At that time I had very little to do with clil approach in my own teaching although I now firmly believe that all elt teachers, in one way or the other, we all promote some kind of clil approach or at least soft clil.
It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I began to get fully involved with clil teaching and clil methodology. My interest surely sparked when Chris Williams from the University of Foggia asked me to join his clil teacher trainer team to deliver some lessons to a group of secondary school teachers.
I must admit that initially, I was quite reluctant to take on such a burden. I needed to convince myself whether there was a connection between an elt teacher and a clil teacher.
Let's start by looking at my profile:
A master’s degree in Languages, followed by a TESOL Certificate and an NVQ in teaching in adult education. An MA in Applied Linguistics which has given me a strong understanding of concepts, current issues and research methods in the core areas of applied linguistics; thanks to it I have been able to develop specialised knowledge of theory and practice in targeted areas of language teaching, technology, and sociolinguistics / intercultural issues;
I have been teaching for almost 20 years covering all sort of classes: from pre-school children to adults; from General to exam preparation classes. English for business as well as English for tourism have also often been on my agenda.
My fairly long stay in the UK saw me working as a teacher of Italian to British students. That was a real challenge! GCSE as well as A' level classes, Italian for specific purposes: fashion and business.
Last but not least, esp classes, teaching legal English to undegraduate law students for the last 12 years together with English for Cultural Heritage undergraduate students.
A good range of classes but where does CLIL fit with all this?
At first glance, CLIL seems to share a lot with all those paths of my life listed above especially my most cherished experience as a native speaker teacher of Italian. This meant I had to retrain myself if I wanted to teach my own mother tongue to speakers of other languages. In that context I was the subject knowledge teacher but I needed to learn how to transfer that knowledge across.
My TESOL training was very handy in that respect since it gave me the opportunity to understand the fundamentals of the English language, including its structure sounds and sound patterns, and words and word formation; to apply this knowledge in classroom pedagogy, curriculum design, materials development, and assessment and evaluation; to reflect upon teaching practice so as to be able to articulate how theory informs practice, and to continue to improve as teachers; to critically evaluate the current literature on TESOL and apply this knowledge in practice in a range of learning settings;
Once back to Italy I got a contract (which I am still on) with the University of Bari teaching legal English to undergraduate students. Legal English has been another big challenge and definitely a more demanding job. This time I was the language expert .. Not the subject teacher!! Not having a legal background I had to start to familiarize with all the typical features encountered in the legal language, learn a lot of new vocabulary and be prepared to present relevant topics to my students. What has probably been the most difficult step is to show my students how to read and understand complex legal texts, let alone writing contract clauses!!
As things stand, ESP classes seem to move very much into this direction of clil approach or at least in the direction of soft clil since here content and method are based on the learner's reasons for learning.
Notwithstanding, we need to make sure we perfectly understand that clil is not like teaching a foreign language. It is teaching the language and an academic subject at the same time so that you learn about maths, biology and geography while you also learn about the language you need to talk about these areas. Anything else is content based approach!!
And yes I have come to the conclusion that elt teachers have got a lot to offer in terms of methodology and approach since they are not only the language experts but also the ones trying out all sort of methods and looking for wonders to attract their learners.
This could well be the key to set up on this new journey! The time will tell where it will take me.
One thing is true and that is clil approach has already influenced my own elt classes let alone my esp classes!!
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