Monday, November 7, 2016

CLIL: From Europe to Greece


Last week I had the chance to attend a very informative lecture about CLIL(Content and Language Intgrated Learning)  and how schools in Europe adopt this method at CITY college in Thessaloniki.

Dr. Mattheoudaki, Associate Professor at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, mentioned first the Common European Framework of Reference concerning language learning and moved on to explain P21 (Framework for learning in the 21st century.
Then she analyzed the 8 basic competences for lifelong learning according to the European Framework of Reference:
  • Communication in one's mother tongue
  • Communication in Foreign Languages
  • Mathematical Competence and basic competence in science and technology
  • Digital Competence
  • Metacognitive Competence (learning how to learn)
  • Social Competences
  • Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship: one's ability to transform ideas to actions
  • Cultural knowledge and expression
 Dr. Mattheoudaki continued and described how foreign languages are taught in Europe and explain the difference in the terms Plurilingualism (ability to speak in at leas three foreign languages and switch between languages according to the circumstances) and multilingualism ( a society in which different languages coexist side by side but are used separately.

CLIL was then analyzed. It is the method that gives the opportunity to the student to learn language in context and learn terminology of different fields from a very young age. The advantage of this method is that students become proficient in the language they will later need in their work or studies early on. Additionally, studies have shown that when students use the language more, their brain tends to work more as the brain of a bilingual person. 

In the end of the lecture participants had the chance to watch videos of pilot classes who used CLIL and how students advanced in a period of 3 moths which was really impressive.

All in all it was a very informative and interesting lecture. 

No comments:

Featured Post

Teaching online through Lockdown

Some months ago, when I wrote a blog on online Teaching for iTDi , I could never imagine that the teaching world would turn digital overn...