CLIL Principles 2
CLIL Principles 2
the learners, who are partially or fully bilingual, had to be considered as well
(Lyster, 2007: 1, Bongartz, Rymarczyk, 2010: 7f., Breidbach, Viehbrock, 2012:
10f., Königs, 2013: 34f.). Consequently, more languages are now involved in
bilingual teaching settings, due to a diverse learner and teacher clientele. The
potential for multilingualism is central since language policies desire that stu-
dents acquire two foreign languages in addition to their first language (L1)
(Wolff, 2013: 18). The re-cognition of the importance of the L1 in all learning
processes, which could be the home language for students with migration back-
grounds, is a part of this new orientation, which is discussed in detail in the con-
text of the Canadian language situation, where territorial bilingualism occurs
(Wesche, 2002, Swain, Lapkin, 2005). Bilingual branches teaching content in a
foreign language at school level have been offered in Germany since the 1960s,
and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been popular since
the 1990s in Europe as an approach which integrates teaching content in the for-
eign, second or additional language learning, where the additional language is
used as a medium for authentic usage (Marsh, 2002).
Vollmer (2006: 5f.) discusses CLIL’s potential in terms of internal and ex-
ternal processes of plurilingualism in the context of Europe:
Acquiring conceptual literacy and discourse competence for subject-specific use and
thus acquiring new varieties of language use within one and the same language is
not to be seen as a luxury, but rather as a preliminary and fundamental form of pluri-
lingualism.
A second form of plurilingualism develops when a learner acquires other lan-
guages, extends his/her repertoire with new languages through foreign language edu-
cation adding to the new varieties of the language of school education and home
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12 Language education policy and CLIL principles
more effective second language programs to meet the changing needs of local
communities.” In short, education ought to promote globally competent life-long
learners. Since each and every subject teaches its subject specifically, and inter-
disciplinary methods including various literacies and content cannot be acquired
without language and vice versa (Hallet, 2005: 5, Vollmer, 2013: 125), educa-
tors refer to this teaching approach as Language Across the Curriculum (LAC)
(Vollmer, 2006: 5, Lyster, 2007: 56). Further, this approach clearly indicates
every teacher’s responsibility for holistic language education, thus making pure-
ly bilingual education no longer appropriate. The term is even worth reconsider-
ing. Content, languages and methods must be fused to meet the multicultural
premises of the diverse learners (Hallet, 2013: 54) as well as to meet the goals of
global education in terms of globally competent and multiliterate life-long learn-
ers.
Ruiz de Zarobe et al. (2011: 13) discuss the plurilingual perspective offered
by CLIL and claim that it is “one of the most effective frameworks to foster plu-
rilingualism in the European landscape, where it is firmly becoming a preferred
educational approach.” However, CLIL practice in Europe is characterized by
diversity, both in terms of language policy and the instructional approaches used
at school (Königs, 2013: 48ff.).
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 13
es. The best results within these areas can be observed in the CLIL students’ lis-
tening and grammar competences. It can be assumed that this is the result of fre-
quent L2 exposure and, thus, learning time within an authentic and communica-
tive CLIL environment.
With regards to CLIL discourse, the dominating role of foreign language
teachers and applied linguists has to be acknowledged. It is only recently that
content experts have begun participating in this discussion (Ruiz de Zarobe et
al., 2011). Breidbach and Viehbrock (2012) provide a good survey of CLIL and
recent CLIL research in Germany. Surveys about competence development
within the subjects are rare; case studies by Bonnet (2004), Koch and Bründer
(2006) or Osterhage (2007) strongly indicate that subject specific competence
development is also more sustainable. Despite the promising benefits of CLIL,
not every school offers it due to a lack of resources. If schools offer CLIL clas-
ses, students are often selected according to their foreign language proficiency,
because it is assumed that students with weak language competences are not a-
ble to adequately participate and, thus, might disturb CLIL lessons. This selec-
tion might lead to the formation of an elite (Breidbach, 2002: 23, Breidbach,
2013: 15). Furthermore, it is simplistic to juxtapose conventional language clas-
ses to content and language integrated scenarios, as language classes use con-
tent-orientation, too. It is preferable to speak of a continuum of scenarios from
focus on form to focus on meaning. Most probably, the balance between the two
will vary from model to model, from country to country; maybe, even from
school to school and is, to a large extent, dependent on the didactic purpose.
Content and Language Integrated Learning by Interaction, edited by Rita Kupetz, and Carmen Becker, Peter Lang GmbH,
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14 Language education policy and CLIL principles
Content and Language Integrated Learning by Interaction, edited by Rita Kupetz, and Carmen Becker, Peter Lang GmbH,
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 15
Content and Language Integrated Learning by Interaction, edited by Rita Kupetz, and Carmen Becker, Peter Lang GmbH,
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16 Language education policy and CLIL principles
of both content and language. As the focus of instruction is on content and lan-
guage simultaneously, one can speak of an authentic dual learning arrangement.
The notion of counterbalancing content-based and form-focused options will
occur throughout the book. As will the concept of scaffolding. Gibbons (2002:
10) defines it as
a special kind of help that assists learners to move toward new skills, concepts, or
levels of understanding. Scaffolding is thus the temporary assistance by which a tea-
cher helps a learner know how to do something, so that the learner will later be able
to complete a similar task alone.
To put this counterbalanced approach into a global education perspective, it is
not enough to consider plurilingual students and perspectives, the content of the
subject itself might provide a link to eco-didactics. For that reason CLIL is a
promising educational approach, which might lead content teachers to overcome
their scepticism and to become active partners in the CLIL business. The pre-
ferred pedagogy adapted in this volume is a “multiliteracies” approach (Depuy,
Copyright © 2014. Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. All rights reserved.
Table 1: CLIL’s competence dimensions (translated and modified from Breidbach, 2006:
13)
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 17
Butzkamm and Caldwell (2009: 41) point out that learning subjects in a for-
eign language (FL) can be successful in educational contexts that meet the
following requirements, with special implications for the use of the mother
tongue (MT):
• There is an increased amount of contact time for the foreign language. That
means, teaching content subjects through the FL does not replace conven-
tional language classes and systematic language instruction, but is added on.
[…];
• In order to be able to teach a subject such as biology or geography in an FL,
teachers work hard to improve their language skills;
• Teachers must find ways and means to transmit the special MT register of
content areas taught in the FL.
These three claims provide a good starting point for raising issues of the lan-
guage policy involved: Butzkamm and Caldwell’s first requirement addresses a
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18 Language education policy and CLIL principles
its importance for understanding texts and concepts. Königs supports this view
since he believes that bi- / multilingualism should have an instructional permit
as a methodological and curricular tool not only to promote the idea of multilin-
gualism, but also to consider the diverse language backgrounds of the students,
thus empowering them to express content matters in more than just one language
by acquiring bilingual literacy (2013: 34ff.).
To grasp the new quality of CLIL, which is not simply teaching a subject in
an additional language, the suitability of various school subjects for a CLIL con-
text should be considered. The critical perspectives of content experts need to be
taken into account (Bonnet, Breidbach, 2004). Traditionally, only social science
subjects were favoured for the CLIL approach, because they were believed to be
more vividly demonstrative with clear connections to the learners’ lives in terms
of content. Therefore they were assumed to be more suitable for spoken produc-
tion due to the subjects’ inherent descriptive nature. (Sekretariat der Ständigen
Konferenz der Kultusminister, 2006: 16f.). According to CLIL’s original de-
mand to promote intercultural understanding, it was taken for granted that only
social science would meet the premise for such intercultural learning settings
due to their affinity to other cultures (Bonnet, 2004: 20; Wegner, 2006: 244).
Moreover, social sciences were considered to be cognitively less complex and
abstract in comparison to science (ibid.). However, these assumptions have
changed with the theories of constructivism as well as through groundbreaking
empirical research (Breidbach, 2004), and, meanwhile, the natural sciences are
beginning to gain the upper hand on social studies. However, presently all sub-
jects are considered appropriate for CLIL, which goes hand in hand with the
paradigm shift from the focus on language instruction within a subject setting to
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 19
the focus on content itself, where language is being used as a vehicle to com-
municate content (Wolff, 2013: 18f., Schmelter, 2013: 41). We will use the dis-
course on teaching history in a CLIL curriculum as an example to articulate one
of the major concerns of the proponents of the various subjects, which is related
to the fact that CLIL is frequently monolingual and that the gain is linguistic ra-
ther than content-oriented.
Hasberg (2004) investigates whether learning history can be achieved in a
bilingual history-teaching context. He is positive about the potential of sources
from various languages for dealing with the “other”. This form of empathy is
certainly needed when speaking about the global learner’s competences. Has-
berg points out, however, that there is a lack of empirical investigation and
theoretical foundation on a balanced use of the languages concerned for learning
history and their impact on identity formation (2004: 231). Barricceli and
Schmieder (2009: 209) discuss the advantages and disadvantages of teaching
history in a CLIL setting. They are strictly against a monolingual approach
Copyright © 2014. Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. All rights reserved.
where only the target language is used. They support instead the implementation
of scenarios with multilingual resources, if appropriate, where terminology car-
ries culturally loaded meaning. Thus, various languages and their resources
could be used as tools to reconstruct not only historical but also cultural realities.
This is another way of addressing the MT taboo. A CLIL approach should not
only foster one target language, but provide bilingual or multilingual avenues to
the content and the concepts where various languages are the tools. In this man-
ner, learner plurilingual competence is supported.
Lyster’s counterbalanced approach to CLIL provides a starting point for de-
veloping teaching principles, because it combines various instructional practices
at the interface of language and content literacy instruction, form-focused in-
struction as well as decontextualized grammar instruction and incidental focus
on language (2007: 25ff.). However, content experts claim that content drives
the curriculum (Hasberg, 2004; Barricelli, Schmieder, 2009). If the CLIL ap-
proach is to be accepted by the content experts, this priority needs to be accept-
ed. Furthermore, Lyster’s model needs to be enhanced by embedding it in a
pluri-lingual and global setting (see figure 3).
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20 Language education policy and CLIL principles
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 21
course, too;
• Learning skill development is seen as third goal dimension within the frame-
work of multiliteracies empowering learners to become life-long learners;
• Besides these interwoven core principles with a multiple focus, CLIL instruc-
tion offers great potential for authenticity in terms of the object (material),
the subject (learner) and the situation. (Blell, Kupetz, 2011: 109);
• Modern media and technologies provide opportunities for eLearning and
networks related to CLIL communities which is crucial for dealing with
multimodal texts;
• Scaffolding is needed when it comes to specific content instruction, which
should also focus on context and culture, where applicable. This means that
didactic reduction of content, e. g. in terms of simplification, needs to be ap-
plied in order to generate essential key concepts, which relate to the learner’s
existing beliefs or knowledge. Furthermore, scaffolded learning is based on
Vygotsky’s principles of learning in the ZPD;
• CLIL is always subject to active learning, which means that the amount of
learner communication in the target language must exceed that of the teach-
ers, who is thus a learning facilitator;
• As a learning facilitator the teacher needs to deal with language mistakes in a
moderate way as the focus is clearly on meaning before accuracy. Feedback
is consequently essential, be it student-student feedback or student-teacher
feedback.
• Learning centeredness and learner centeredness correspond with a task-
based approach, which helps students to actively learn content and language
simultaneously, without neglecting learning skill development;
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22 Language education policy and CLIL principles
• The educational shift from instruction to construction goes hand in hand with
CLIL, which focuses on learning by construction. Language and content
learning needs various approaches that are embedded in specific and general
learning skills (e.g. note taking or vocabulary learning as general skills and
analyzing graphics or microscope technique as specific skills);
• However, in order to reach the global learner’s competences, CLIL arrange-
ments must also focus on multiliteracies to be developed by an interaction-
oriented approach.
The CLIL core principle authenticity is essential and needs further explanation.
It used to be the most outstanding CLIL principle in terms of authentic language
usage and content (texts and other materials) coming from the various school
subjects. Widdowson (1987) makes a distinction between genuine and authentic
(1978: 80) and describes the process of working with authentic material as au-
thentication. We argue that even this is no longer sufficient (Blell, Kupetz,
2011: 109). In terms of learner-orientation, we need to consider the process of
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 23
All of these CLIL principles help students in building integrated knowledge and
skills for an increasingly interconnected world, which is also the aim of global
learning. Multiliteracies pedagogy, on the other hand, tries to grasp the implica-
tions of change in our social environment, which leads to an “increasing multi-
plicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the text-
ual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioural, and so
on.” (New London Group, 1996: 64) Another major issue dealt with by multi-
literacies pedagogy is the dichotomy between local diversity and global con-
nectedness. The latter helps to work out the relationship between a multiliter-
acies pedagogy and a global learning paradigm. Warschauer (1999) elaborates
further on the implications of the spread of the Internet for literacy, international
language use and additional language learning and teaching. He claims that “we
must practise principles of situated learning” with authentic tasks and problem-
solving activities to “benefit their (student) future lives as productive citizens”
(Warschauer, 1999). CLIL provides genuine discourse space for this.
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References
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24 Language education policy and CLIL principles
Content and Language Integrated Learning by Interaction, edited by Rita Kupetz, and Carmen Becker, Peter Lang GmbH,
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 25
Content and Language Integrated Learning by Interaction, edited by Rita Kupetz, and Carmen Becker, Peter Lang GmbH,
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Rita Kupetz & Alexander Woltin 27
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Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=1766405
Created from unimelb on 2020-10-17 04:30:23.
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Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=1766405
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