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CLIL and Trilingual Education in Kazakhstan

CLIL and Trilingual Education in Kazakhstan

Sarsembayeva Aitkul Zholdasovna
Kyzylorda oblast
Aral region
An English teacher of School №59
 

«Our young people must study, acquire new knowledge, gain new skills, and skillfully and effectively employ knowledge and technology in everyday life. We need to create the opportunities and ensure the most favorable conditions for that …»N.A.Nazarbayev

About the history CLIL: the CLIL method was used for the first time at the Jyväskylä Finnish University and also in the Netherlands in the late 90s of the last century. The countries mentioned above emphasize project-based learning when students (from their home countries and from abroad) work in various groups for one semester. As a consequence of the co-operation they are given the opportunity to work with people of different backgrounds and with different native languages. This fact enables them to get used to a wide range of accents. The CLIL method is said to correspond with the process of being acquainted with the so-called lingua franca and uses it as a communication tool among nations in order to enable everyone to understand each other without having to learn many languages.

Advantages and Disadvantages CLIL as a teaching method has its advantages but it also has some drawbacks when compared with other approaches. As for the positive aspects the following ones can be named:  learning enhances critical thinking of students; the learning process is based on real life situations; leaning is based on teamwork (in some countries based on projects); raising the intercultural awareness of both students and teachers; increasing employability; breaking various kinds of prejudice and fear of travelling outside the home country; acquiring communicative skills and patterns. Possible negative aspects:  a high level of time consumption for material preparation; students/teachers do not have the relevant level of foreign language knowledge; not enough information on the CLIL method; lack of motivation to use the CLIL approach; reluctance of using the method;  training courses are not available on a regular basis.

        Method:  this is a qualitative study based on interviews and focus groups. The researchers take into account the nature and aim of the research questions, the expected outcomes and the uniqueness of the situation. The research involves an extensive content analysis of policy documents, existing curricula and programmes, and any other materials that universities have developed to support pre-service teacher education for the trilingual academic system. The fieldwork will involve data collection at three higher educational institutions, purposefully selected on the basis of engagement in pre-service teacher education to serve the needs of the evolving trilingual educational system.

This will include one-to-one and focus group interviews with: 1) officials and administrators in higher educational institutions responsible for training trilingual education teachers;
2) teacher educators who directly participate in the teacher learning process;
3) final-year teacher students.
Expected Outcomes: the main impetus that led us to undertake this study is to provide a real-life picture of the current state of affairs with pre-service teacher education to serve national needs of the trilingual education system in Kazakhstan. The study is substantially context-driven.

The practical purpose at a national level is to provide the Ministry of Education and Science with an analytical report based on empirical data collection and analysis, since the project team’s subsequent recommendations are highly likely to be influential in future trilingual education policy and practice. This research is also significant in that it will contribute to the delivery of the Ministry’s Strategic Plan for Trilingual Education and Research.

At an international level, including European contexts, the findings and recommendations will be of interest to those engaged in the development of trilingual/multilingual education systems where one of the languages of instruction will be a foreign language. This research will be of special use at the implementation stage of such systems, as setting up an effective pre-service teacher training can be challenging and require lessons learnt from across various geographical contexts. Since this research is a work in progress, there are no concrete findings, conclusions and recommendations at this stage. However, research findings will be available at the time of the conference. The paper focuses on the following priorities of trilingual education:
—        how teacher training institutions have changed their academic programmes to respond to the needs of pedagogical cadre to deliver trilingual education;
—        to analyze current practices at these institutions to deliver quality teacher education programmers in trilingual education and identify challenges;
—        to identify existing developed good practices that could be used for further dissemination in other teacher training institutions.
Following results were achieved while using Content Language Integration curriculum.

  1. CLILcreates conditions for naturalistic language learning. CLIL is thus seen as an opportunity for importing an element of ‘learning the language in the street’ into formal education. A second major argument revolves around the purpose and the meaning of language use in the classroom. It is true that learning about geography, science or history in the CLIL classroom gives the use of the foreign language a purpose over and beyond learning the language itself.
  2. Next contribution of CLIL is that teacher presentations are missing, i.e. extended teacher speeches, also called ‘lecturing’. This absence of teacher monologue and teacher dominance
  3. The third positive result is that is more conversational symmetry in CLIL classes were achieved,with students having “more space for interaction. Students can be seen to socialize students into subtly different identities as users of the target language, affording them with learning opportunities regarding the target language which are qualitatively different than the ones routinely met in EFL lessons.
  4. The implications of the study at school were as considering students behaviour in different situations. Two classes of seven grade students were taken for investigation for the present purpose. They were to watch a video lasting 5 minutes, being a bit ambiguous in meaning. Students attending CLIL lessons focus on possible outcomes of people’s actions, while students who don’t have CLIL lessons pay attention more to the action itself.
  5. We hypothesized that students in CLIL classrooms would have bigger receptive and productive vocabularies than those in mainstream education because of the larger amount of foreign language input that is available in CLIL. The vocabularies were studied from the perspectives of receptive and productive knowledge and word frequency. CLIL learners turned out to know specific vocabulary rather than their schoolmates studying in classes without CLIL lessons. Specific target language terminology is a significant contribution to increase of target language lexicon.
  6. Instructional approach is the most effective with second language learners.As CLIL is based on instructional language teaching, it helps to develop oral communication skills.
  7. Being a universally recognized though teaching CLIL means using diverse methods and forms of classroom practice, and implication of collaborative teaching.
  8. CLIL increases learners’ motivation. Students tend to hurry to CLIL lessons, and are always eager to be involved in different activities at the lesson.

The use of Content and Language Integrated Learning is considered a new pattern in language and subject teaching as for integrating both parts (linguistic and factual) into teaching. Next, it responds to the needs of globalization and uses lingua franca as a means of communication within multinational communities. The practical employment of this teaching approach is expected, although it is quite demanding for the participating learners and teachers. CLIL emphasizes effective learning outcomes, cognitive knowledge, critical thinking, and real life use of a language in the subject’s background. Learners acquire the basic structures for communication in a foreign language which is being developed.

The use of Content and Language Integrated Learning is considered a new pattern in language and subject teaching as for integrating both parts (linguistic and factual) into teaching. Next, it responds to the needs of globalization and uses lingua franca as a means of communication within multinational communities. The practical employment of this teaching approach is expected, although it is quite demanding for the participating learners and teachers. CLIL emphasizes effective learning outcomes, cognitive knowledge, critical thinking, and real life Learners acquire the basic structures for communication in a foreign language which is being developed.

References

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