CLILling me softly…

Laura Loder Büchel  |
PH Zürich

Si enseigner des contenus ayant du sens pour l’apprenant dans les cours d’anglais de l’école primaire peut être judicieux, enseigner la langue anglaise est en revanche absolument nécessaire. Bien entendu, diluer les contenus d’un cours ou simplifier à l’excès la langue anglaise pour pouvoir aborder certains contenus est également frustrant et souvent insatisfaisant. Le présent article propose d’abandonner le “I” (intégration) de CLIL, au profit d’un fort accent sur le “L” (langue), et un “C” (contenus) sans objectifs d’apprentissages linguistiques particuliers, dans le but d’un enseignement de la langue plus efficace et ayant pour but de préparer les élèves à l’école secondaire.

Since the advent of English in the primary school in Switzerland, there has been endless discussion about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). A special form of CLIL in public elementary schools was piloted in the canton of Zurich in the late 90s through Schulprojekt 21 (Stotz & Meuter, 2003) when English was not yet its own subject - it was integrated into various other established school subjects such as handicrafts or science and social studies. Since that time, as English became its own subject and an intercantonal curriculum was developed, the initial concept has undergone changes and much of the pioneering practice has been lost due to mandatory EFL coursebooks, end of term grades and other larger changes to public education which occupy teachers’ time. At the peak of the piloting, we saw teachers with no textbooks with which to teach English use elbow grease and innovation to passionately integrate the English language into whatever they were teaching. From the lifecycle of the frog to how to help hedgehogs survive the winter, from origami to experiments – it was all done and there are myriad archived lesson plans and Schulprojekt21 materials in the basement of Zurich University of Teacher Education. […]