CLIL - Would it be possible at la Sínia?

During a CLIL lesson, a foreign language is used as a tool in the learning of a non-language subject in which both language and the subject have a join role and are integrated.
Teaching subjects through a foreign language has the potential to increase motivation and success for learners, lead teachers to collaborate and take charge of these developments in order to enhance their own teaching and professional interests by generating their own theories of classroom practice. But, apart from that, there are much more reasons to believe in CLIL: Theoretical bases for CLIL

Apart from that, CLIL instruction has some requirements. After reading "The integrated nature of CLIL: A sociocultural perspective" and "Developing CLIL: towards a theory of practice" I am going to comment the most important requirements which are necessary to develop a CLIL lesson, in order to analyse if it would be possible to do CLIL at La Sínia:

- Active participation of the learner
As La Sínia works by projects, students are always asked to participate, they are constantly the centre of the activities and it makes them to get involved in everything. So they are actively learning in almost of the activities.

-  The learners need the language to assist their thinking and develop their higher order thinking skills
The English lessons of la Sínia are very dynamic, but students are not used to talk in English. They use words, but they don't ask or answer questions in English. As it was commented in one of the lessons, students feel shy or they don't want to do mistakes while they speak, so they prefer to speak in Catalan.

 - A CLIL classroom demands a level of talking, of interaction and dialogue activity which is different to the traditional content or language classroom
As I have commented before, the interaction and the dialogue is constant, because normally the student is the centre of the activity; but the problem is that this interaction is never done in English: the teacher speaks in English, but students don't try to follow her. 

- The teacher should have the chance to teach in bilingual/language specialist schools using CLIL methods, apart from practising CLIL teaching in methodology seminars and workshops.
The specialists of the school have a very high level of English, so they are completely able to arrange a CLIL lesson. Apart from that, they have both assist to CLIL courses, to improve their teaching skills and to know a bit more about this methodology.


- Teachers are authoritative mediators
As long as I have seen at their lessons, both specialists manage their lessons as mediators of the students' learning, but keeping their authoritative position, because if they didn't do it, it would be completely difficult to manage the lessons.



After analysing this aspects, I strongly believe that CLIL can be developed in any area if teachers are able to benefit from more cooperation between teacher education institutions and local schools. But it is true that some schools have more difficulties to develop CLIL than others. However, in this case, I think that La Sínia works with a methodology which completely fits with the CLIL requirements. But it has to be said that some aspects should change if it is wanted to achieve a successful CLIL lesson. And the main aspect is, in my opinion, the dialogue between teachers and students in English. Teachers must work on motivating the pupils to speak English at class. It does not matter if they are wrong. The most important is to talk and to try in order to improve their level. This has to be transmitted to the students, and teachers should give talking opportunities to allow students to get used to it before developing a CLIL lesson.


Here there is a page of an interesting teacher and researcher about CLIL, Erwin M.Gierlinger. He has a lot of information about CLIL, some news, projects, models and so on. Have a look at it!
Clilingmesoftly