1. Challenges and
Opportunities for
Languages as a Medium of
Education
Do Coyle
FLAME, January 2013
University of Aberdeen

2. Key Messages
• CLIL is viral - debunking some myths
• CLIL is about ‘meaning-making’
• CLIL evidences academic progression across
languages (CALP +) (pluriliteracies)
• CLIL is predicated on language(s) as learning tool
• CLIL practitioner learning communities have to
agree their own set of shared principles - start small
• CLIL is inclusive - all learners have the potential to
engage in high quality meaning-making provided
that certain conditions are in place

3. Future perfect and present continuous

4. Pointing to the Critical Nature of Literacies

5. Council of Europe Programme
2012-2015
• Learning through Languages – promoting
inclusive, plurilingual and intercultural
education
www.ecml.at/learningthroughlanguages
• Web 2.0 Literacies through CLIL: effective
learning across subjects and languages
Do Coyle, Oliver Meyer, Teresa Ting, Kevin Schuck, Ana
Holbach UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain

6. The ITALIC project
• Investigating Student Gains: Content and
Language Integrated Learning (2009-2011)
• Motivation and ‘successful learning’
• Focus (i) learning environment, learner
engagement and learner identities
• Focus (ii) student perceptions of CLIL
www.abdn.ac.uk/italic

7. ITALIC: investigating CLIL in England
and Scotland -the learners’ perspective
• 11 secondary schools across
England and Scotland
• Different CLIL
experiences, different types of
schools
• Over 650 11-14 year olds
• 19 French, German & Spanish
teachers and 6 subject teachers

8. Findings: Learner self perceptions in
CLIL lessons
36.6%
84% voted to continue with CLIL – it’s better
than language learning

9. A Learner Conference
• Organised by the learners for the learners
• Class representatives
• Learners as teachers
• Reflecting on their projects
• Teachers’ Charter
• Chill and Spill [video room]
• Interviewing teachers
• Certificates/parental involvement

10. Teachers’ Charter for
successful CLIL
• Explain things clearly
• Listen to us pupils
• Make a task hard but not too hard
• Challenge and fun
• Make lessons more interactive
The Top Five Recommendations

11. What we want is to....
• Communicate
• Be challenged
• Engage in learning meaningful new things
• Interact
• Use our language i.e. what we know
already
• Construct our own talk i.e. what we want
to know
• Learn for us

12. What the learners say:
In CLIL lessons
• If it’s too hard you cannae really do it but
if its normal hard and you teach it well, it’s
easy and hard at the same time [S6]
• Using other languages to think in is hard
but it really helps us understand the main
ideas and I suppose its harder to forget
[T2]
www.abdn.ac.uk/italic

13. What the teachers say:
In CLIL lessons
• I know that for my learners to learn they have to be
able to use language they don’t already know. It’s my
job to make sure the tasks we do develop those
opportunities in a systematic way – you know recycling
[Ke9]
• For pupils to articulate what they have learnt they
also need to create new language so they need
scaffolding to support this. Osmosis takes too long
[CX3]
• Rethinking classroom learning activities has been an
eye-opener for me and the learners [pt3]

14. What the teachers say:
In CLIL lessons
Analysing CLIL principles has been do-able
because we have shared it, we have had to
shortcut, we have explored 4Cs, BICS and
CALP, classroom discourse and grammar
and come up with our very own versions
which work for us – a sort of collective
understanding. We feel WE and our pupils
are the innovators now [T5]

15. Unpicking ....progression through
literacies
• Not achievement levels/descriptors
• Concept complexity: meaning-making not
knowledge involves skills and understanding
• Precision of expression (writing and speaking)
related to subject or trans-disciplinary discourse
• Depth of understanding appropriate to learners
• ‘Noticing’
• Strategy awareness and use
• Long-term memory
So need to work with different texts
and take control of task sequencing.....

16. 1206198725081983

17. Opportunities & Challenges
• Timing policy, practice and research
• Professional community building and networking
– out there viral ~ FLAME
• Support: start small, take short cuts
• Linking (e.g.literacy colleagues, other subject
areas)
• Put the academic back into learning (CALP+)
• Find an immediate classroom focus: task
sequencing & chunking

20. Transition them from
‘bain linguistique’
to
‘bain d’apprentissage’

21. do.coyle@abdn.ac.uk
Thank you