The first day of our CLIL class we had many questions regarding this subject. Most of our questions have been answered along the sessions and we even had the opportunity to practice CLIL/CRLL activities and share it with our classmates, which was an interesting and enriching experience. Our project was about climate change and it was taken from a 3rd of ESO social science subject. 

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Out of all the ideas and reflections from this course I would like to highlight one in particular, the thought that CLIL is not a new concept. CLIL was used in the past. What is new about it is that in the past was for just for the elite of society and nowadays is becoming available for everyone who wants it.

1. What did I learn in the course?

In this course I learnt about the difficulties and the advantages of using CLIL or CRLL when teaching. We had the opportunity to see to what extend students feel that their English has improved by using CLIL through a video shown in class and that was very interesting. Learning improves through motivation and the study of a language in  natural contexts is motivating for students. When learners are interested in a topic they are more motivated to use the target language to communicate.

2. How has the course impacted my future teaching and ideas? How has it contributed to my development as a teacher?

According to researchers, CLIL is long-term learning. Students become academically proficient in English after 5-7 years in a good bilingual program. Therefore, it is important to be able to share that fact with our students and our colleagues so we can all commit to work together in a long term project.

 

3. What have I learnt with the project and how has it made me rethink/reshape my role as a language teacher?

I had the opportunity to work collaboratively with my peers, to listen to everyone’s point of view and to respect their opinions. I learnt that teaching CRLL/CLIL  it can be more difficult than it seems. Nevertheless, I think it is worth it since students will understand that fluency is more important than accuracy and errors are a natural part of language learning. Learners will develop fluency in English by using English to communicate for a variety of purposes instead of by forced learning through artificial contexts.

 

 

 

4. How have I participated in the course project?

Since I am the only member of the group that is doing the practicum this year, I obtained the specific competency based activity from the geography course book at my placement school. I also created the google doc and answered some of the questions but we all worked together deciding on the script for the video, we revised each other’s answers, etc. In conclusion, we all participated equally on the task. Therefore, in my opinion, we all deserve 100% of the mark.