CLIL and its benefits in contemporary teaching and learning

Hello everyone! This time, I'd like to talk about a very interesting topic. Hope you like it!

CLIL and its benefits in contemporary teaching and learning

These days, the language learning has changed radically, which brought many new methods and approaches in the language teaching, especially for teaching English. There are many methods of teaching English at our disposal and one of the most promising, innovative methods that’s also growing so fast in so many European countries is CLIL. But, what is CLIL and what are its benefits in teaching and learning of a foreign language?

CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Learning, is a teaching method used to teach both a particular subject and a foreign language. In other words, language is used to teach content and content is used to teach language. It has a lot to do with language immersion. The term was created by David Marsh in 1994 and consists in learning a foreign language through learning a subject in that language, for example, learning History in English in an Albanian-speaking country.

There are a number of benefits to using CLIL in the classroom. Firstly, many teachers see CLIL as a more natural way to learn a language. When a subject is taught in that language there is a concrete reason to learn both at the same time. And as students have a real context to learn the language in, they are often more motivated to do so, as they can only get the most of the content if they understand the language around it. This way, student’s progress more quickly and solidly than they would with deliberately separated subjects. Moreover, being content focused, CLIL classes add an extra dimension to the class and engage students, which is especially advantageous in situations where students are unenthusiastic about learning a language. Thus, students are actually doing something with the language, rather than dealing in some of the rather tired phrases and topics that old-fashioned language lessons tend to turn up. The focus is on language acquisition rather than enforced learning, i.e. building up language competency through using it to explore and discuss curriculum topics, leading to more natural and sophisticated communicative skills over time.

Secondly, because CLIL is so strongly associated with both a content area and a foreign language, it’s naturally imbued with cultural and societal significance. Your students will develop a stronger understanding of a foreign culture as a result of CLIL instruction and will be more likely to “see the big picture” in terms of the relationship between language and society. Also, knowing more about a language increases sometimes the learners’ interests in different cultures such as the one they are learning the language from. As a result, CLIL helps students in developing bilingualism or multilingual interests and attitudes as well as broadening their intercultural knowledge and understanding.

Thirdly, CLIL also encourages students to develop 21st Century skills, including the ability to think critically, be creative, to communicate, collaborate, to prepare students for further studies and work and increase their opportunities in life.

Finally, CLIL offers new learning strategies while adding diversity and flexibility to existing methods and forms of classroom practice.

On the other hand, CLIL as many other methods has some challenges. As CLIL is subject-focused, language teachers may also have to develop their own knowledge of new subjects in order to teach effectively. They must also structure classes carefully so that the students understand the content of the lesson, as well as the language through which the information is being conveyed. In other words, there is a need for more teacher training and materials.

And when it comes to classroom management, educators need to be very aware of individual student understanding and progress. It’s therefore important to consistently concept check and scaffold the materials to be sure both the language and content are being learned.

All things considered, the CLIL approach provides lots of opportunities in teaching and learning a language. It is a much more sophisticated way of learning languages and learning other subjects. CLIL brings authentic learning into the learning experience from the very beginning, it teaches you how to learn in a safe way and it slowly guides you to becoming a master learner / speaker of a foreign language. However, we must also take into consideration the challenges or disadvantages before applying this method into the classroom. I believe that CLIL is a great method. Many also call it ‘the method of the future’, as it is accepted by parents as well, but I think that it still needs improvement, especially, in the lack of funds, teachers, trainers and materials. CLIL has very good points but it is not appropriate for every country or system. Efforts and studies should continue to be made in order for it to be successful.

The Assessment / Evaluation of Students

 Hi everyone! 👋 I hope you are doing well!😊

This week, I'd like to talk about a fundamental factor in teaching, - 'the assessment or evaluation of students'. 

Firstly, assessment is very important, as it provides feedback to the teachers about their teaching and the students about their learning. It's crucial for teachers to know if they are teaching the right way or  whether or not students are learning what they are supposed to be learning and gaining something from it and if there is a way to teach the subject better, or promote better learning. Also, students need to see their results and receive feedback on what they could do better to ameliorate their learning process or notice their mistakes and correct them on their own.

Secondly, there are many ways that teachers use to assess students in the classroom. Usually, the teacher assesses students’ performance during all class activities, mostly through the activation of students during classroom hours, by asking and answering questions, doing class-work and home-work exercises, through tests, projects and the student’s portfolio, where all student's work is collected. 

Here are some of my own suggestions to assess student's learning in the physical and online classroom:

1.Every day the teacher checks student’s homework to see if they have done it or not. Those who have done the homework are evaluated with a ‘plus’, whereas those who haven’t with a ‘minus’. 

2.Sometimes, the English teacher might use a mixture of evaluation forms in order to grade that student with a ‘10’ grade, such as:                                                                                                                           

• The student reads aloud his/her homework to the class and then translates it: one sentence in English, one sentence in Albanian.;                                                                                                                           

• The teacher asks students about the previous lesson: ‘What was it about?; Translate the new words/phrases learned in the previous lesson from English into Albanian or from Albanian to English.’ 

• When asking about grammar, in particular about the past simple tense, the teacher may ask questions such as: ‘How do we form the past simple tense?; For what do we use it?; Give examples.; Why you have chosen this verb tense and not the other tense?; How can we distinguish or understand that this is the correct verb tense?’, etc.

3.Another way of evaluation I'd suggest in the classroom is to allow students for self-assessment. Thus, to give students an opportunity to assess their own learning and reflect on the progress they are making. For instance, I may give students at the end of the lesson some kind of “review activity”, so that they may see the progress they’ve made in just one lesson. For instance, taking the last five minutes of class to ask my students, “What have you learned today?”.  By doing this, students may pick up something they missed earlier. Something else, I could do is also to have some sort of “performance activity about correction and feedback”, like a role play. When students are done, I would end the class with corrections of words or expressions they used incorrectly; things they forgot to say, etc…; or sometimes I would ask students to give their opinion or feedback on their classmates’ performance. I strongly believe that we as teachers should use this way of evaluation more, as this process also helps students stay motivated and interested in their own learning.

Using Technology for Student Assessments

As we all know, technology has changed the way we teach and how students learn. Teachers can now use technology to help with their student assessment.

1.Plickers is a fantastic way to get formative assessment from your students without each student needing a device. The teacher sets up a Plickers account, and prints off a class set of answer cards. The teacher asks the class a question. The students respond by turning their answer card in one of the four directions. The teacher uses a smartphone or tablet to scan all of the student’s cards. Since each card is assigned to a specific student, teachers get real data on who answered the questions correctly and who still needs more review. 

2.Ed Puzzle allows teachers to embed questions and quiz questions aligned to the specific video students are watching. It let’s you know which student have completed the assignment and the grade they achieved. Students can now independently watch a video, with the benefits of the guiding questions from their teacher. This would be great as a station activity or to leave for a day when students have a substitute teacher.

3.Edulastic - An efficient platform and a powerful standards-based assessment tool that tracks student progress on standards mastery, especially for test prep.

4.Classkick - Easy-to-use, real-time monitoring, feedback, and assessment for 1-to-1. It's a great option for teachers who want to go paperless, provide specific feedback, and encourage collaboration among students in 1-to-1 classrooms.

5.Spiral - It's an engaging, easy-to-use tool that supports both formative and summative assessment while allowing for student collaboration.

6.ClassFlow - is a robust lesson creation and delivery tool that helps with assessment. In the hands of a determined teacher, this platform's useful suite of tools can support learning experiences that move from instruction to assessment and back.

To sum up, student assessment is an ongoing continuous and daily activity in the classroom, and it is integral to effective teaching. There are many ways we can use to assess our students both in a physical and an online classroom. However, we should choose carefully as that can not only have a positive, but also a negative effect on our student's motivation, process of learning and their attitude towards us.

That all! Thanks! Hope it helps you!

Week 9

Topic: “How to teach grammar in a fun way?”

Grammar teaching is an essential aspect of education. Without proper grammar, writing, reading, and speaking all lose meaning and value. Grammar is an important subject for teachers to impart to their students. But learning how to teach grammar can be a challenge.  I don’t want to say grammar lessons are the ugly stepsister of teaching, but they can be if they’re not implemented in a fun and meaningful way.  For our students, learning grammar can be an amazing experience, or it can be a monotonous routine. It’s true that students are more likely to be engaged in the learning process if you’re excited about the content, but I’ve noticed from my experience that students will stay engaged if they’re participating in a way that leaves room for creativity, choice or snort-inducing laughter.

How can we define grammar? Grammar can be defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words or bits of words in order to form longer units of meaning. There is no doubt then that teaching grammatical rules constitutes an essential aspect in the mastering of a given language.

Tips for teaching Grammar to students, from ‘young learners – beginners’ to ‘high school – intermediate and advanced learners’

First of all, the teacher should use different steps when teaching grammar. Thus, the teacher should make sure that the lesson is structured accordingly and that the students are being exposed to the grammar properly and are getting enough practice while using it.

4 General Steps to teach Grammar:

1.Exposure. We have to expose the students to the grammar structure. This, could be in written form, for e.g. I could give the students some sort of a story, a reading passage, a dialog that they can look at in a video and the grammar is also there. Another way, could be in a spoken form by telling the students a story; or in listening form, where students can listen to a dialog and basically listen to the grammar structure. So, what’s important here is that the students are exposed to the grammar structure.

2. Notice and select: After the students are exposed to the grammar structure, I give students some exercises that allow them to notice and select the pattern of the grammar structure. For instance, I could give them an exercise, like a controlled exercise, where the students have to answer some questions, look at the structure and the questions, basically lead the students to notice the pattern for the structure, while I’m guiding the students to do this.

3. Practice Stage – Here, I allow students to execute the structure on their own by doing some practice activities. For example, if I have exposed the students to the grammar through a written text, I’ll have them practice with the written text, like completing the missing words such as verb forms either in the present, past simple tense or another tense in the text and I ask students to make their own sentences with those words; or answer questions related to the text. On the other hand, if I’ve exposed grammar to students through a dialogue, I’ll have them practice on writing their own dialogues by working in pairs or small groups of students.

4. Homework and assessment – I give students their homework to practice at home on their own, and finally do some sort of an assessment, such as a ‘game – quiz’( using interacting features to do that such as action buttons, hyperlinks, pictures in it, sounds that tell if the answer is correct or wrong and gifs showing their thumbs up or down) at the end of the lesson or maybe in the next lesson, that allows me to evaluate how well the students have understood the grammar structure and how well they can use it. The assessment stage should mirror the exposure stage.

Tips to make the lesson more fun and enjoyable in the classroom

1.Include, games, songs, pictures or videos                     

• Games: By using games that include a little competition in the classroom, you can have fun and get your students to learn as well. In terms of grammar, for example: “Jeopardy”, “Who wants to be a millionaire?” –  And a traditional board game format where you throw a dice and move around the board all lend themselves well to grammar points. We can make our own or find them online. I could also award points to the winning pair for each task.  This, will encourage them to do their best and if I do this over the course of a week, they’ll see their points build up and become even more competitive. They can convert these points into a prize on Fridays. For instance, 20 points = chocolate, 30 points = a music video of their choice played for the class to enjoy, 40 points = no homework.

• Songs - offer a wealth of grammar points and help students to practice their listening skills too. I, as a teacher may create my own lyrics completion worksheets or have students listen to and read the lyrics of a song while looking out for and highlighting specific grammar areas.

• Pictures, such as pictures cut out from illustrated magazines, postcards, photographs, posters, maps, transparencies, etc. – Teaching grammar through visual aids, especially through pictures, seems to be important in the sense that it arouses interest, motivation in the pupils / students in beginner but also intermediate and advanced classes. As the saying goes “Interest begets effort”, this is true in the sense that for undertaking any work, we must be first and foremost motivated and interested in that work. So, if a pupil / student is motivated, the process of learning grammar will become easier and he will understand quicker without time consuming. But if the teaching is verbal, it may appear as something boring for the pupils / students. Then the teacher should bear all these factors in mind not to use abstract things which may result in not conveyed messages.

• Using videos – e.g. specific activities could involve rewriting the dialogue with a specific focus, answering comprehension questions based on a video clip or continuing the story with – “what happens next?” type of task.

 

2. Get Students to Move with the TPR (Total Physical Response) method

Getting your EFL students up and mov­ing around the classroom will serve multiple purposes. Not only will physi­cal activity keep your students more awake and focus their attention on the lesson at hand, but it will also help them remember and retain the language they are learning. Using TPR (Total Physical Response) method, you can make physical as­sociations with language concepts. Though having stu­dents move around the classroom and do actions during the class may seem chaotic at times, but the ad­vantages far outweigh the drawbacks as it reinforces the learning items and keep them in the long-term memory.

An example of the TPR method activity: The grammar version of ‘hot potato’

Many students, especially those in the elementary grades, enjoy being able to get up and move around. I ask the students to get up and stand in a circle. I give the first student a bean bag and set a basic timer for a random interval, such as one minute and six seconds. The student with the bean bag must think of a word that falls into a particular category, such as a verb, and then pass it to the left as quickly as possible. The student left holding the bag when the time beeps must leave the circle. This also allows me as a teacher to assign the grammar areas based on the students strengths and weaknesses as well as gain a better understanding of to what extent they have greased the material.

3. Teach Grammar Communicatively

Communicative classes focus on com­munication and langue use by stu­dents rather than theory and repetitive practice. It would be perfect for learning to occur if you were used to encouraging your students to use the language that they know in meaningful communications. In grammar class, include speaking activities and give your students a chance to exploit the language they’ve learned in real-life situations whenever pos­sible.

4. Let my students be the teachers

As a way of reviewing grammar points after I have taught and practised with the class, why not hand over the responsibility of teaching to the students themselves! For this, I might divide my students into small groups and have them prepare a grammar activity or two with explanations of the grammar point on a given area. They should then ‘teach’ this to the rest of the class and check the answers to their self-created activity with the group too. This can be a quick or much more dawn out task based on the group’s size, ability and time constraints.

5. Use Group Activities

Using group activities, role-plays, discussions and other such activities will both keep your students interested in the grammar classes and keep them accountable to one another for class participation and task accomplish­ments. Some students are shy and may disap­point you. These shy and disappointing students are often reluctant to participate in individual activities. Take advantage of them by involving them in group tasks when possible. They will feel interested and desire to participate.

6. Avoid Lecturing

Even students with the best attention spans have a difficult time listening to a 20-minute lecture in the EFL class. Nowadays, students of all ages expect and desire quick changes from one activity to another. That means that you should avoid keeping to talk for more than ten minutes on any grammar lesson. Keep things interesting for you and your students by planning quick changes in topics and activities when possible throughout your grammar class.

8. Offer Variety

When you follow a certain syllabus in a textbook, you will find you offer the same activities for your students day after day, unit after unit. This makes your students feel bored, so you should create different types of activities with every grammatical rule you teach, and to engage your students, try to meet their learning styles in your teaching. When your students are using discussion, research, pre­sentations and other means to learn and practice grammar, they will stay more interested in what you and their fellow students have to say.

Some other activities to make grammar more fun could be:

1. Wake students up!

Making my students think by providing incorrect examples now and again such as ‘I have went to America’ and giving them time to correct me. They may not as it’s quite a common error when using the Present Perfect but they might surprise me and if they don’t, I might prompt them! They’ll soon get into the habit of examining all the examples I write on the board and the answers I give just in case I’m trying to catch them out. It’s a great way of keeping them on their toes!

2. Make it personal (3th – 9^th – 12^th grade)

Students love getting to know their teacher and you’ll find that they’re much more engaged when you bring yourself to your classroom. Bring in personal photos of a recent holiday and project them on screen for everyone to see.  Elicit vocabulary and ask questions such as: ‘What am I doing in each photo?’, What do you think will happen next?’, ‘What do you think happened before the photo was taken?’ Then, let them work with a partner to do the same with a few more photos.

3. Dress up as grammar. (3th – 9^th grade)

This could be a thing that you do as the teacher for Halloween or a random Friday, but I think it would be fun to figure out a way for students to participate too. Consider acting out or dressing up as the following:

Dependent clause: A Santa who goes around asking everyone if they can give him a ride, loan him $20, make him a sandwich, etc.

Possessive pronoun: Wears a shirt that says “MINE” and goes around stealing others’ pencils and belongings (eventually gives them back).

Dangling preposition: Walks around with a fishing rod that has “caught” a piece of paper with a preposition written on it.

Part of speech: Has a sign around neck that says “SPEE.” (Get it?)

Make funny examples or practice sentences.

I think it is totally worth the effort to write your own practice sentences for grammar.

4. Celebrity biographies (6^th - 12^th grade)

Find a celebrity biography that will be quick and easy to read in class. Have the students use the biography to identify the different forms of the past tense. For example, underline the difference between “she has performed many concerts in her career” versus “she had performed in many concerts” versus “she was born.” Have the students name the verb form being used in each example and ask them to orally explain the difference between the different usages. This exercise will help students see how grammar can influence the meaning of words and potentially alter a story.

That’s all for this week. Thank you everyone! Have a nice day!

Week 8: Teaching an EFL skill with the use of at least 3 media/technology elements

Topic: “How to teach vocabulary and writing skills in an engaging and fun way?”

The main skills that I want to teach to my students which are related to my final project are vocabulary and writing, as they are related to one another, but also speaking, reading and listening. I think that all skills are interrelated with one another and won't function so well separately, although as much as I would like to not all students are good at all these skills, that's why they are divided into different categories. I've included in some way each and everyone of them into my lesson. But, the primary focus of my lesson is teaching the new words of the vocabulary about films/movies, taking about it with my students and writing an article about their favorite movie.

How do we define vocabulary? Vocabulary is the foundation of language.

In a nutshell, vocabulary is important because it’s the basis of all language. It’s the raw building blocks that we can use to express our thoughts and ideas, share information, understand others and grow personal relationships. When you have a wider vocabulary in your target language it also helps support all four language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. As Paul Nation (2015) noted in his paper on vocabulary learning: “Vocabulary is not an end in itself. A rich vocabulary makes the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing easier to perform.” Vocabulary is clearly important for language learning as it underpins all other language skills, can be a stepping stone to high level language use and can help the student to achieve fluency faster. 

What are the benefits of vocabulary?

1. It Improves Reading Comprehension. Research has shown that kids need to understand 98% of the words they read to understand what they are reading. Improving vocabulary skills will improve their understanding of novels and textbooks.

2. It’s Important to Language Development.  Children who develop a rich vocabulary tend to be deeper thinkers, express themselves better and read more. Improving language and literacy skills early in life will help them be more successful academically and communicatively.

3. Communicating Ideas. Successful communication or “saying what you mean” is dependent upon a good vocabulary base. Using the right words when talking, makes you a more effective communicator.

4. Expressing Yourself in Writing. Having a good vocabulary to draw from can help you write more effectively. Students need to use a more formal tone when writing – not conversational language – and to do that, they need a richer vocabulary to tap into those words we don’t use when we speak.

5. Occupational Success. Researcher Johnson O’Connor found that “a person’s vocabulary level is the best single predictor of occupational success.”* Success in the business place depends on your communication skills.

How I would teach vocabulary through the use of media or technology elements?

1.) Using a 'movie vocabulary' video with animation, pictures, written vocabulary words with explanation and the audio voice on the background. I might ask students to watch the video first and try guess the topic of the lesson and then re-watch the video again, but this time I pause it frequently for discussion and clarification. / or I introduce them with the topic of the day: "My favorite movie", and in order to grab my students attention and get them involved in the lesson, I have a class discussion about movies such as: 

1. Do you like movies? Yes. / No.

2. What kind of movies do you like? What genres do you know? (Action, Comedy, Romance, etc.)

3. Who’s your favorite actor / actress?

4. What was the name of the last movie you saw? / Tell me the name of a movie / film you’ve watched recently.

5. What kind of film was it?

6. Did you like it or not? Yes / No? ; Why?

Then, I ask students to watch a video containing the new vocabulary about movies and explain the content of the video in more detail. After that, 2.) I use graphics and pictures to make it more appealing to student's eyes with some other types/genres of movies which weren't in the video; explain it, discuss with them and have a practice review about what they learned until now. / 3.) Also, to make it more practical and see if they really understood everything, I can ask them to do a 'quiz activity' on an online website: https://wordwall.net/play/16749/858/356 5, that I created myself where students have to 'Guess the movie genre/vocabulary' related with the video. Here, each student should write their name, complete the quiz within 5 minutes and submit their answer to me.

The next part is about writing skills.

How do we define writing?                                        

Writing is a core skill that benefits students across the curriculum, K-12 and beyond. It’s the basis of communication, history, art, and more disciplines than can be named. Writing skills are used every day in classrooms, from practicing fine motor skills early on to eventually writing full essays to display critical thinking skills or persuasive skills.

Writing is the foundation of expression we give students, to be built upon throughout their academic career. Although specialized writing classes like composition have faded from popular pedagogy, writing requires a complex intersection of skills that are critical to a student’s life, both in the classroom and out of it.

However, although writing skills are increasingly important, they are often not adequately taught. When writing is taught in schools, writing instruction often takes a backseat to phonics, handwriting skills, and reading comprehension, so I think we as teacher should pay closer attention to this skill.

Why is Writing Important?

Writing is used in many areas of our lives.

• Writing is critical to becoming a good reader.

• Writing is an essential job skill.

• Writing is the primary basis upon which one’s work, learning, and intellect will

be judged—in college, in the work place and in the community.

• Writing equips us with communication and thinking skills.

• Writing expresses who we are as people.

• Writing makes our thinking and learning visible and permanent.

• Writing fosters our ability to explain and refine our ideas to others and ourselves.

• Writing preserves our ideas and memories.

• Writing allows us to understand our lives.

• Writing allows us to entertain others.

How I would teach writing through the use of media or technology elements?

1.) I would use the PowerPoint Presentation using a video projector in class while presenting the writing part. Here, I would use their previous knowledge to guess what a film review is, as I've mentioned their 10th grader students, so they have encountered this topic before in their previous school years. Then after receiving some responses from my students, I move on to the explanation of: "What is a film review?" and "How to write an article / review of your favorite movie?",  - explaining the structure of a review with actual examples, useful words / expressions/ adjectives to describe films and write the review. Then, ask them if they understood or they could provide me with some examples of their own. 2.) Next, I present them with an actual example of a review about the film - 'Ant Man', a reading passage, but first I instruct them to listen to it as an audio recording, they listen to it carefully for the right pronunciation and meaning of the text, and then I ask some students to read it aloud and try to translate it in Albanian while giving feedback if needed. 3.) After that, we move on to the exercises related with the film review, which could be from the textbook or a quiz I've created myself about certain elements in the reading passage, like the structure, its purpose - for students to comprehend more the use of a film review and how to make one themselves. In the end, I give them their 'HOMEWORK: Write an article about your favorite movie (100 – 120 words) for a school magazine, using the plan below. 

Plan

Introduction (Para 1): title, type of movie, actors

Body (Para 2): main characters, plot

Conclusion (Para 3): opinion & reason.' and also give them some recommendations => five websites that will help them become more knowledgeable about films / film reviews and help their English at the same time:

Website 1

https://wordwall.net/play/16749/858/356

Website 2

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a film review website. You can find tens of thousands of film reviews here. It’s a great website to visit when you are deciding what film to watch. You can find out who is in the film, what type of film it is and most importantly what other people thought about the film.

Interesting fact: Rotten tomatoes used to be thrown at actors by the audience if a performance had been bad!

Website 3

ISL Collective

ISLCollective is a website that focuses on English language learning and film. There are hundreds of film clips and each one has interactive learning activities to help you with your English.

Website 4

Trailer Addict

Trailer addict is a website where you can find thousands of trailers (those film clips that are used to advertise and promote movies). Watching trailers can be a great way to practise your English, especially if you don’t want to watch a full film. Alternatively, you can use the website to decide which film to watch at the cinema or at home.

Website 5

IMDb

IMDB.com is another film review website. There are thousands of reviews from professional film critics and the general audience. You can find out more about the film, watch trailers and you can even add your own review.

To conclude: There are lots of ways you can teach vocabulary and writing through the use of media / technological tools and different teaching strategies and approaches. But, it's up to you to choose the most suitable ones for you classroom. I personally would like to use as many as I can to make the learning process of my students more fun and enjoyable.

That's all. Thanks!