Learning about CLIL

We had three different materials to read for this week about CLIL. After having read them all, we have discussed what each of us understood in group. Our debate has been quite heated, and we have come to a general conclusion about CLIL: we understand the global concept about CLIL, that it deals with content and language at the same time, and that language is a tool for learning, besides being a tool for communication in itself.

We have had the chance to know a bit more about a CLIL project developed in preschool in Catalonia. These are the main ideas that we would highlight from this experience:

• It is important to bear in mind that a CLIL project implies producing materials for children, leaving behind the view of the traditional English teacher. In other words, we must broaden the view about what we would like children to learn about.
• Regarding the language part, we should place the focus on fluency and global understanding, rather than accuracy.
• All activities should be geared towards creating debates among children, making them talk.

What we didn't particularly like about the example from Catalonia was that the topics and activities of the project were fixed beforehand, even though they are supposed to be based on children's interests. It didn't seem like a flexible project.

We would underline the following ideas regarding the videos and text about CLIL contained in a different set of materials we read:

• CLIL is about using language to learn and learning to use language through the development of content.
• There is no "good" CLIL and "bad" CLIL, just bad and good ways to mix language and content. CLIL happens to be a successful way to combine language and content learning.
• CLIL is about "doing things", it is about having fun.

Finally, we have read an article on a project about newborns in Zerain. These are the most interesting ideas we have drawn from it:

• The project is about meaningful learning, about following the interests of children. If this project is CLIL, then clearly CLIL must have it's base on meaningful learning.
• A single project could be used to learn contents about very different subjects in an integrated way. In this project children learn about mathematics, spoken language, written language, analysing and plotting data, magnitudes, rhymes, English, Spanish, Basque, etc. Therefore, the general idea underlying CLIL could be applied to learning many contents in an integrated way.

Still, we feel that we would like to know CLIL more in depth, as we have only managed to grasp the general idea in an intuitive way so far. Besides, while the examples from Catalonia and Zerain are very practical, the other readings and videos were a bit more abstract and sometimes not that easy to follow.