Page 60 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content Communication
Progression in knowledge Interaction; language used
and skills to learn
4Cs Model Figure 3.1
Cognition Culture
Thinking and Awareness of self The Elements of CLIL
understanding and the others (following Coyle et al.,
2010)

The language of learning

CLIL
linguistic
The language for learning – The language through learning –
progression
classroom language and developing own strategies to
professional literacy access new language
Figure 3.2 The Language Triptych (adapted from Coyle et al., 2010, p. 60)

could be to calculate and convert units of time. This can be done through
a variety of communicative and creative tasks in which pupils develop the
skills for calculating and describing time. The content determines the lan-
guage that will be used, so the focus will be on time vocabulary (year, month,
week, day, hour, second) and useful structures (A minute has 60 seconds). Sev-
eralstudiesindicatethat CLILstudentsreach theirlearningtargetsin thecon-
tent lessons just as well as those learning the same curriculum material in
their L1 (Tedick & Wesely, 2015; Verdev et al., 2023).

Communication
The emphasis is on developing language skills and using language as a tool
for communication while learning content from various subjects. Coyle et al.
(2010) proposed the idea of ‘the language triptych’ as a framework for the
analysis of language used in a CLIL lesson. The language triptych is com-
posed of three types of language: the language of learning, language for
learning and the language through learning (Figure 3.2).
The languageoflearning refers to the language needed to access concepts
and skills in an area of knowledge. This does not only involve the key vo-
cabulary related to the topic at hand but also the grammatical patterns and
language skills (e.g. explaining, describing, etc.) needed by the learners in
the learning process. For example, in a lesson on ‘geometric shapes,’ the lan-

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