Integrating everyday language with conceptual development across the CLIL pathway

Tarja Nikula & 
Josephine Moate 
University of Jyväskylä

Einer der Schlüsselprozesse beim CLIL besteht darin, die Fortschritte der Lernenden zu unterstützen, wenn sie sich auf einem Kontinuum von konkreten, einfacheren Formen des Alltagsdenkens und -sprechens zu formelleren und abstrahierteren Formen der Wissensvermittlung bewegen. Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Rolle der Alltagssprache bei der konzeptuellen Entwicklung im CLIL-Unterricht und bei der Sozialisierung der Schülerinnen und Schüler zu fachspezifischen Verwendungsarten der Sprache. Er bedient sich des Begriffs des Bildungspfads um herauszustreichen wie Alltagssprache und Bildungssprache eng miteinander verbunden sind. Beispiele aus der Primar- und der Sekundarstufe zeigen auf, wie die Rolle der Gebrauchssprache sich verändert von eher formelhafter Verwendung hin zur Funktion als Vermittler von abstrakterem Denken bei älteren Lernenden.

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL), an educational approach involving the use of foreign/additional language as a tool for instruction, keeps gaining ground in different countries and across educational levels. CLIL has been shown to have potential especially from the language learning perspective because it creates a space to be engaged in meaningful language use. Recently there have been calls to focus on the very concept of integration and what the process of simultaneous development of language and content knowledge and skills requires from teaching. It has also been emphasised that the notion of integration requires a reorientation towards language skills as specific to different content areas and disciplines (e.g. Meyer et al., 2015; Nikula et al., 2016). This requires progression from everyday language to what can be called academic language which, in general terms, means education involving gradual movement on a continuum from more everyday, concrete and commonsense to more technical and abstract uses of language (see Forey & Polias, 2017: 148-147). In this process, furthermore, subject and disciplinary areas involve learners socialising into content-specific ways of constructing knowledge and using language (Nikula, 2017). This process challenges those learning through L1 and L2 alike (see Llinares & Whittaker, 2010). This progression, however, should not be seen as a matter of everyday language being entirely replaced by academic language. Rather, as Barwell (2016: 113) notes, informal and academic language are inextricably linked and both are necessary. For this reason, we want to call attention to the role of everyday language in content and language integration and in conceptual development and orient to CLIL as an ongoing process along the educational path. Using vignettes from CLIL classrooms from primary and secondary level, we illustrate fundamental ways in which language and content integrate at different points in the educational pathway.