Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): A Methodology of Bilingual Teaching - Bernd Klewitz

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when the teacher begins to articulate his or her implicit knowledge and understanding about teaching and learning. The teacher’s implicit knowledge becomes explicit through this process—that is, the teacher is aware of his or her knowledge (theory of practice) and can begin to actively develop this. The starting point for a theory of practice is the teacher’s own professional beliefs (Coyle 2010: 45).

      Bilingual programs, immersion situations and CLIL itself, however, are foremost concerned with people and the younger, learning generation; therefore, a good starting point for bilingual didactics and methodology is provided by dismantling the myths and legends of bilingualism, especially as they occur in dealing with young children and growing-up adolescents. Various hypotheses have been tried and rejected, enlivened and surpassed, from the black boxes in behaviorism, the famous Universal Grammar right up to constructivist learning theories and the findings of neuro-biological research. In this, surprisingly, the almost old-school sounding controversy between nature versus nurture “won’t go away” (at least according to Steven Pinker), but from all these theories and more or less proven assumptions interesting conclusions can be drawn for applying relevant ideas to the implementation of CLIL programs or modules. Worth noticing are also quite profound discrepancies due to cultural differences in the target countries, but CLIL has emerged as a global pedagogical concept and there is no reason one should not appreciate diverging practices and learn from their advantages and fallacies.

      The building blocks of bilingual approaches, shared by an ever-growing bilingual community, are at the center of a common core of CLIL teaching strategies: be it the 4 Cs Framework, bridging BICS to CALP, the Language Triptych, the Bilingual Triangle and the Third Space of inter/transcultural competence or the Task Design Wheel in a taxonomy of cognition. All these features of multi-perspective learning support bilingual lesson planning and scaffold the development of discourse strategies in CLIL programs. In this they also create windows in the traditional foreign language classroom of TFL without necessarily forestalling the inclusion of the students’ native language (L1) additionally to the target language (L2) as the vehicular language of teaching and communication. The precise relationship between L1 and L2 remains open to debate in the light of contradictory research findings and the interpretation of “bi” in bilingual programs.

      Apart from honing inter/transcultural skills, a further common ground between TFL and CLIL can be found in literature studies with Literary CLIL as a particular focus of this methodology. Whether conceived as a content subject in its own right (Literaturkurs) or transferred from traditional language teaching as an enrichment of CLIL-content, selection criteria of high “L” or (popular) low “l” are needed and study designs for literary analysis and criticism have to be developed. Different genres are presented to open up this new domain for bilingual teaching and allow for the inclusion of music, poetry as well as the established fields of short stories and novels. Literature remains a concern for CLIL, because—taken content subject curricula word-for-word—its implementation is still exceptional. In this context, the primacy of content might shed a new light on the differences between TFL and CLIL indicating a potential fusion of both approaches without replacing one by the other—a discussion taken up in the desiderata and challenges posed by CLIL.

      On the practical side—bearing in mind the theory of practice—the tools and skills of CLIL deserve special emphasis in that they make the concept work, and whether using a worksheet compass or learnscape as advance organizer, focusing on task-based teaching or embracing the Visual Turn they can be studied in their application in ten sample CLIL modules. These and, for that matter, all chapters are presented with a section of “review—reflect—research” that invite further trying out and finding out the essentials of a teaching concept that is not only increasingly popular but also meets the needs of modern language instruction allowing for new and changing perspectives in a contingency of linguistic and content-based version of seeing learning through the eyes of our students—the Visible Learning paradigm. It is hoped the vignettes introducing each of the ten chapters will whet the reader’s appetite and be able to highlight the gist of information and discussion points presented.

      Photo © Andrew Krause and McKinnon Secondary College, Department of Education and Training, Victoria, Australia.

      “Die Deutsche Schule Melbourne liegt auf dem Land der Wurundjeri ..., und ich möchte sie anerkennen als die traditionellen Besitzer dieses Landes. Ich möchte meinen Respekt aussprechen für ihre Stammesältesten, in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft, und die Ältesten von anderen Stämmen, die heute hier sein könnten” (Bernice Ressel, Principal).

      Helmsman of Chicago. © Photo Bernd Klewitz

      Bilingual Children

      Vignette “A Family Experiment”

      In the South of Germany, a young family has gone bilingual. Four-year-old Ava has already developed a ready understanding in English and, from time to time, expresses herself in words and short phrases in what is going to be her second language (L2). Her brother Paul has just celebrated his first birthday and listens to his father’s English attentively. Peter, who attended a High School in California and passed his IB there, speaks to his children only in English, whereas his wife Sophia uses German in family conversations. Frequently, the grandfather, an English teacher himself, on his visits addresses the children in English as well, in order to “support” the English atmosphere a little. But recently he was taken aback when Ava, with a certain panache, asked him: “Warum sprichst Du Englisch mit mir, Opa?” Obviously, his grandchild had noticed that he every so often switched between languages and did not trust him in his role as a genuine English speaker.

      The example raises questions like these: Does bilingualism really work at an early age? How does it develop in the long run? Can it eventually result in a balanced command of two languages? If we take these questions further and to the level of language acquisition and learning in a school context, we would have to scrutinize bilingual programs like immersion and its European counterpart CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). With regards to terminology, “bilingual” might appear as a misnomer or, at least, ambiguous, because it can either refer to the (pedagogical) aim to enhance a native-like command of two languages or the strategy of using two languages in the process of instruction. In any case, it makes sense to disentangle or even dismantle some myths and legends of bilingualism.

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