Multiple perspectives on CLIL: Students’ performance, classroom participation and participants’ attitudes and beliefs

Prof. Ana Llinares (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

 
After more than two decades of CLIL implementation and research in Europe and beyond, it seems clear to both the research and education communities that its objectives and challenges go beyond the improvement of learners’ competence in an additional language. In order to succeed at school, CLIL learners who study different subjects or disciplines in a second/third language need to be familiar with the linguistic demands of these disciplines, and teachers need to know what challenges are specifically related to the additional language and which are subject-, mode- or activity-related language issues, which affect students’ academic performance, no matter if the language of instruction is the L1 or an L2/L3. In this scenario, many recent studies have addressed the importance of exploring content and language integration and have attempted to present theoretically-informed models that allow researchers, and ultimately CLIL teachers, to evaluate students’ academic language performance to convey specific disciplinary knowledge (e.g. Llinares et al. 2012).

Following Nikula et al.’s (2016) multidimensional approach to the understanding of content and language integration, and drawing on some results from the TRANS-CLIL research project (http://www.uam-clil.org), in this session I will explore and illustrate the concept of content and language integration from three perspectives: a) students’ academic spoken and written production; b) their content and language engagement in classroom interactional activities; and c) students’ motivation and beliefs about learning their school subjects in English. These issues will be addressed in the context of the transition from primary to secondary school and in relation to different degrees of exposure to CLIL in the Spanish context.

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