Practice Activities – CLIL

SUBJECT PRACTICE ACTIVITIES:

CONTENT & LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING
GENERAL INFORMATION:

The subject practice activities consist of doing individually five short exercises. The
document must fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: 3 pages (without including cover, activities’ statements, index or

appendices –if there are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Size: 11.
- Line height: 1.5.
- Alignmen: Justified.

Besides, the activities have to be done in this Word document: leave the activities’
statements where they are and just answer below them. In order to make the correction
process easier, please, do not write the answers in bold, and it will then be easier to
distinguish between them and the activities’ statements. On the other hand, the
document must still fulfil the rules of presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for
quoting and making bibliographical references as detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject

Evaluation” document. Sending it to the teacher’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the “Subject Evaluation” document.

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 Practice Activities – CLIL

Name and surname(s):Piñeyro, Romina Paola

Group: 2017-02
Date: 3/10/2017

Practice Activities

Do the following exercises and justify your answers.

Task 1

Look at the contents of the grammar in the following indexes. What do they have
in common? What was the criterion used to select the content?

New Headway Pre-intermediate, by John Soars (OUP, 2000).

An extract from a textbook designed for the teaching/ learning of EFL and addressed to Pre-intermediate
students

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Adventure Elementary OUP

This is an extract from a textbook designed for the teaching/ learning of EFL and addressed to
Elementary students.

In these two extracts from different books, New Headway Pre Intermediate and
Adventure Elementary, the contents have been selected probably on a criterion of
learnability and utility. If we consider that learnability is the criterion for grading the
content according to student´s cognitive level, it is possible that the design of these
contents are aimed adolescents or pre adolescents groups, considering the topics that
accompany the grammar contents. As regards utility, the grammar points have been
designed and organized along the different units to fit the topics chosen for
communication, given that both books are meant to be used by pupils around the world
and, because of that, the relevant structures needed for suiting these communication
objectives are general and useful to be applied in the proposed communicative
situations which, in each book, are highlighted under the headings of functions. I can
see that here again there is a lot of emphasis on the learnability criterion more than the
utility one, that is to say, I perceive, especially in the case of English Adventure
Elementary, that the purpose is vague. In the words of Philip Ball (2009) “there
appears to be a problem that was never solved by methodological innovation alone.
The question of content – and then of the methodology that best works alongside it –

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are crucial considerations when discussing the issue of paradigm change in language
teaching”

Task 2

What are the differences between the following tables of contents? What do they
suggest you?

(Adapted from “Galaxy 2”)

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Adventure Elementary OUP

In this case, the difference between the two examples of contents selected is very
differently devised. In the first case taken from Galaxy 2, there is a clear intention of
working in an integrated way, that is to say, closer to a CLIL methodology, since the
headings suggest that there is articulation between the different areas explored all
connected by a common thread: the topic selected for each unit. Still, there is a need
for improvement in the sense that we cannot appreciate whether it fits the rest of the
curriculum, and whether the topics selected only serve the purpose of language
teaching making other probable contents “disposable” (Ball,2009). The second
example is clearly older and follows a pattern more to do with the Grammar Approach.
Language items and structures are presented in such a way that there is no interaction
with other topics, and the criterion of utility has been completely not taken into
consideration. It presents a series of contents to be taught in a given order but at the
same time there is no presence of purpose. The answer to the question “what for” that
Ball (2009) proposes is completely neglected. However, there is a suggestion as to
how to introduce the different items enumerated in an attempt to articulating it with
Phonetics and suprasegmental aspects connected with intonation. Still, there is no
contextualization for the learning to take place which should be the priority and which,
in the case of Galaxy 2, HAS been taken into consideration.

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Task 3

Look at the following activity. What type of methodological practice does it

promote?

Language study
Words ending in s
Look at the transcripts below of David and Bridges talking about their families (section 26b
and 19).
How many words are there ending in s or ‘s?
Does the s or ‘s always mean the same?
Some words always end in s, for example, his.
What about this one?
I’ve got one brother and he’s got two daughters.
Put the words ending in s or ‘s into categories.

Bridget’s family
DA: If we look at, erm, your mother Sheila. Has she got any brothers and sisters?
BG: Yes, she’s got one sister.
DA: No brothers?
BG: No.
DA: Okey. What about your father?
BG: He’s got three sisters.
DA: Oh, and no brothers?
BG: No.

David’s family
BG: Now it’s my turn. Your father’s called John?, and your mother’s called Pat?
DA: That’s right.
BG: And your brother’s married to… Jane?
DA: Jane. Good.
BG: Jane. And they’ve got two daughters called… Emma and Sarah.

Now look at the text in Section 24. Find thirteen more words that end in s and put
them into categories.

ADAPTATION FROM Collins Cobuild English Course (Willis and Willis 1988:15)

It clearly follows a structural methodological practice focusing on grammar and lexis.

There is a lot of focus on the way words are formed and finding examples of those
inflections seems to be more important than understanding the text as a whole and
making sense of it. Besides, when the learner must turn to the text in Section 24, he or

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she is supposed to find even more examples of the target structure, repeating the task
without contextualising the task.

Task 4

What type of objectives would you include the following statements in?

LISTENING
I can understand simple words and phrases, like “excuse
me”, “sorry”, “thank you”, etc.
I can understand the days of the week and months of the
year.
I can understand times and dates.
I can understand numbers and prices.

GRAMMAR
Adjectives: common and demonstrative
Adverbs of frequency
Comparatives and superlatives
Going to […]

British Council, Level A1 – English Foreign Language

The first set of statements I would include them in Outcome Objectives since they
clearly describe the production that can be carried out by the student, while the other
set, the Grammar Contents, I would include them under Priority Objectives, since here
the teacher can decide how to reach the outcome in a variety of ways. So, the first
group would be set under Procedural Objectives, while the other under Conceptual
Objectives.

Task 5

What does the following information gap activity suggest you?

Student A

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COUNTRY CAPITAL

France

Dublin

Spain

Amsterdam

Belgium

Student B

COUNTRY CAPITAL

Paris

Ireland

Madrid

The Netherlands

Brussels

This activity seems to be part of a communicative activity, since it is divided between

student A and student B, for which reason I deduce there is expected to be some sort
of interaction between the learners, in which they have question and answer sentences
related to Countries and Capitals. It could be interpreted that if this activity were part of
a CLIL proposal, the student would be using the target language, applying a variety of
structures and WH questions and at the same time he would be using the language as
a tool for the real content which, in this case would be Countries and Capitals of the
world. A topic related to Social Studies and Geography, depending on the School
Curriculum.

REFERENCES:

 Ball, Philip (2009) Content and Language Integrated Learning. FUNIBER

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