CLIL in FL communication

• Content - Progression in knowledge, skills and understanding related to specific elements of a defined curriculum

• Communication - Using language to learn whilst learning to use language

• Cognition - Developing thinking skills which link concept formation (abstract and concrete), understanding and language

• Culture - Exposure to alternative perspectives and shared understandings, which deepen awareness of otherness and self.

A CLIL 'approach' is not far removed from humanistic, communicative and lexical approaches in ELT, and aims to guide language processing and supports language production in the same way that an ELT course would by teaching techniques for exploiting reading or listening texts and structures for supporting spoken or written language.  Not only comprehensible INPUT is stressed but also comprehensible OUTPUT on the part of the student and it is this feature that perhaps separates CLIL from other approaches. The students must be provided with Time and Space to PRODUCE while the teacher takes a back seat .

The structure of a CLIL lesson MAY follow the pattern below:

• Processing the text.

• Identification and organisation of knowledge

• Language identification

• Tasks for students

In this way, the students are empowered to search for information and to convert it into knowledge through constructivism and then to actively verbalize their understandings in the target language.

CLIL, with its integration of language and non-language content, can boost motivation by providing a legitimate and authentic context for language use. In CLIL, the language becomes the means rather than the end in itself and this leads to a significant reduction in the amount of anxiety expressed by learners (Lasagabaster 2009). The content-led nature of the lessons allows the learners to engage with them at a more creative and challenging cognitive level and provides opportunities for genuine interaction with others, oneself and the world over a varied range of contexts (Greenfell (2002)). CLIL proposers also mention the possibility of the so-called “double effect “, i.e., positive attitudes towards the content subject may transfer to the language subject (Coyle et al. 2010). Finally, CLIL is described as fostering a “feel-good and can-do “attitude in all learners towards the vehicular language and language teaching in general (Marsh 2002, Coyle at al. 2010).  

The limited research available so far in CLIL affective effects seems to back up these claims (Lasagabaster 2009, Hood 2006, Seikkula-Leino 2007, Alonso et al. 2008). CLIL learners display significantly more positive attitudes to the foreign language and language learning in general than non-CLIL learners. However, in all of these studies, the CLIL effect shows also some significant limitations. In Lasagabaster (2009), CLIL learners experienced a visible deterioration in their attitudes towards the foreign language over their secondary schooling, more so the case than their non-CLIL peers.  Contrary to the researchers’ expectation and unlike the Canadian immersion experience, the gender gap in motivation was the same in both groups.  In Seikkula-Leino’s study (2007), while CLIL learners remained more motivated than their non-CLIL peers, they also reported a lower self-concept of themselves as language learners. 

What this suggests is that, as one would expect, CLIL, on its own, cannot solve the motivation problems associated with learning languages. The motivation to learn the content cannot be taken for granted, but neither is content on its own the source of all motivation. Motivation is an environmentally sensitive entity that needs to be created, but also maintained and reviewed (Dörnyei 2001). Other factors are at play, not least the classroom environment and specific methodology. Seikkula’s findings can be explained by the intrinsically challenging nature of CLIL lessons, where the learners are exposed to plenty of language which is above their current level of competence. Hood (2006) (in Coyle et al. 2010) had already identified the need to preserve the learners’ self-esteem in the initial stages of CLIL while they adjust to the new challenge. The implication for CLIL teachers is the need to provide plenty of positive feedback. 

The persistence of the gender gap in CLIL programmes is even more revealing. In the vast literature on boys’ underachievement and lack of motivation in MFL, a recurrent theme is that boys are de-motivated by the lack of content beyond the purely linguistic.  It has been argued that boys respond best to extrinsic motivation and that thus CLIL could be more appealing to them (Field 2000, Davies 2006, Clark and Trafford 1996, Jones and Jones 2001). The above findings, therefore, suggest that other factors are still at play, and these could be, among others, differences in learning styles and wider social perceptions about the gendered nature of languages. Interestingly, CLIL relies quite heavily on two types of  methodology that have been seen associated with demotivating boys  –the cooperative approach to tasks and an extensive use of target language (Field 2000, Jones and Jones 2001). At the same time, the hegemonic masculinity image offered in the wider cultural context continues to accord little importance to communication and contributes to perpetuate the gendered message about languages (Davies 2004, Coleman 2009, Carr and Pauwells 2006).  Thus, for  CLIL to have a gender-eroding capacity in motivation, it would need to be reinforced by a context where the personal and economic benefits of learning the foreign language are immediately obvious and part of the learners’ day to day experience, such as in Canada (Lasagabaster and Sierra 2009).

CLIL does not exist in a vacuum, but in the social and cultural contexts of different countries. The research on the motivational impact of CLIL has been carried out within the context of CLIL in English in Europe, where learners feel a strong instrumental motivation. Most  learners know they will have to (and probably already do) use English as an instrument to do other things, from accessing knowledge to cultural products. Learning another subject through English reflects realistically their needs as learners.  It is doubtful that the same considerations could apply necessarily  to the context of schools  where languages other than English are used as vehicular languages, such as in the UK. Research suggests that the globalisation of English as a lingua franca has resulted in a deviating trend between English and other languages, which are becoming an increasingly marginal field of specialisation across Europe (Dörnyei 2002).  Learners are unlikely to see the instrumental need of learning a content subject in a foreign language other than English beyond providing a more authentic communication context. Yet the authenticity of that context seems more intrinsic than extrinsic. While it creates some specific communication needs in the classroom, it does not reflect the reality of the learner’s wider experience. The danger is that CLIL could be perceived as an ultimately artificial communicative situation (Johnstone 1994). 

Finally, if integrative motivation remains the main determinant of attitudes towards languages, the impact on motivation of the wider social attitudes towards “otherness” must be taken into account. In countries such as the UK where the social climate and public opinion, as reflected and shaped by the media, is conspicuously unsupportive of anything foreign and commonly portrays multilingualism as a problem rather than a resource (Coleman 2009), CLIL, for all its provision of meaningful content, on its own cannot neutralize social perceptions. It must be reinforced by an active effort, at whole school level, to counteract the way in which public discourse favours monolingualism and cultural insularity.  In schools where people in key management positions overtly support languages, pupils are more likely to carry on with languages learning beyond the compulsory level (Evans and Fisher 2009). If CLIL has a chance of success, the whole school community must engage in shifting social attitudes to language learning beyond the classroom. 

CLIL can enhance learners’ motivation and overcome the main shortcoming of communicative language teaching by proving a meaningful context for authentic communication around relevant and cognitively challenging content. While it responds to long-establish short-comings in MFL teaching, CLIL has its own limitations. It must be complemented by good practice into positive feedback and a variety of teaching styles to support the achievement of all learners. More importantly, where relevant, it must be coupled with active attempts at counteracting social perceptions of otherness and language learning. Combined with all these factors, the potential for CLIL to boost motivation could be a powerful tool.

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From a language point of view the CLIL 'approach' contains nothing new to the EL teacher. CLIL aims to guide language processing and 'support language production in the same way as ELT by teaching strategies for reading and listening and structures and lexis for spoken or written language. What is different is that the language teacher is also the subject teacher, or that the subject teacher is also able to exploit opportunities for developing language skills. This is the essence of the CLIL teacher training issue.

Thus CLIL offers opportunities for real CLT and interactive communication between students and teachers, moving them forward into the World English Project where they can confidently take their place next to other none native competent, knowledgeable, expressive English language speakers.

Part 2. Intercultural aspects of using CLIL in teaching FL communication.

2.1. Competences and CLIL.

CLIL is generally linked to the development of greater intercultural awareness (Coyle et al. 2010 and 2009) by providing learners with experiences that would have been impossible in a monolingual or traditional MFL setting. Although language and culture are inseparable, language work in itself does not necessarily lead to the sort of self-awareness and tolerance of difference linked to intercultural understanding (Broady 2004, Byram 1997, Jones 2000). In CLIL, the key difference is the provision of a meaningful context and the use of the foreign language as a tool to explore and construct meaning. In this way, learners can engage in deeper learning about themselves and others, and, at the same time, experience the process from the perspective of their counterparts (Coffey 2005). An intercultural ethos is thus a defining feature of the CLIL classroom both a micro-level, through meaningful interactions in the vehicular language and potentially, at macro level, by providing pupils with the linguistic tools and knowledge to extend their interactions beyond the classroom (Coyle et al. 2010). The use of new technologies and school partnerships abroad can make CLIL a catalyst for living intercultural experiences, and teachers are encouraged to be proactive in order to fulfill CLIL’s potential. 

There are potentially some theoretical and practical limitations to this claim. In the CLIL cross-curricular model, it is often the case that the learning of a subject is not culturally located at all, such as in science, maths or PE. In these contexts, the amount of savoirs (Byram 1997) developed by the learner can be limited. However, it can be argued that the use of a foreign language as a medium for learning is in itself a decentring process of one’s own linguistic worldview and thus, in itself, an essentially intercultural process (Coffey 2005). The use of a different language to explore the world can be seen as a first prise de conscience of a different culture and of the commonality of the human learning experience. In the context of increasingly diverse student populations, such as in the UK, CLIL can thus also contribute to the development of social cohesion within a given society through greater intercultural competence2 (Anderson 2008). 

It is interesting to note that not all CLIL models accord the same central importance to culture and intercultural understanding as Coyle’s 4C model. Whereas her model places culture at the centre of the 4C pyramid, other European models place language and communication at the core and culture as a peripheral element (Dalton-Puffer 2008). This difference may stem from the practical fact that CLIL in Europe in essentially CLIL in English (Dalton-Puffer 2008). The motivation to learn English is linked less to an interest in the culture(s) it is associated with and more to its usefulness as a lingua franca (Byram and Risager 1999, Holly 1990). However, even if the motivation to learn English is purely instrumental, developing the full range of savoirs associated with intercultural awareness is still essential, because a lingua franca is never culturally neutral (Byram and Risager 1999). Learners of different native languages using English to communicate will inevitably do so by reference to cultural realities embedded in the lingua franca. CLIL in English, in many ways, has greater potential to develop intercultural awareness than CLIL in other languages, because it multiplies exponentially the range of possible opportunities for contact with a broader range of cultures. It can therefore contribute to placing learning in a truly multilingual context. It is thus essential not only that the intercultural ethos is maintained in the classroom, but also that the cultural elements that underpin English as a language are incorporated in the process. Failure to do so would result in an impoverished CLIL experience for learners. 

CLIL certainly has the potential to lead to greater intercultural awareness than traditional content or language teaching.  In fact, this is probably its most solid claim. Its integration of context, language and cognition creates the perfect environment to encourage reflection and self-awareness, while allowing learners to re-appropriate the language as a learning tool in their own context. In this sense, CLIL can allow the learners to step outside their own experience and develop a “perspective consciousness” of cultural processes (Broady 2004, Coffey 2005) more effectively than traditional classrooms. With the growing need for a genuinely global sense of citizenship, this dimension of CLIL programmes is probably its most valuable asset and one that cannot afford to come second to the more practical aims of enhancing linguistic proficiency. Ironically, because of the status of English as a lingua franca, this may be strength of CLIL programmes which use other vehicular languages, as will be the case in the UK. 

Today it is hardly necessary to convince people that teaching a foreign language is inextricable from teaching the culture of its speakers and this should be done not simply through “teaching the facts” but developing certain skills, deepening students’ understanding of themselves, inspiring tolerance for otherness. Culture is no longer viewed as “high”, e.g. pieces of various arts, knowing the history of the respective country, but as a small-letter word – the total of views, attitudes, modes of behaviour, which determine a group of people as such. Consequently, it is not by chance that the ‘fifth skill’ – that of being able to communicate interculturally is being discussed together with the “classical” language ones – the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. When discussing the problem of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), Michael Byram (1997) states that it is a complex of competences, which he terms with the French word ‘savoires’. According to his classification we can speak of ICC when the following skills (savoires) are developed: skills of interpretation and relation; skills of revealing and/or communicating; knowledge of self and other, of communication – in private and in public; an attitude of relativising ‘self’ and appreciating ‘others’.

General competences of a language learner comprise following sub-competences:

- KNOWLEDGE:

• general
• contextual
• procedural

- ATTITUDES AND RESOURCES:

• emotional
• psychological

- KNOW-HOW:

• operational
• relational
• cognitive

Educational system of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in the field of foreign language teaching and learning is based on competence-centered approach in formation of IC, as indicator of formation a person, able effectively communicate in intercultural level.

According to Kunanbayeva S.S, we distinguished following competences, which are developed through CLIL:

- cognitive;

- communicative;

- lingua-cultural;

-reflexive.

Cognitive competence and CLIL.

The first and important condition – the social environment, in other words the language environment, which emphasizes the concept of the contents, and learner has motivation to listen and use language.

The second condition – language and content integration. Experience of programs of language immersion shows that studying of the foreign language where language and the maintenance of other subjects are integrated, is much more effective, than the isolated training at a lesson.

The Content and Language Integrated Learning is based on language assimilation, rather than mastering. At bilingual Content and Language Integrated Learning the lexicon and communication models are taught, at the same time systematically teaching the content of a subject. The main attention is paid to meaning and the content, instead of language structure. The approach based on the content: the maintenance of a subject is integrated at a language lesson, and language training – at a subject lesson.

CLIL suggest cognitive acquisition of language. It means learner master the knowledge in other spheres through FL- s/he learn it cognitively.

Research has shown that cognitively undemanding work, such as copying or repetition, especially when there is little or no context to support it, does not enhance language learning [Smith, Paterson].

By actively involving pupils in intellectually demanding work, the teacher is creating a genuine for learners to acquire the appropriate language.

Communicative competence and CLIL.

Defining a foreign language learning as participatory learning Hymes mentions notions such as, communicative event and communicative competence [].

We take the formulation chosen by to Mey characterize  communicative competence, "a knowledge of language is gained from participation in actual communicative events, implying the simultaneous reliance on a number of semiotic resources and the collaboration of other participants[mey]".

It is easy to see where a rationale of CLIL can latch on to this: CLIL lessons definitely have a number of physical participants, who interact with each other and make use of a number of semiotic resources (location, images and texts).

It is mainly the fact that CLIL lessons are concerned with the content of subject like biology or history, which earns them the predicate of "authenticity" and of being "a true communicative situation". Subject content counts as "information" and, since the transfer of information is widely seen as tantamount of communication, CLIL classrooms come to be regarded as more truly communicative events than language lessons and thus excellent environments for gaining language knowledge through participation. 

The second key concept of communicative competence refers to the individual's knowledge governing the competent use of grammar. Similar to the notion communicative event, also the notion of communicative competence has undergone a reinterpretation in CLIL. Also, communicative competence seems to be understood as fluency and/or low anxiety in face-to-face oral interaction.

The main point about communicative competence is that knowledge of grammar cannot be dissociated from knowledge about its use. Hymes first introduced the concept, arguing that knowledge of linguistic structures and functions is embedded into a larger concept of cultural knowledge, other components of which are pragmatic and sociolinguistic, but also social and physiological in a more general sense. An important arguments for this essential interconnectedness between the partial competencies which make up communicative competence lies in language acquisition: knowledge of language is undeniably gained from participation in actual communicative events, where the different partial competencies necessarily co-occur.

Lingua-cultural competence and CLIL.

The field of modern foreign language learning pedagogy provides solid foundations to support the formation of a third culture and, as the CEFR puts it, to enable the development of interculturality and “intercultural awareness, skills and know-how”. The (post-)communicative era of foreign language teaching is closely connected to the student-centered approaches of task-based and project-based language learning (Willis, 1996; Stoller, 2002; Ellis 2003). Embedded within these frameworks, one finds the call for authentic language learning contexts that are linked to the real world and its issues (connection to the Lebenswelt). Here, the main emphasis is placed on the functional use of language, i.e. to utilize language as a tool for communication. These function-focused classrooms are often described by using the dichotomies of fluency before accuracy or meaning before form (Littlewood, 2004). Learners are engaged in authentic communication processes and acquire skills and strategies to successfully carry out given tasks. As such, the learning environment lends itself to forms of learner autonomy (Little, 1991; Dam, 1995) as well as cooperation and collaboration; furthermore, it promotes the active construction of knowledge (Wolff, 2002).

It is the integral element of modern, function-focused language learning – the various facets of task orientation – that strengthens the potential for the fusion of language learning and intercultural learning. The language learning classroom reaches out beyond its traditional scope of language related objectives and opens up to include real-world topics. The context within which language is used becomes fundamentally important and often issues are raised which – traditionally – are covered within content subjects. This development supports the efforts of cross-curricular teaching and clearly shows the conceptual parallels of modern language teaching and CLIL-teaching. Experiencing and understanding a foreign language in a content-based way opens the doors to intercultural learning processes. By using materials that convey, portray or reflect insights into foreign viewpoints, it becomes possible to (re)construct the underlying perspectives. Foreign positions on a given topic, underlying assumptions, attitudes, feelings and interpretations can be grasped and analyzed. By aligning and comparing these with one’s own perspectives, intercultural learning can be initiated: The linguistic and cultural worlds begin to open up and their explorations lead to the above mentioned “knowledge of the other and contribute to intercultural awareness, skills and know-how” (Council of Europe, 2001: 43); as such, content based and thus contextualized, culturally loaded language work enables a deeper understanding of the foreign linguistic and cultural codes. Transfers from one set of codes to another (e.g. translation processes) may still be difficult; however, interculturally competent language learners are (more) aware of the cultural conventions underlying the words they encounter and use.

Reflexive competence and CLIL.

Reflexive competence is the demonstrated ability to integrate or connect performances and decision making with understanding and with an ability to adapt to change and unforeseen circumstances and explain the reason behind this adaptation[Teaching Strategies for Outcomes-based Education Авторы: Roy Killen].

In reflexive competence the learner demonstrates the ability to integrate performances and decision making with understanding and with an ability to adapt to change in unforeseen circumstances appropriately and responsibly and explain the reason behind these adaptations. Reflexive competence is more than the sum total of practical and foundational competence. It draws on and integrates the other two competences but in itself represents a capacity that is vital in an ever-changing world.

Reflexive abilities positively influence on formation of  Intercultural Communicative Competence, because create conditions for an exchange of opinions, solutions of educational tasks through communication in a foreign language,  promote increasing responsibility of one student for results of group actions, when performing a task and gradual transfer of responsibility for results from the teacher to the student.

Complexity of the organization of a learning material for realization the efficiency of educational process consists in search of an adequate ratio of the tasks, directed on development of  communicative competence and on formation of the reflexive abilities.

In this regard, at the organization of a material the following fundamental provisions should be guided:

1. To plan a lesson for formation a concrete reflexive ability.

2. To create the favorable environment for reflexive communication, where the lesson structure helps the student to be involved in a reflexive position, and encourages mastering skills and abilities.  Thus, the educational space is created, as communicative environment, cooperation, self-development of students due to positive motivation.