NEW CLIL PROJECTS FOR 2022-2023: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

 

The new call for Multilingual Projects allows schools to start or continue developing a subject through the medium of English. I have been working on this for 18 years now and I am really pleased to say that school teachers and students have provided me with very positive feedback on the outcomes of the project. In short, students feel more motivated to learn the language because they are actually doing something with it, whereas teachers do not have to struggle to keep students' attention. 

Some  schools in the area where I work are asking for the project for the first time. I have been delivering specific training for them  in order to let them know about the main ingredients each CLIL unit must include. However, I am aware that this powerful dish needs longer cooking time so allow me to share a masterclass by Lola Reeves Garay Abad, teacher and teacher trainer from Trinity College. I am sure she will shed light on what CLIL is about.

   

 From these lines, my heartfelt thanks to Lola  on her inspiring talk. 

Looking forward to meeting CLIL teachers on our next seminar session on April 5th. We will continue with the LOCIT model (Lesson Observation and  Critical Incident Technique): three schools will show their students' classroom practice and, as usual,  their outcomes will be effective tools on self- reflection and professional growth. 

Apart from this, we will focus on Feedback and Assessment in CLIL. We will be presenting some examples of CLIL-friendly tests and all seminar members will have the opportunity to share what type of  assessment they carry out and its outcomes. 

CLIL AND INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

 

We are living in a world where content knowledge, communication, cognitive skills, and culture are key for every citizen. Therefore, all students are in need of opportunities that help them develop the aforementioned.   Why am I starting this blog entry like this? Well, I would like to do my bit and contribute to debunk the idea that CLIL is elitist. As a matter of fact,  CLIL seems to  curb the influence of students’ SES (Socioeconomic status)  on their language learning and motivation, thus creating a more inclusive learning context.

I am aware that the only way to shed some light into the question of whether CLIL  is at odds with inclusion or not is through empirical evidence so I have decided to share the latest research on the issue with the readers of this blog. That is why today I would like to recommend this article by  Professor María Luisa Pérez Cañado: "CLIL and elitism: myth or reality?", in The Language Learning Journal. No doubt her thorough research will toss  most common fears aside. 

Apart from latest research on the topic, experts on the field of CLIL and inclusive education are offering webinars to let teachers know about the way to develop good  CLIL practice for all learners. This is the case  with  a  webinar  organized by Pearson: "the 4 C's of CLIL with Inclusion in Mind ". On November 24th and 25th Jennifer Schmidt will provide participants with suggestions on how ALL students can improve language and cognitive skills through CLIL. You can read the objectives of the webinar and register here.

From these lines, my most heartfelt thanks to Maria Luisa Pérez Cañado and Jennifer Schmidt  for their invaluable contribution to such a crucial matter  as Inclusive Education is . 

CLIL SEMINAR AT SECONDARY LEVEL 2021-2022 (ONLINE)

 

Dear CLIL lovers

It is a true pleasure to let you know about an important new feature of the CLIL Seminar at Secondary level: it will be held online on a monthly basis  so that teachers from Bizkaia, Araba and Gipuzkoa  can take part in it.  Thus, we will create a poweful network that enables all of us to improve our teaching practice. 

Please, follow this link to register as soon as possible because the first session will be starting on October 26th. 

You can read about the objectives of the seminar sessions  and calendar below these lines:

OBJECTIVES 

 - To help teachers with their daily practice by facilitating materials and  ICT tools for the different subjects they are teaching in English

- To work on academic language and subject specific vocabulary

- To pave the way for the development of pluriliteracies across the curriculum

- To give teachers useful information about conferences, different types of events and webinars related to their classroom practice and professional development

- To provide teachers with a network so that they can share classroom practice and materials with other teachers

CALENDAR

OCTOBER 26th
NOVEMBER 16th
DECEMBER 21st
JANUARY 18th
FEBRUARY 22nd
MARCH 15th
APRIL 5th
MAY 24th

TIMETABLE

From 15:00 to 17:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons

THE SIXTH SYMPOSIUM ON CLIL IN THE ADIGE VALLEY

 

The TESOL Italy Val d'Adige-Etschtal Local Group invites all of us to the online event The sixth Symposium on CLIL in the Adige Valley "From International to Local" co-organized and hosted by the  Department of Humanities and Philosophy of Trento University . It will take place on Friday May 14th 2021 from 14:00 to 16:00 (CET) via Zoom.

You can access the flyer here. In order to register for the event for free, click here  and choose the promotional memebership option. 

My heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Hill, coordinator of the Local group, for sharing this wonderful event with us. 

In this post I would lke to make you aware of a website for 8-to 18-year-old students created by a group of teachers who hope to foster and  develop a love for learning the subject of Geography. 

From the home page, you can browse through the many project types to:

• Create geography models of globes, volcanoes, earthquakes, rivers, settlements, weather, mountains, coasts, and more.


• Use paper craft templates to make printable models, animals, international theme models, and flags to color.


• Build 3D maps.


• Make volcano models with great ideas for exploring the world of volcanoes.


• Construct pop up models of a river drainage basin, the Beaufort Wind force scale, and population density.

​

They also offer teachers the chance to let them know about  some other Geography topics which would lend themselves well to being made into models. If you wish, you can get in touch with them through this form and help the authors to increase the appeal of learning Geography. 

May I offer my  heartiest congratulations to the teachers who maintain 3D geography site. 

Working on grammar through extensive reading in Science

Our students are often asked to read for understanding and for pleasure. We encourage them to read in order to enrich their vocabulary but we can also ask them to read a text not only  for the   reasons mentioned above  but also to improve their grammar. 

I would like to share an example based on a Science text. My classroom proposal  is aimed at B1-B2 students depending on your teaching context. You can put  it into practice if you are teaching English or if you are an English teacher  working in coordination with a Science teacher who is developing the CLIL approach. In this case, the activity that focuses on language  would be carried out by the language teacher and the Science teacher would focus on Science concepts. 

The main purpose of this type of activity is to foster students' reflection on the features of Science texts so as to foster understanding. 

You can click here to download the text and you can find the classroom activity below the following  image: 

 A heatwave can fry the brain. Photograph: aryos/Getty Images

Classroom activity:

Today we are going to read a text to learn about a new research carried out by scientists but we are also going to read the same text to discover the grammar of it. Therefore, the first time you read the text, check that you understand the ideas in it by looking up the new words. The second time you read the text, work with your partner and pay attention to language use by answering the questions below:

1)  Find at least two comparative sentences.   Would you say their use is important for the type of text? Why?

2)   The text is written in the present tense and in the past tense but you can find at least   an example of the present perfect tense. Can you underline it and say why the writer uses it?

3)   Can you find any words or phrases that express probability?   Underline them and pay attention to the way they are used in this text. Do you think they are common in scientific texts?

4)  Lines 13-14: what do you notice about the use of the words “increase” and “decrease”? Have you learnt anything about the way they can be used?

5)   Lines 10-12: “not only … accurate”.  Do you understand this sentence? Is it the first time you see a sentence starting with “not only”? How could you paraphrase it and make it more simple for a friend of yours who does not understand it?

6)   A feature of scientific texts is the use of long sentences. Can you find one and divide it into two sentences to increase  understanding ?  

7)   The use of the passive voice is very common in scientific texts. Can you find at least three examples? Why do you think the passive voice is so common in Science?

8) Lines 24-33: look at the way “while” and “meanwhile” are used. Is it a different use from the one you knew?  Do you understand  their meaning in this context?  

 9) Lines 31-33: notice the use of "face" in "buyers are faced with far fewer decisions". Can you make a sentence of your own using "be faced with"?

10) The text says that "women are sick of AC standards being tailored around men". What are you sick of? 

I hope this proposal is useful to make your students improve their grammar and better understand Science texts by reflecting on language features of this type of text. Please, let me know what you think about it. 


Science text taken from : 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/11/heatwave-bad-decision-making-harvard-study

World Science day for peace and development in our classrooms

Celebrated every 10 November, World Science Day for Peace and Development highlights the important role of science in society and the need to engage the wider public in debates on emerging scientific issues. It also underlines the importance and relevance of science in our daily lives.The 2017 theme is “Science for Global Understanding”. Global Understanding is key to peace and sustainable development in that it promotes the commitment of individuals and local communities in sharing knowledge for actions and behavioral change. Science is thus central to global understanding as it not only helps understand the world but also it assists in designing, developing and implementing the change we aim for. 

UNESCO strongly encourages all to join them  in celebrating World Science Day for Peace and Development by scheduling something special for that date. 

My proposal for your  Secondary classrooms needs three sessions and is based on the following video:
 

Before starting viewing the video above, prepare a handout for students with the most difficult words which are key to understanding and check they know those words.

While watching the video, ask students to write down the name of each of the scientists who,  according to the author of this video, changed the world. They should also try to understand  the reason why he/she  was essential for mankind. (Students  can use this  simple table to take notes while they listen).

Let students watch  the video twice and after watching the video for a second time,  ask them to  share their notes in pairs for about 15 minutes. After that,  proceed to check their understanding  of the contents of the video by asking different pairs to tell you what they have written. 

In the second session, group students in threes /fours and ask them to think about a  STEM discovery/ theory that   exemplifies the important role of  Science in our society. Each group  will have to write a paragraph about their favourite discovery and the reasons for their choice. This language support document will help them to express their opinion, agree and disagree with their partner. You can prepare copies of it and hand them out to students before  they  start talking in pairs. They will need about 45 minutes for this second task. 

Help students with websites they can use to carry out this task:

https://www.factmonster.com/science/general-science/life-changing-science-discoveries

http://list25.com/25-biggest-scientific-discoveries-in-history-of-mankind/

https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/5-scientific-breakthroughs-we-couldnt-live-without.htm


The third session that wraps up this micro-unit on the importance of Science and its impact on society will be aimed at listening to the different groups. Allow students to read their paragraph aloud for other  students to listen  and, if you feel like it, after all groups have been heard,  you can ask  students to vote for the "most important" discovery/theory/development. 

I hope this simple proposal will raise awareness of the importance  of Science in and for society. 

FACTWorld and CLIL

The Bulgarian English Teachers' Association  held a Conference in Sofia on June 6th 2015 and Keith Kelly developed a  very clarifying workshop on 'CLIL for ELTs'. 

Throughout our seminar sessions we have been talking about the need to provide students who are learning an area through English with the language support  which will enable them to understand the content as well as to write about it or prepare an oral presentation on it.  You will find a very  clear example of how to support students with the required language on Heredity. 

As you run through the slides, you will also witness how groups of students carry out project based learning  in Science classes.  There are different examples for young learners but I like one that  shows a a group of very young learners working on "Let's launch a rocket together" and we can see how they have a great time while  they learn content related to rocket design  and use the language they need  (nouns, action verbs and the language of comparison).

The slides also include very interesting  "product" projects, one of which I highly recommend for Chemistry teachers: Chemistry as a Cultural Enterprise. Here you will be able to take part in School partnership projects and/or see the projects that have already been completed.  I also reckon that  Chemistry teachers  are bound to find the  "Publications" and "News" sections really interesting.

One of the last slides includes some essential references for those  teachers who implement different areas at Primary and Secondary levels  through English , such as the Forum for across the Curriculum Teaching and the  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council  website.  The section called "News, events and publications" will  open a door to   a great deal of news that can add an element of motivation to your classes.  There are clearly written texts and in some cases  there is a video and even the video transcript itself.  If you enter here, you will find a nice example: "How do we choose the food we eat?" 

Therefore,  I would like to thank Keith Kelly  for sharing this  workshop with all of us.  You can follow it  below these lines:

A VERY GOOD WEBINAR TO ROUND UP OUR CLIL SEMINAR 2014-2015

Next Tuesday May 26th we will have our last seminar session together. It will also be the second session in which teachers from different curriculum areas will present part of their work to the rest of the group. I am sure all of us  (18 teachers in the group at the moment of writing these lines) will gain a considerable amount of knowledge next Tuesday as we did in the previous session. Right now it is truly difficult for me to choose a topic among the many that make up "the universe of CLIL" and write a final post on it. Therefore, I will just t list the main topics we have developed since October so that all of you can check that your folders are filled up with every topic in this list and  next Tuesday we will decide on   seminar session priorities for our CLIL classes.

This is the list of topics we have covered since October 2014 till May 2015:

- What is CLIL?  What makes it so motivating for students? What makes it different from traditional bilingual instruction?

- Planning a CLIL unit

- Support for CLIL learners

- Interrelation between Content and Language: successful ways to do it

- A deep analysis of BICS and CALPS in CLIL contexts

- Vocabulary instruction in CLIL contexts

- The most useful ICT resources for subjects taught through English

- Assessment and evaluation in CLIL classrooms 

Check that you have the whole pack and ask me if you missed any of the resources for each of the topics above.

I will finish with a recommendation: Cambridge webinar on Supporting Primary and Secondary teachers in CLIL contexts. You can access the slides from here  and you can follow the webinar below these lines:

:

FEEDBACK AND ASSESSMENT IN CLIL

Jason Skeet , NILE training consultant, delivered a very interesting  on-line webinar on Feedback and Assesment in CLIL on April 2nd. Skeet is an experienced consultant and trainer in CLIL at Utrecht University and has provided advice and training for bilingual schools throughout The Netherlands. If you could not attend this webinar, now you can listen to the complete recording here. The ppt  slides that he used can be found here. I reckon they offer a very clarifying insight into the complex issue of Feedback and Assessment in CLIL. 

There is no doubt that any educator needs to adjust his/her teaching taking assessment into account and as CLIL practitioners, in the teaching and learning process, we should  focus not only on content, and not only on language. Each is interwoven, even if the emphasis is greater on one or the other at a given time. All this should be considered when facing  assessment. 

Next seminar session we will tackle this challenging issue. Our focus will be placed on looking at practical suggestions and ideas that can be applied in a CLIL classroom.

Apart from this, our session on April 21st will be the first of two sessions in which seminar members will present the work they have done on oral skills in content areas, written presentations, other activities that have proved to be truly successful and  personal sites where diverse  CLIL units have been uploaded.

World Water Day 2015 on March 22nd

World Water Day is March 22nd — a day when the world turns its attention towards the 750 million people who lack access to safe water.  From these lines, I would like to contribute to raising awareness of the importance of this issue among our students.  

The following video can be a nice starting point:

The British Council website offers a very complete range of activities that you can carry out after watching the video. You can access them here. You will find both on-line ("check for understanding: multiple choice and gap fil") and off-line activities ("worksheets and downloads").

Really moving stories that describe the drama millions of people are going through can be found on water.org. Since co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White in  in 1990, water.org has helped hundreds of communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean gain access to safe water and sanitation.

You can also make students listen to the following interview with Matt Damon about the water crisis in 2010:

A wide variety of resources is offered by the United Nations website.  Logos and posters in many different languages can be downloaded from here.

Finally, a very practical ready-to-print lesson plan is offered, as usual, by ESL Holiday Lessons. You can work on this plan and students are bound to learn lots of language while they also get a glimpse of the crisis affecting one of the most precious resources we possess. 

VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION IN CONTENT AREAS

The role vocabulary plays in reading and content area lessons is not the same. In fact,  there are important differences between the two.  For example, the words temerity and fulcrum in a novel do not relate to each other. Therefore, understanding the meaning of one and not the other in the book has little impact on the readers’ comprehension of the entire text.

However, in a content area, words are related to concepts and are often related among themselves. Take for instance the words atom, neutrons, protons, nucleus and electrons. These words are necessary to know in order to understand the concept of an electron cloud. Therefore, students need a thorough understanding of content vocabulary because these words are labels for important concepts. Acquisition of  the meanings of these words is necessary in order to learn further concepts.

Furthermore, the word nucleus in Chemistry is different from the word’s definition in Biology. This is because each discipline has its own language or technical vocabulary that students must learn in order to comprehend specific content-area information.

Another  essential consideration is that content vocabulary consists of many low-frequency words that do not appear in other contexts.

All the differences mentioned above leave no doubt that  a  different approach to vocabulary instruction in  content areas is needed, mainly  one which enables students to integrate  new terms with what they already know. Apart form this, vocabulary instruction in content areas has to ensure that new terms are  taught and retaught in multiple contexts and allow students  to use these  new terms in ways that are meaningful to them as often as possible.

Content area teachers can get considerable help from language teachers if they provide them with information about the vocabulary  strategies that work in their English language classes, so I suggest that English language teachers should carry out a simple survey among students so as to make them aware of  the vocabulary strategies they are using and  the need to use some they are still not familar with.

Experts on strategies that lead to effective acquisition of the subject-specific vocabulary have to be known by content area teachers:   Keith Kelly provides us with excellent resources so as to work on vocabulary in Science and Geography in three different stages:

- Working with words

- Working with sentences

- Working with texts

For those of you who wish to have a bank of basic vocabulary  strategies that can be used in any content area, this file can be very useful. I will try to show you how you can adapt them to your specific subjects in our next session together on February 10th. 

A lesson plan on Globalization

A new year has just begun and I know that all of us are eager to fill it in with new hopes, projects and illusion in our personal and professional environments. 

My humble contribution at the start of this year will be a lesson plan I have developed for Secondary 3 and 4 level students on the topic of Globalization.

Although this topic can be included  both in Geography and Citizenship content areas,  I reckon that the proposal I offer might be just  an introduction to the topic in a Geography class but a complete sequence in Citizenship. 

CLIL  practice is much more effective when coordination between the language teacher and the subject teacher takes place so this lesson plan would work much better if this coordination took place and the English language teacher could present the basic  vocabulary and language  (mainly contrast clauses, language for expressing opinions and language  and structure of an opinion essay)

In case coordination between the subject teacher and the English  language teacher is not possible,  I have added some language support for the students and for the subject teacher who  might need it.

Regarding the focus on language, I have tried to choose some activities that help students with differences that are basic in any content area and not only in Citizenship or  Geography: language that is used to express facts versus language that is used to express opinions, language that  shows certainty and language that shows uncertainty; language that conveys caution; language for generalizations; language for contrast.

You can read the whole lesson plan and find all handouts for you and for the students here.

I hope you will find my proposal useful. We will talk about it in our next seminar session together.

eTwinning projects: a way to develop creativity, CLIL and key competences

Over 500 of the most innovative teachers and Education experts from across Europe met in Rome, from 27 to 29 November, for the 10th annual eTwinning Conference. The topic of this year’s event was “Opening Education” and how eTwinning can promote creativity and innovative practices in both teaching and learning.  I would like to highlight three powerful outcomes of eTwinning: 

 - eTwinning has started a new collaboration with the e-safety label project.  We were talking about the importance of  Internet safety in one of our last seminar sessions and I wrote a previous entry on this issue. It is, in fact, one of the most important topics schools must look into at the moment so taking part in this project is highly recommendable. 

- eTwinning projects and CLIL:  If you enter the e-Twinning project Kits, you will find  ready-made projects for your classroom on different content areas and for different ages. The kits can be downloaded in PDF version and you can rate, comment and browse other teachers' opinions on the kits.  The winner projects videos are subtitled in 25 languages. The one below these lines won the award for the category ages 12-15: Health4life:

- eTwinning has launched a new publication on key competences entitled "Developing pupils competences through eTwinning". It explores the 8 Key Competences for Lifelong Learning -Communication in one's mother tongue; foreign languages; digital skills; basic skills in Maths and Science; learning to learn; social and civic responsibility; initiative and entrepreneurship; and cultural awareness and creativity- and how they can be addressed at school through the eTwinning projects. You can download the publication in English from here

Let me finish by encouraging all of you to take part in an eTwinning project which will, undoubtedly, enhance your teaching skills and be very beneficial for your students. 

International Day for Human Rights on December 10th

Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 7 million people who campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.  The website displays  lots of resources for the classroom in different languages but today I would like to recommend a  human rights cross-curricular teaching resource for secondary schools. It contains eight lesson plans  which  can be used separately or as part of  a series of carefully planned sessions  across the year. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the resources together with short film clips and accompanying resources, which you can also order by filling in this form .

Right below you can find a short summary of each of the lesson plans and the links to access them:  

•  Lesson 1 - Understanding human rights: Introducing human rights with images, activities and a short film
• Lesson 2 - Human rights in the UK: Making the Human Rights Act come alive with real-life cases and a presentation activity
• Lesson 3 - Dying to give birth: Using key mathematical skills to assess maternal mortality in different countries
• Lesson 4 - Mi dia, y los derechos: Comparing the daily lives of students in the UK with young Spanish-speakers across the globe
• Lesson 5 - Freedom of expression: Exploring the right to free speech through film and text using key communication and critical thinking skills
• Lesson 6 - Refugees and asylum: Dramatic role play activity using a tru story to understand and empathise with asylum seekers and refugees
• Lesson 7 - The death penalty: Discussion and debate about the death penalty using global facts and a real case
• Lesson 8 - Taking action: A short film case study giving real-life context for developing campaigning skills.

The lessons plans provide you with power point presentations, resource sheets, video clips and teachers' notes. All of these resources can be downloaded for free and  you can also order the whole pack of lesson plans  by filling in this form.

Plenty of interesting topics  for you classroom in English, French and Spanish  may be found under the title "Thematic issues" on the United Nations website. Do not miss the special section they have prepared for  International Human Rights Day on December 10th

Last but not least, if you wish to work on language thoroughly, you will have a great opportunity to do so by downloading the lesson plan ESL Holiday Lessons offers here.

International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is observed on November 25th because of a horrific historical event. On this day in 1960, three sisters were brutally killed in the Dominican Republic. The Mirabal sisters were political activists. They campaigned against Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship. Their brutal execution triggered the anti-Trujillo movement and within a year the Trujillo dicatorship came to an end. The sisters were referred to as the "Unforgettable Butterflies" and they have become a symbol against victimization of women. 

To raise awareness and trigger action to end the global scourge of violence against women and girls, the UN proposes 16 Days of Activism against gender Violence. Enter the UN website and choose among the many proposals the ones you find the most suitable for your students. 

A good way of starting could be this quiz to test your students' knowledge on this issue.

"In the words of"  is also a very interesting reading proposal because it features first-person articles written by celebrities, well-known personalities and women's wights activists. 

Last but not least, I reckon that  boys  could benefit from knowing about the heforshe campaign that was born to underline the role of  so many men who in recent years have started to stand up in addressing inequalities and discrimination faced by women.  Emma Watson's speech at the  UN Headquarters can be an excellent resource  to raise awareness of the need for boys and men's collaboration to fight gender inequality:

You can find the script of her speech here.

Finally, if you want a ready-to-use lesson plan that helps you to work on language while developing this topic, do not miss the proposal taken  from 
a great website with many lesson plans.  I have  downloaded it for you  so you can access it from here.

I hope that the ideas I have laid out above enable all of  us  to make our students  reflect upon the causes and consequences of gender inequality and, above all, teach them to respect the value of gender equality so that they are able to know a different reality in a near future.

SAFETY ON THE INTERNET

Cyberbullying, sexting, grooming are  starting to get into our dictionaries because unfortunately traditional bullying has evolved into a new way of humiliating  or harassing kids and teenagers. Cyberbullying means that someone  may be harassed  by someone else hiding behind his or her cell phone or computer screen.  I reckon that our role as teachers must include setting out clear standards of behaviour when they use the Internet, social networking sites and mobile phones. 

An example of a classroom practice that can help to  make our students aware of the dangers of the net is this sequence by Pilar Torres, a Secondary English teacher from Angel de Saavedra High School in Córdoba.  In this project, students listen, speak and write in English about computers, social networks and internet safety. Regarding language, they will learn the vocabulary related to the topics mentioned before and they will be provided with  a very meaningful context to use the modal verb "should" to give advice  to their peers.

The final outcome of the project is a digital poster that includes advice on internet safety and a very useful rubric to assess both the format and the content  in the poster is suggested by Pilar.

Some other related resources may be:

Video on internet safety

Internet safety quiz

Digizen website

A TEXT FROM A CLIL MUSIC LESSON AS AN EXAMPLE OF COORDINATION BETWEEN THE LANGUAGE TEACHER AND THE SUBJECT TEACHER

Nowadays, all CLIL practitioners can get material for their content areas from a variety of sources, such as the Internet or from coursebooks. However, on many occasions materials have to be adapted so as to make them easier for students. I have written other entries on this blog on the convenience of providing students with visual scaffolding so today I would like to give some clues on how to make content in a Music lesson easier for students without diminishing the amount of content-obligatory language.

  

Content-obligatory language could be defined as the language needed for subject matter mastery in the mainstream classroom. This language consists of words, structures, collocations  and functions which are essential for the topic they are studying.

CLIL students will also need content-compatible language, i.e. the everyday kind of language which is useful for both the study of a specific topic and for general use  (verbs like blow, hit, play which will be useful in a Music lesson but also in everyday situations)

   

I have mentioned the word language twice so it is important to stop at this point to clarify that the  CLIL teacher focuses on language only in the sense of enhancing the effectiveness of this role; he or she should not spend his/her time  explaining the difference between the past simple and present perfect. That is precisely why coordination between language and subject teachers is essential in order to identify language problems in the topic in advance so that they can be dealt with effectively.

Let’s focus on a text that can be part of a Music lesson on the orchestra (string instruments) and see how we could make it easier for students while respecting the necessary amount of content-obligatory language.  This is my proposal.