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• Liliana García Abril

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Practice Activities – CLIL

SUBJECT PRACTICE ACTIVITIES: CONTENT & LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

Name and surname(s): Liliana García Abril Group: 1 Date: May 25th, 2019

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Practice Activities – CLIL

Index

TASK 1.............................................................................................................................................. 3 TASK 2.............................................................................................................................................. 5 TASK 3.............................................................................................................................................. 7 TASK 4.............................................................................................................................................. 8 TASK 5.............................................................................................................................................. 9 References..................................................................................................................................... 11

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Practice Activities – CLIL

Practice Activities Do the following exercises and justify your answers.

Task 1 Look at the contents of the grammar in the following indexes. What do they have in common? What was the criterion used to select the content?

New Headway Pre-intermediate, by John Soars (OUP, 2000). An extract from a textbook designed for the teaching/ learning of EFL and addressed to Pre-intermediate students

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Adventure Elementary OUP This is an extract from a textbook designed for the teaching/ learning of EFL and addressed to Elementary students. The contents of the grammar presented in these two extracts are similar as they focus on present tenses and are related to real world topics which are well structured in units and contents separated as well; even if the names of the units are different, the contents themselves are very equal. Another important aspect which is very similar, is the categories that the extracts have as the unit, content, vocabulary and grammar. According to the grammar the students can carry out process where they are able to develop activities in the real-world, as the units intend to show students real-life content that they would learn how to use it in case they need it, as they contain a high level of ‘notional’ language (Ball, 2016). At the same time, these units “possessed a linguistic objective” (Ball, 2016, p. 10) where the textbooks mentioned encourage students to talk about their daily life using present tenses as reflected in the units’ names (“getting to know you” “time out”). Thus, for the two contents, it is quite relevant to have a sequence, so the learner has the opportunity to learn different contents in present supporting in the daily expressions and functional English.

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Practice Activities – CLIL

Task 2 What are the differences between the following tables of contents? What do they suggest you?

(Adapted from “Galaxy 2”)

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Practice Activities – CLIL

Adventure Elementary OUP The table of content of the first book suggests that content is based on the communicative language teaching perception. Each unit not only stipulates the topic, content, vocabulary or grammar but also, the process that it represents under the established skills and sub-skills. Group activities seems to be relevant since learners have to interact having in mind the sub-themes of the unit. Furthermore, the fact is divided into different skills and activities. Also, it takes into account students’ interest and motivations. Here, the pair or group work is enclosure in some activities which allow learners to gain new vocabulary and grammar, and at the same time, exchange ideas and work collaboratively since the design of the unit is more students centred (Arzamendi et al, 2016). In contrast, the second table, is only structural based content perspective, where language is been learned through a collection of structures or patterns of sentences and vocabulary (Dushi, 2012). The activities and vocabulary are subordinate to the grammar content. The main goal is to master the structures than the acquisition of language. Thus, learners do not have the chance to acquire new vocabulary, grammar or expressions which might be useful for their learning process. Another difference with the first table of content is that here, students seem to have a lack on interaction as they do not have a real discussion where they could negotiate meaning. 6

Practice Activities – CLIL

Therefore, learners only centered on the grammatical structure of a sentences rather than the development of the skills, so the language acquisition process only occurs as the learner is able to bring out the task (Richard, 2016).

Task 3 Look at the following activity. What type of methodological practice does it promote?

Language study Words ending in s Look at the transcripts below of David and Bridges talking about their families (section 26b and 19). How many words are there ending in s or ‘s? Does the s or ‘s always mean the same? Some words always end in s, for example, his. What about this one? I’ve got one brother and he’s got two daughters. Put the words ending in s or ‘s into categories. Bridget’s family DA: If we look at, erm, your mother Sheila. Has she got any brothers and sisters? BG: Yes, she’s got one sister. DA: No brothers? BG: No. DA: Okey. What about your father? BG: He’s got three sisters. DA: Oh, and no brothers? BG: No. David’s family BG: Now it’s my turn. Your father’s called John?, and your mother’s called Pat? DA: That’s right. BG: And your brother’s married to… Jane? DA: Jane. Good. BG: Jane. And they’ve got two daughters called… Emma and Sarah. Now look at the text in Section 24. Find thirteen more words that end in s and put them into categories. ADAPTATION FROM Collins Cobuild English Course (Willis and Willis 1988:15)

The activity assigned here, encourage the Lexical approach since learners have to determine language under grammatical rules. As Lewis (1993) highlighted “is carried out by lexis than grammatical structure”. In this instance, learners are asked to discover the rules and meaning to identify the accurate use of the “S” by classifying the words or 7

Practice Activities – CLIL

chunks. Furthermore, the lexical Syllabus also promotes the task-based methodology were learners are encouraged to communicate in English in order to improve their language communicative skills by going through a learning process in written and oral form.

Task 4 What type of objectives would you include the following statements in?

LISTENING I can understand simple words and phrases, like “excuse me”, “sorry”, “thank you”, etc. I can understand the days of the week and months of the year. I can understand times and dates. I can understand numbers and prices. GRAMMAR Adjectives: common and demonstrative Adverbs of frequency Comparatives and superlatives Going to […] British Council, Level A1 – English Foreign Language

The type of objectives is based on the CEFR which makes an “analysis of the functions, notions, grammar and vocabulary necessary to perform the communicative tasks described on the scales could be part of the process of developing new sets of language specifications.” (Council of Europe, 2001: p. 30). The objectives presented here, are related to a Level A1 which according to the Council of Europe (2001) is called Breakthrough since it is: “is considered the lowest level of generative language use – the point at which the learner can interact in a simple way, ask and answer simple questions about themselves, where they live, people they know, and things they have, initiate and respond to simple statements in areas of immediate need or on very familiar topics, rather than relying purely on a very finite rehearsed, lexically organized repertoire of situation-specific phrases” (Council of Europe, 2001: p. 33).

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According to this, I would include the following objectives:

1. Student will interact in a simple way in order to rehearse simple statements for specific situations in real life.

2. Student will identify English Parts of Speech in order to gain words and simple phrases to stablish conversation to “understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases” (Council of Europe, 2001: p. 24).

Task 5 What does the following information gap activity suggest you?

Student A

COUNTRY

CAPITAL

France Dublin Spain Amsterdam Belgium

Student B

COUNTRY

CAPITAL Paris

Ireland Madrid The Netherlands Brussels

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As this task reflects an information gap activity, its purpose is to generate a situation in which learners need to communicate with each other so as to obtain some particular information from each other, and hence to close the gap. The gap usually refers to some information learner might recognize from his/her previous knowledge or might be derived from the teacher setting up the gap by providing determined information to a learner that another learner needs to get (Tanner,2012). This activity is designed in order to increase content and at the same time communicative strategies “based on a standard trick in communicative language teaching” (Ball, 2016, pg. 77), thus, the activity recommends that the students work in pairs in order to fill in the gaps to be able to communicate with each other and thereby developing speaking, reading, writing and listening skills as well. Besides, this task suggests that students have some information that other students do not have, so as the task is a communicative task, student need to ask their classmates in order to achieve it and perform it correctly to complete the missing information. The type of activity suggests here, is a Pyramid discussions, which enables sometimes students to ‘think-pair-share’, since it allows learners to structure first their learning in their own and then permit them to move on to be able to discuss what they have recollected to get to a final performance where they can share ideas with another classmate to make it meaningful for his/her learning (Tanner,2012).

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References Arzamendi, J., Ball, P., and Gassó, E. (2016) Second Language Acquisition. Funiber. Ball, P. (2016). Content and Language Integrated Learning. Funiber. Council of Europe. (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge, U.K: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Dushi, G. (2012). Essay on the Structural Approach of Teaching English. Retrieved from http://www.preservearticles.com/2012010920309/essay-on-the-structuralapproach-of-teaching-english.html Tanner, R. (2012, March 19th). Reflection on CLIL [Web Blog post]. Retrieved from http://clilreflections.blogspot.com/2012/03/getting-learners-speaking-inenglish.html Richard, J. (n.d). Difference Between Task, Exercise, Activity. [online]. Available at https://www.professorjackrichards.com/difference-task-exercise-activity/.

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