UNIT 3 WHAT’S CLIL?

WHAT’S CLIL?

CONTENT LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

CLIL refers to situations where the contents are simultaneously learning with a foreign language.

Also, CLIL is a flexible concept, where the most important is education and not multilingualism, because multilingualism is the added value. Besides, methodology is what we must adjust to each group. And we can use a CLIL like a tool for the promotion of foreign languages and minority languages.

On the one hand CLIL has 5 dimensions: The culture dimension, the environment dimension, the language dimension, the content dimension and the learning dimension.

On the other hand the 4 CLIL Principles are: Communication, Culture, Content and Cognition. The Communication is using language to learn whilst learning to use language.

It is also important to indicate that language acquisition is cyclical and recursive, learners acquire best when they create, discover and construct their own meanings, and other important point is that reading is essential for developing academic English skills.

In Teaching is also important to know the order of language skills and work that way since childhood education. We must begin with listening, continue the speaking, after reading and finally writing.

In my opinion, it’s very important make the content of the subjects relevant for students, connect with their lives, culture… because it’s the best way to learn. We must never forget that communication has a primary importance and the students need to recognize them for their efforts, especially working with children with specials needs as I do.

My best teacher

Before writing about my best teacher, I have to say, that at primary school I studied French, so, when I went to the high school I didn’t know nothing of English. 

I had to study English hard, but it wasn’t enough. My parents had to make a big effort and I started to go to an English academy. Eventually my marks improved. 

The most important moment for me was when I met Giowana… She has been the best teacher I've ever had. She was close, friendly and the most important, she really cared about us. When I was studying in third year of high school she helped me more with my English language. And one day she said to me that she wanted to apply for a scholarship to go a month in summer to study in England. That was very strange for me because she didn’t propose it to all students of the class. And finally I was the only one in my class who went to England. 

That summer was very important to me because I learned a lot and met many people, and the most important was that I lost my fear to speak in English. 

It was long ago so I don't know anything about her, but I would like to thank her because she trusted me and gave me such opportunity in my life.