Do your students talk a lot? Good! CLIL is all about maximizing language output for students. But that is not easily achieved when a teacher explains most of the time, leaving little room for students to actually practice their speaking skills, is it? That is were student speaking time comes…
Why are language expectations important? Guest post by Janet Streeter “Do you know One Direction?” “Have you met Justin Biber?” I was reminded that teenagers are the same the world over. I smiled, said “No, sorry, I’m afraid not” in my best British English and looked hopefully at my colleague…
Pronunciation as a vital element of CLIL A couple of months ago I received a mail asking me about the role of pronunciation in CLIL. Or, to be more specific, phonetics. The write mentioned he could not find any specific content about this topic in relation to CLIL. I have…
Images as a source for language Guest post by Peter Sansom, Part I of the “Practical CLIL ideas” series As an art teacher in my lessons I make use of a great deal of images. Paintings and sculpture from art history, films, drawings and photographs all have a part to play.…
I like running. Twice a week I’ll run a distance somewhere between 5K and 10K. Or at least I try to. Yet I find that I don’t do it when it’s raining it’s cold outside I feel tired Motivation is a thing here. I recently signed up for a run in…
If I would have to name the single biggest question most (new) CLIL teachers have with CLIL it would be: How do you balance language and subject in a CLIL lesson? They might even think the subject content of their lesson would become less important. That is simply NOT true. Let…
Some phrases are used by teachers all over the world. Sentences that have nothing to do with the subject but are vital for classroom. Thousands of teachers say the same things … and make the same mistakes in classroom English. Obviously, this is not the case for native speakers. But if…
They enter your classroom, looking around. Some might be noisy, most of them are silently waiting for the new experiences that await them at the new school. A select few has already read through the books and think they know what to expect. The students sit down, you start the first…
During a recent workshop I received the question regarding the difference between CLIL and immersion. Also, some other people used CLBT and CLIL as different phrases for the same type of language learning. To make matters worse, some teachers argued EFL is a lot like CLIL. EFL, immersion, CLBT and CLIL.…
The number one priority of every CLIL teacher is to activate language. To do that, teachers themselves speak English all the time, but teach a subject of their own. Nothing new so far However, with the focus primarily on the subject, language can fall behind. Or worse, you might revert…