Carolina Serna
Co-designer of the History class in French (La Révolution Industrielle: Cal Vidal)
1. What did I learn in the course?
Before starting this module I already had some basic knowledge of what CLIL is because I know some people who study under this methodology. However, I was unaware of most of the characteristics of CLIL and I didn’t know anything about CRLL. It can be generally said that many people don’t know the basic traits of these methodologies. Some people see it as a trend that is detrimental to the students’ learning of the subject. Others see it just as a great opportunity to learn a language in an immersive environment. After this module, I believe that CLIL is positive for students and that it should not be used as a segregating actor, the only thing students need is motivation and eagerness.
2. How has the course impacted my future teaching and ideas? How has it contributed to my development as a teacher?
In my opinion, we have acquired lots of knowledge that not only can be applied in CLIL classes, we should always apply it when teaching, for instance: the importance of collaborative work, planning and predicting, using a variety of useful techniques and make people participate and learn actively in class.
Trying to do our best to motivate and engage students, interacting with them, making ourselves understood and achieving high levels of participation lead us to reach the following goals: make that our students improve their language skills at the same time that they are learning the content and the competencies of the subject.
3. What have I learnt with the project and how has it made me rethink/reshape my role as a language teacher?
With the project, I have learnt that CLIL is not a threat to language teachers, but a new professional opportunity. It is difficult to be a CLIL teacher, you always need to make sure that you are integrating language and content in such a way that it will enhance students’ knowledge. Besides, we are language experts, but we do not know as much as the teacher about the topics that the subject covers. Therefore, we need to work really close and be very well organised in order to be efficient and effective.
4. How have I participated in the course project?
In order to design this project, we have all actively participated and contributed with ideas to develop our final product. Personally, I studied French as a second language at high school and during the two first years of university. A number of years have passed by since I stopped studying or using French regularly but I still remember some basic things. Therefore, I have been able to help at planning the lesson, predicting the language that students would need, creating the materials for the class (the visual support and the worksheet), and support Tània’s presentation.
