On my way, some reflections

The day that our Dutch cabinet fell over the issue of the NATO mission to Afghanistan, was the day I flew out to Valencia. Months earlier I had applied for a grant from Europees Platform to finance a professional development course under the title of State of the Art CLIL. A term I didn´t know before but which stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. This (Comenius) course took my interest as it focuses on the issue of how to teach and learn about particular subjects in a language that is not your native language.
A number of years before I had experimented with an international module (taught in English)for a few years in a row about trends and perspectives in culture & society. The approach was quite innovative in the way that our students attended an 8 week course in English, were provided with only English language study materials and articles and moreover, had to take turns in chairing the different sessions themselves (in pairs). Supportive materials in how to handle these tasks were provided and my role became one of coaching / tutoring the students to make sure they kept on the right track and tackled the subject matter in depth.
With each group that I coached at the time, it was fascinating to see how the proficient English speakers and the more communicative students dominated the first sessions.
In the breaks that we took I always tried to stimulate the more silent students and coax them gently into more active participation in the discussions that were taking place in class. It wasn´t as if they had nothing to say, it appeared.....
After some probing I found out that many of the silent students had been told (by their teachers of English at secondary school) that they were failures as far as English was concerned.
Once I´d found that out, I adapted my strategy a little. During the initial introductory session led by me, I specifically addressed this issue and asked them to support each other in expressing their views. I also recommended bringing along dictionaries to class and encouraged them to consult them whenever they felt they lacked the vocabulary to express themselves. These proved to be successful strategies, as I saw more and more students joining the discussions and just doing their best in using the English that they knew AND developing their English language skills !
Another barrier I identified was this: the students in the chair often tried to open up debates by asking open questions but got frustrated from time to time when there was little response. Gradually I found out that this was mainly due to two factors: one was the occasional, complicated phrasing of the question. It was often simply too difficult to start discussing immediately. Another cause was the length of the question and the time to ¨absorb¨ the question, which prevented students from responding.
Realising this, I sometimes decided to intervene to clarify the questions put to the group and pointed out the importance of asking clear questions to facilitate interesting dialogues on the issues that were raised and to take some time before inviting anybody to respond.
By doing this, I became aware that students were also learning things at a different level; they saw that the clearer you communicate yourself, the more you stimulate the group to join and contribute. And the better you involve a group, the more valuable the experience and the discussions become. Two beneficial side effects I would never have imagined before I started out with these sessions. Fascinating !
So when I saw what CLIl entailed, I felt straight away that this would be a very welcome professional development step for me.
Writing this on my way to Valencia I hope to contribute some of these experiences to the CLIL course tomorrow or any of the coming days.