contrast, hypothesise, show cause and effect etc; as well as to use the vocabulary of
school learning – both the words which are specific to subjects and those which are
cross-curricular. Finally they may never have been taught to use study skills in their
L1: for example to take notes when reading or listening, to use the range of visuals
which school subjects use (graphs charts, diagrams etc); and to use the reference
sources which schools require learners to use – books, libraries, internet etc).
The truth is that schools don’t often teach these skills explicitly. Instead, teachers
hope that their learners will pick them up. Some do indeed pick them up. These are
normally the more middle-class children whose social and educational background
has prepared them well for education from the first day of schooling. Some children,
however, continue, in the absence of formal instruction in these skills, to have
difficulty using them. These skills are part of the hidden curriculum: teachers tend to
assume that learners learn them, and often they get away with it: many learners –
through repeated exposure – do simply acquire them.
Teaching in L2
Learners in CLIL programmes, however, may not use these academic language
skills easily. Firstly, they may simply not have a good enough control over them: they
belong to the group who have always found them hard to acquire in L1. Alternatively,
they may have developed them to a degree in L1, but have difficulty applying them in
L2. Why should they find this hard? Mainly because they are still developing basic L2
abilities. They have their hands full trying talk, listen, read and write with basic
fluency. It is difficult enough to use the L2 for general purposes; to use it for learning
subjects stretches their abilities to the limit. So in CLIL programmes it is difficult for
subject teachers to ‘get away’ with avoiding teaching CALP explicitly. They can do
this with L1-medium learners because they can rely on them having good social
fluency and being able to develop this, without too much help, into academic
proficiency. In CLIL programmes, their students are still developing social fluency,
and will struggle to develop academic language ability alongside it. Learners in CLIL
programmes are thus learning basic language skills, academic language skills and
new subject concepts all at the same time.
Support for learning
This sounds difficult. And indeed it can be. But students in many CLIL classes do
surprising well: they learn subjects and develop language abilities pretty
successfully. How do students manage this?
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Often they are very well-motivated and resilient and this takes them a long way.
They are often selected or self-selected, which means that many will come with at
least half-developed academic language skills in L1, which they will use with some
success in L2.
Their teachers will, either explicitly or part-consciously sense that they have to teach
in a different way and begin to accumulate new pedagogical strategies.
What are the strategies which constitute good teaching of subjects in L2?