, it means that students do not feel the pressure every time they speak that every word they say is graded. Nikula states that in a CLIL classroom students have “more space for interaction” (Nikula 2007, 203). Therefore the ‘fear’ of using the target language diminishes. Because the amount of practising time is greater and because the pressure to use the language correctly is lower, it does not come as a surprise that research shows that students in a CLIL environment speak the target language better than their traditionally schooled peers (see, for example, Lorenzo et al. 2009). It should be noted that when it comes to productive skills, it is mainly speaking that is better developed (Mewald 2004; Marsh et al. 2009). CLIL students generally display greater fluency and creativity and are more inclined to take higher risks, which is often associated with good language learners (Naiman 1995; Dalton-Puffer 2008). Writing, on the other hand, does not seem to be influenced by the CLIL learning environment

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(Vollmer et al. 2006; Llinares & Whittaker 2006). The reason behind this is quite simple: school lessons are predominantly oral events, meaning that the opportunities to practise writing skills in the CLIL language (or even in the mother tongue when it comes to traditional education) are not as numerous as one would think. Edwards and Westgate put it as follows. “Talk remains the main means of transmitting information and books and other prepared resources are essentially only adjuncts to it” (1994, 16). We have to note that this may not always be the case and that CLIL does stimulate writing skills in some situations. Research by Mousty et al. (2007), Vandersmissen (2010) and Veron (2012) has shown that CLIL does offer advantages in writing and reading skills. In these researches, the target language had a mostly one-on-one correspondence between sound and sign whereas the mother tongue of the pupils had a more complex relationship, meaning that one sound could be written in a number of ways. It was shown that children who first learn to read and write in the target language (with a straight forward orthography), and only afterwards in their mother tongue, obtained a higher level in both writing and reading skills in both languages. Often it is feared that by exposing children to a new language, proficiency in their mother tongue will diminish. It is reasoned that if 20% of the curriculum is taught in the target language, only 80% of the curriculum is left to be taught in the mother tongue. The reasoning (although seemingly logical) is incorrect. Van de Craen et al. (2012) show that 100% minus 20% is in fact equal to 120%. Instead of having 80 % education in the mother tongue, the students receive 120 % of language teaching, which leads to an increase in their general linguistic competence. The underlying language structures are more highly stimulated, which has its effects on all languages, including the mother tongue. When more than one language is used, language structures can be compared, leading to a better insight into where the differences between languages are and what is or is not possible with a certain language (Bialystok 2005). This better insight into structures will be discussed further in this article, as it is an important element in the cognitive advantage CLIL offers. For now, it can be concluded that this better insight into language structures also offers an advantage in mother tongue knowledge: the student will better understand how the language system works and how to use it properly. So far, no negative effects on mother tongue development have been found when a student goes to a CLIL school (Washburn 1997; Nyholm 2002; Van de Craen et al. 2009). Another effect of CLIL education is that students in a CLIL environment have a more positive attitude towards (language) learning. Lasagabaster (2011) shows that students who learn languages in a CLIL environment have a more positive attitude towards language learning and towards learning new languages. Students in a CLIL project in Belgium, who are enrolled in the first year of a vocational school and who had a negative attitude towards

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learning in general, showed a remarkable attitude change after the implementation of the CLIL project. For two hours a week they received a practical cooking class in French instead of in Dutch, with remarkable results. They liked going to school and they felt that what they learned in their language classes was not useless anymore. This led to better marks in all subjects (Van de Craen et al. in press). This is mainly due to the fact that learners acquire the language in a meaningful context. Important to note here is that the CLIL effect is not only seen with the stronger students or those “really gifted for languages”. Mewald (2004) and Eder (1998) – among others – have observed that CLIL significantly enhances the language skills of the broad group of students whose foreign language talents are average. It seems that a higher percentage of students reach the B2 (CEFR) level than in traditional education. Haunold (2006) further adds that this is not because the CLIL group has much higher top scores than the traditionally schooled students. The traditionally schooled group also obtained high scores, although the percentage of students reaching that level was lower. It can be concluded that the so-called language-gifted students can reach high language levels in both traditional and CLIL education, but that the real benefit of CLIL lies in the fact that it is able to stimulate the not-so-gifted students as well in such a way that they also reach a high level. The CLIL advantage seems to be pretty impressive, but what we will try to show here is that the CLIL advantage goes further than language proficiency. The goals of CLIL (according to the CLIL Compendium) are more than language goals alone: • Develop intercultural communication skills • Prepare for internationalisation • Provide opportunities to study content through different perspectives • Access subject-specific target language terminology • Improve overall target language competence • Develop oral communication skills • Diversify methods and forms of classroom practice • Increase learner motivation (www.clilcompendium.com) Dalton-Puffer (2008) refers to an adaptation of Coyle’s circular model (2008) with its four areas content, communication, culture and cognition made by Zydatiß (2007). In this model, there is no hierarchy, although it is clear that communication – and thus language – is at the centre of this model.

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We feel that all too often, research stops at the level of communication and language proficiency. Of course, often content results are compared to see whether or not education in the CLIL language hampers with the content knowledge. But we feel that educators and often researchers do not pay enough attention to the added value CLIL offers on a cognitive level. For this reason, we will try to show that when trying to evaluate a CLIL student and when trying to find the CLIL advantage, it is important also to look into the underlying cognitive and neurological effects. By doing so we want to point out that when trying to evaluate a CLIL student, it is important to look at the bigger picture.

3 The cognitive and neurological advantage Many studies have found that advantages related to bilingual development are not restricted to improved linguistic or metalinguistic skills but that they may also extend to the cognitive domain, even when no linguistic information is involved (see Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan 2004; Costa, Hernandez & Sebastian-Galles 2008; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok 2008). In this section we will discuss the cognitive and neurological advantage CLIL learners have. But in order to do so, some elements of a child’s cognitive development will be discussed in order to explain how CLIL is a better learning method than the traditional schooling method. Next we will discuss the advantages bilingualism has, and we will finish with the advantages CLIL education offers besides language advantages.

3.1 Introduction A child’s cognitive development already starts in the womb. To what extent it develops is still heavily debated, but it is clear that when the child is born it

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can already recognise certain voices and sounds (Goswami 2008). After birth, cognition develops at high speed, although sometimes there are the so-called “cognitive gaps” (Piaget 1954). This is a piece of knowledge that is not acquired yet and that somehow slows down the development. This is perfectly normal, as developing and learning take time and it is impossible to learn everything at the same time. Therefore it is important that during a learning process repetition and sufficient time should be allocated. It is impossible to talk about cognitive development without mentioning brain development. At birth, there are barely any neuronal connections. Afterwards a neuronal boom occurs, as every incentive creates a neuronal pathway in the brain. After a while, the unused neuronal connections disappear and the ones that remain are enforced. The more stimuli a child receives through its environment, the more neuronal connections are made and enforced (Carter 1998; Fabbro 1999; Gazzaniga et al. 2002). This enforcement is essential, as it not only ensures that neuronal connections do not dissolve, it also guarantees access to certain pieces of information or performance of certain actions without too much effort. This is called automation. Neuronal connections can be described as the roads in the brain that connect information storages with each other. When something is learned, the neuronal connection resembles a jungle path, meaning that it is very hard to get through and it requires a lot of effort to get where one has to be. When that jungle path is used a lot, it becomes easier each time to get through up to the point where the jungle path turns into a highway where you can go from one point to another at a high speed without much effort. In order to change the “jungle path” to a “highway”, time, exercise and repetition is needed. The reason why it is important to make sure that a child grows up in a stimulating environment and why it is so important that as many neuronal connections as possible are enforced is that the more neuronal connections there are, the more a child will be capable of finding (subtle) differences between all elements in his/her environment. This implies a better-developed categorisation system and also a broader knowledge (Posner & Keele 1968; Samuelson 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Colunga & Smith 2005; Zentall et al. 2008). The brain has to mature and sometimes a child is unable to make a connection between two things because the brain area for making that connection has not matured at the time. Brain maturation and cognitive gaps are therefore often linked. For example, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is one of the last areas to mature and often a child’s inability to preform a certain task is linked to the fact that the PFC is not matured enough (Diamond 1985; 1990). Again, time and repetition play an important role here: giving the brain time to develop and repeating information so that the neuronal connection gets enforced will create a well-wired brain. As a result the influence of the environment on a child’s development is enormous. Depriving a child of stimuli and communication will seriously damage the

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child (an extreme example is the case of Genie Wiley, a girl that had been locked up and tied up in a small room for the first thirteen years of her life (Curtiss 1977; Rymer 1994)). According to Vygotsky, “the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development […] occurs when speech and practical activity, two preciously completely independent lines of development, converge (Vygotsky 1978, p.24). Language stimulates a child’s cognitive development and is one of the tools to categorise one’s world. Language also raises a child’s cognitive development to a higher level, as it enables the child to name objects and to distinguish between different objects. When a child grows up in an environment where many stimuli and many words are offered and used, its cognitive development will boom. When more than one language is present, this environment becomes even more stimulating. The child then not only learns to name and distinguish objects from one another through language, it also learns from an early age onwards that an object can be called different names and also that it has to adapt its language use depending on the person it is speaking to. This is the start of the development of what is called metalinguistic competence. In short metalinguistic competence is the ability to reflect on language and the aptitude with which to manipulate the language (García 2009). The advantage bilinguals have over monolinguals is that bilinguals will be able to compare their language from an early age onwards and will realise quite fast that a certain structure in language A may very well be incorrect in language B. A monolingual on the other hand will not be able to compare language-structures, as he/she does not have another language at his/her disposal to compare with. It should not come as a surprise then that bilinguals have a more highly developed metalinguistic competence that enables them to have a better insight in language structures (Bialystok 2005; Lorenzo et al. 2009). If a stimulating environment can lead to a better-developed neuronal network, it implies that the brain is a flexible instrument that can be influenced by its environment. An example is for example the case of the London taxi drivers: research by Maguire et al. (2000) showed that their hippocampus had become larger than the average hippocampus, because they had to rely on it more in their function as a taxi driver than an average person. How bilingualism and CLIL (can) influence(s) the brain, what the advantages are and how this is visible in the classroom will be discussed further on. Now we will first explain how CLIL creates advantages on a cognitive level for students that traditionally schooled students do not have.

3.2 Why CLIL stimulates pupils more Above it has been established that it is of capital importance that children are raised in a stimulating environment. The presence of multiple languages can

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be a very stimulating factor in a child’s environment, but somehow traditional education curricula do not seem to be able to imbed languages in such a way. CLIL, on the other hand, uses languages in such a way that it approaches the natural way of learning much more closely. The natural way of learning basically consists of an interaction between implicit and explicit learning. Explicit learning is where the learner is aware that he/she is learning something and that the teacher is explaining something. Implicit learning on the other hand is learning without realizing it and also learning by doing something in a meaningful context. An illustration of the difference: explicit learning is a parent explaining to a child how he or she has to tie shoelaces. Implicit learning is then the child that is practising and trying to find a way to tie his shoelaces. Implicit learning is a much more robust way of learning, which will be explained into greater detail further on. In traditional education, implicit (language) learning is barely used. In traditional education, the emphasis is all too often on grammatical correctness and often teachers are unable to give their students sufficient time to use and to practise using the target. In CLIL education on the other hand, students learn the language in a much more implicit way, as they have to use it to understand and communicate about the content of the course. They basically learn the language “along the way”. Of course, it is important that the language teacher still offers them explicit language education as well, as the brain thrives on the interaction between implicit and explicit learning. This implies that because the higher frequency of interaction between implicit and explicit learning of the target language, a CLIL student’s metalinguistic competence will also be higher. Implicit learning is the key to why CLIL learners get more advantages than on the language level only. In education there is a change of paradigm going on from problems that can be solved in an algorithmic way to problems that require insight and conceptual knowledge (Brandsford, Brown & Cocking 1999). This means that students have to use all the knowledge they have to understand what is asked and to reach the needed insight to solve the problem whereas before students were able to follow an almost step-by-step instruction-list given by the teacher to solve the problem, creating a situation in which understanding the problem became otiose. This way of teaching resembles the natural way of learning and CLIL education is much more suited for this sort of teaching. The result of this kind of teaching is that students have to rely much more on previous knowledge of skills. This leads to more “free space” in working memory for the new elements, as working memory limitations regarding novel information are a bottleneck when it comes to learning (de Jong et al. 2008). Miller (1956) and Cowan (2001) state that only 7 +/- 2 information elements can be held in working memory and this number decreases when the information does not only have to be remembered but also processed (for example when elements inter-relate and

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when they have to be combined, like when solving math problems) (de Jong et al. 2008). However, when certain pieces of information have already been stored in long-term memory in the form of cognitive schemata, the working memory will treat those schemata as one piece of information. The importance of having as many skills and knowledge as possible at one’s disposal in one’s long-term working memory is therefore a huge advantage in the learning process. Because of the presence of two (or more) languages, bilinguals have better developed skills in their long-term working memory, which creates an advantage while learning certain tasks. In CLIL education, the student (although not necessarily bilingual from birth onwards) will also have this advantage through the stimulating learning environment CLIL creates: Through the location of more skills (as for example a better insight in structures, see further) and information in the long-term working memory, a CLIL learner will have more short-term working memory available for learning new skills or information and the general cognitive workload will most likely be lower. So in short, CLIL offers a stimulating learning environment where the presence of an additional language of instruction stimulates not only language knowledge but also the underlying cognitive structures. CLIL will ensure that the metalinguistic competence is better developed, which will lead to a better insight into (language) structures. The stimulation of these underlying cognitive structures leads to a lower cognitive workload while learning new tasks, implying that CLIL students have a higher aptitude for learning. It are these things that ensure that the positive CLIL effect can also be noted in other courses. In the following section, the influence of CLIL on the understanding of mathematics will be discussed.

3.3 CLIL and mathematics It has been mentioned that CLIL creates a better-developed metalinguistic competence. This means that students have better insights into and understanding of languages and language structures. A better understanding of language results in a better understanding of (abstract) concepts, as abstract thinking is stimulated by metalinguistic competence. The repetition principle returns here as well: pupils learn a concept in two languages and the actual meaning of that concept is explained and learned more than once, leading to better understanding. A subject in which the understanding of (abstract) concepts is crucial is mathematics. Although it is often said that one is either more “language minded” or “mathematical and sciences minded”, language knowledge plays an important role in mathematical performance. However, both language and mathematics share common critical features such as abstract mental representation, conventional notations and interpretive function (Bialystok

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2001). Especially when it comes to solving problems, the link between language and mathematics is a very obvious one: when the pupil does not understand what is said or written, the chances of succeeding in selecting the correct information that is necessary to solve the problem are slim. Mathematics is in fact a language and it is a hard one to learn. It requires insight into structures, abstract thinking and problem solving-thinking. A problem with which many students have to cope with is that their math teacher is all too often not aware that he/she is in fact teaching a language (Ellerton and Clarkson 1996). When testing a student, the emphasis is all too often on mathematical insight and knowledge whereas there is no or barely any attention paid to acquaintance with the language of mathematics (Thorndike 1912). Orr (1987) even goes as far as claiming that most problems students have with mathematics are caused by language problems. The reason why CLIL students also benefit from the CLIL advantage in mathematics is that through the stimulating environment of CLIL their metalinguistic competence, abstract thinking and learning aptitude increases. These competences are not strictly language related and therefore they can also be used when it comes to mathematics. Research by Van de Craen et al. (2007) shows that children in a CLIL programme obtain better results on a standardized mathematics test (consisting of nine subtests)1 compared to their traditionally schooled peers. In figure 1 the results of three CLIL groups (“HC”, “Zon” and “tReg”) and 1 control group (“Controle”) performing the same test. It is clear that the CLIL groups outperform the non-CLIL groups on several tasks or otherwise obtain equal results. It has to be noted that only in one CLIL group (the HC-group) mathematics was used for CLIL, whereas in the other two groups either geography or arts and crafts were used. This shows that the math-advantage is not because the CLIL group had more mathematics, but that CLIL used in no matter which course creates a better insight in abstract courses like mathematics.

1 Dudal’s (2002) subtests: subtest 1: verbal assignments; subtest 2: problem solving using multiplications and fractions; subtest 3: ranking natural numbers and finding patterns; subtest 4: mental calculations; subtest 5: simple calculations; subtest 6: geometric problems; subtest 7: fractions; subtest 8: assignments with natural numbers; subtest 9: solving simple spatial problems.

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Fig.1: Results from calibrated math test (from Van de Craen et al. 2007) Similar results can also be found in the research by Jäppinen (2005), Lorenzo et al. (2009) and Murray (2010). Another advantage that can be found in multilinguals is the enhanced cognitive control or metacognition, which is known to correlate with longterm academic success (Blair 2003; Bialystok & Barac 2012). Stimulating this skill is of paramount importance for acquiring skills that are necessary in education (Diamond, Barnett, Thomas & Munro 2007).

3.4 Cognitive control The bilingual advantage in cognitive control has been tested by means of several conflict tasks. These tasks are typically carried out in a laboratory setting in order to isolate the processes being studied. In these tasks, a nonverbal conflict is generated in trials where the relevant stimulus (or that which is being shown to the participant) is surrounded by conflicting stimuli (like in the Flanker task), or in trials where there is a mismatch between the stimulus and the response to be given. Bilinguals tend to respond faster with a higher percentage of correct responses for the conflict trials (Costa et al. 2008). Bilinguals are assumed to score better on these tests because they have to manage two language systems that are represented in overlapping brain areas. Whenever the brain detects a conflict, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) signals the PFC that this conflict has to be resolved. Because bilinguals constantly have to monitor their environment to detect possible signals of language switching, their ACC is structurally different from monolinguals

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(Abutalebi et al. 2011). This neural language control network that is composed of the ACC and the PFC is not only responsible for controlling language systems, but for controlling in general. The presence of more than one language in the brain stimulates this network and makes it more efficient. This better developed language control network will create an advantage in any task that requires controlled processing, no matter if it is in the language domain or not (Abutalebi 2008). On the other hand, some studies have revealed no difference between bilinguals and monolinguals during cognitive control tasks (Costa et al. 2009). One of the reasons for these contradictory findings might be that the presence of a bilingual’s two languages in education is rarely controlled for. In a recent study where 80 children who attended immersion programmes were included, it was shown that length of time in the immersion programme was related to performance on executive control tasks (Bialystok & Barac 2012). More research has to be done into this matter, especially when it comes to CLIL learners.

3.5 CLIL and the brain We have already mentioned how the environment influences the neurological development of the brain. When a child grows up in a stimulating environment, many neurological connections will be made and enforced. Only the enforced neurological connections will remain, and the more and the better the brain is wired, the easier information can be accessed. The need for both implicit and explicit learning has also already been discussed. Brain research can add some extra information however on the importance of implicit learning. Research by Morgan-Short et al. (2010) has proven that in education implicit learning has to be present: two matched groups learned a language, one group through explicit learning (meaning by using explicit grammar teaching) and the other group learned the language through implicit learning. Both groups made progress, but the implicit learners were more advanced than the explicit learners. Brain scans showed that the brains of the implicit learners showed patterns that resembled the patterns visible when using the mother tongue. This means that the brain does not need to work too hard to use the new language and that access to the new language is almost as automatized as access to the mother tongue. This neuronal convergence does not only prove once again the plasticity of the brain, it also proves that CLIL can create more effective brains. The brain scans also showed that implicit learning was a more robust way of learning, meaning that the effects of implicit learning were longer visible than the effects of explicit learning (Morgan-Short et al. 2010). CLIL, with both its implicit and explicit learning, is therefore one of the most brain-friendly ways of learning.

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4 Conclusion From all of the above, we may conclude that being multilingual in no sense hinders the child’s cognitive development. Research has shown that multilingual education creates a better understanding of languages, which influences a number of aspects of the child’s development. First of all, both the mother tongue and the L2 will be better understood. This knowledge of language will also be an asset when learning another language. Secondly, the attitudes towards languages are more positive. Thirdly, through a betterdeveloped metalinguistic cognition, content of subjects will be better understood. Therefore, it often happens that CLIL learners score better on content tests than their traditionally schooled peers. The stimulating environment that CLIL creates is reflected in the brain: the CLIL brain is wired more efficiently than a monolingual brain and it is more apt at learning. This shows that when looking for the CLIL advantage, one must look further than the language level only. It is important to point this out to teachers and policy makers. When evaluating a CLIL student, all aspects of CLIL should be evaluated and these less obvious influences of CLIL can easily be overlooked. CLIL is more than just learning another language; it is a complete methodology that creates better learners in general.

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Part two Integration in practice: The classroom perspective

Chapter five Prospective CLIL and non-CLIL students’ interest in English (classes): A quasi-experimental study on German sixth-graders Dominik Rumlich, Universität Duisburg-Essen This chapter reports the findings of the quasi-experimental study DENOCS on 858 German learners of English (M age=11.9): A two-part scale measured prospective CLIL and non-CLIL students’ subject-related (α=.88) as well as language-related (α=.77) interest just before the former had their first CLIL experiences. The results show that future CLIL students’ interest is substantially higher (p