Enhancing effectiveness of CLIL through writing

1. Enhancing effectiveness of CLIL through writing Barbara Loranc-Paszylk The Academy of Technology and Humanities, Bielsko-Biała POLAND

2. Issues to consider: effectiveness of CLIL from a linguistic perspective • Development of productive skills (the comprehensible output hypothesis by Swain, 1985) • Development of academic skills (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency by Cummins, model CALLA by Chamot and O’Malley)

3. Iluk (1997) enumerates practical objectives of writing: Makes the students employ certain vocabulary items, phrases, syntactical structures; Revises the material covered during the lesson; Enhances the progress of the learner by the means of homework; Provides visual support (especially for learners with a visual modality preference); Helps to prepare for the oral communication; Verifies/controls the processing of material acquired during reading and listening; Integrates reading with listening; Draws the learner’s attention to the difference between the spoken and written language; Allows more stress-free learning context in the process of language learning Why writing? (how does writing influence lg learning)

4. Writing and lg learning One of the stages of writing a piece of discourse is inserting the lexical material (both single elements and phrases coordinating these elements to fit the whole (syntactic adjustements, coherence and cohesion) (Dakowska, 2005)

5. Why academic language skills in CLIL? • Students need to develop academic language skills to be able to summarise, analyze, ewaluate, construct texts, interpret diagrams, tables and select relevant information; • Academic language skills are adapted to the cognitive level of the students, develop critical thinking; • Teaching Academic Language skills signifies the progress from Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) to Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) and abstract thinking; • Academic skills should be taught in the context of authentic academic materials (Adamson, 1989)

6. Skills necessary to process textual information in academic writing (Horowitz, 1986) • Selection of relevant information from the text sources; • Reorganisation of information in the view of task response; • Encoding information into academic English

7. Argumentative vs expository • Why expository texts can be particularly suitable for CLIL classes? -The main aim of expository texts is to inform and explain -The main aim of argumentative texts is to persuade and justify the opinion • Expository texts can be divided into following structures (Meyer,1985, 1999) 1. Description 2. Sequence 3. Causation 4. Problem/solution 5. Comparison/contrast

8. Teaching text structures • Extensive discourse reading (time-consuming) • Explicit teaching (Rose, 1983) means: • Introducing the structures on the real life examples; • Applying the structure to the context of students work; • Teaching comparison/contrast structures not only as a text structure but also as a cognitive strategy or as a way to organize information; • Building up the range of skills towards the more advanced ones (first summarising, then analyzing)

9. Parallel order: I. Introduction (announces comparing two people II. Main idea (person A) -item A1 (appearance) -item A2 (behaviour) -item A3 (personality) III. Main idea (person B) -item B1 (appearance) -item B2 (behaviour) -item B3 (personality) IV. Conclusion Point-by-point order I. Introduction II. Main idea (appearance) -item A1 (person A) -item B1 (person B) III. Main idea (behaviour) -item A2 (person A) -item B2 (person B) IV. Main idea (personality) -item A3 (person A) -item B3 (person B) V. Conclusion Structures of the comparison/contrast essay (Scull, 1987; Leki, 1998)

10. One of basic rhetorical patterns used in academic discourse; Comparing and contrasting is a typical academic task (Skull, 1987); It is a universal rhetorical pattern – comparing/contrasting can be applied in almost all subjects taught through a foreign language, it can also be applied to a wide range of issues, ideas, documents, etc. It is very practical and convenient for the teacher: topics for essays can give a fresh perspective on a given issue, and selecting two aspects/documents to be compared is usually easy to find within textual material of a given class It is one of the most difficult rhetorical patterns as far as the organizational structure is concerned – it makes students develop good habits in keeping their writing organized and structured; It can be written with reference to source material, so students must first comprehend the source text, select relevant data and then organize it according to the comparison/contrast pattern Why comparison/contrast is useful in CLIL classes

11. Comparison/contrast and learning the content • Organizing information and structuring the essay according to the comparison/contrast pattern can be a very effective strategy of learning the content (Hamman, 2003) • Writing comparison/contrast essays can serve as a testing method for the teacher to check students’ progress in content knowledge

12. Experiment details 1. The students and the setting : 69 students of the International Relations at the Academy of Technology and Humanities (2nd year of undergraduate studies) • 34 students of the experimental groups (CLIL) studying social studies in English: (group A: History of European Integration & group B: British Civilization) • 35 students of the control groups (traditional language classes) 2. The method: • time exposure: 90minutes per week during 2 sem. (60 hours in total for the whole course)

13. Materials The experimental groups used the following course materials: • main textbooks: European Integration. From the Idea to Practice.(Buszello & Misztal, 2003);British Civilization. An introduction. (Oakland, 2002). • internet sources: www.europa.eu www. bbc.co.uk • Handouts prepared by the teacher with explicit instruction on academic writing (Leki, 1998) • Grammar exercises (selected topics)

14. Grammar compotent • Students self-studying • Teacher preparing selected excercises as feedback for errors appearing in students’ essays

15. Collaborative tasks: Preparing reading exercises for the rest of the group (adapting texts from the Internet) i.e. gap -filling, true or false questions, completing texts with missing words/paragraphs, comprehension questions; Presenting viewpoints – role play; Class debates and discussions; Vocabulary quizzes Individual work: Reading assigned texts for a given class; Writing summaries of original documents/authentic materials; Writing comparison/contrast essays (400 words); Grammar exercises Examples of students’ activities:

16. 1. Compare and contrast the results of the conference in the Haque in 1969 and the Paris summit in 1974. 2. Compare and contrast the Bretton Woods system and the European Monetary System 3. Compare and contrast the customs union, free trade area and the single market 4. Compare and contrast two documents: the Draft Treaty and the Single European Act 5. Compare and contrast trade in Europe before and after introducing the Euro currency 6. Compare and contrast the Mastricht (convergence) criteria and the Copenhagean criteria 7. Compare and contrast the European cititizenship and the national citizenship 8. Compare and contrast the position of legal and illegal immigrants in the EU 9. Compare and contrast the British, French and Greman visions of future of European Union 10. Compare and contrast two treaties: the Maastricht Treaty and the Constitutional Treaty List of topics for homework –The History of European Integration group

17. 1.Compare and contrast Britain’s position in the European Union and the Commonwealth 2. Compare and contrast sources of British law 3. Compare and contrast civil and criminal proceedings in Britain 4. Compare and contrast programms of the Conservatives and the Labour party 5. Compare and contrast trade in Europe before and after introducing the Euro currency 6. Compare and contrast two legal professions in Britain: solicitors and barristers 7. Compare and contrast the position of men and women on the labout market in Britain 8. Compare and contrast trade unions in Poland and Britain 9. Compare and contrast the national health systems in Poland and Britain 10. Compare and contrast housing in Poland and Britain List of topic for homework –British Civilisation group

18. Experiment hypotheses: 1. The experimental groups will make bigger progress than the control groups in: • Academic Reading; • Academic Writing; • Use of English test 2. The experimental groups will make comparable progress

19. pre- and post-testing • Academic writing IELTS max 36 points in four categories: • -task response 1-9; -coherence and cohesion 1-9; -lexical resource 1-9; -grammatical range and accuracy1-9. • Academic reading IELTS • Grammatical competence CAE Use of English

20. The experimental groups: Progress in Academic Reading: 21% Progress in Academic Writing: 23% Progress in Use of English: 20% The control groups: Progress in Academic Reading: 1% Regress in Academic Writing: -1% Progress in Use of English: 4% Testing results: the experimental and control groups

21. Diagram 1: Progress in Use of English – group results

22. Diagram 2. Individual students results: progress in Use of English

23. Diagram 3. Progress in Academic Reading – group results

24. Diagram 4. Individual students results – progress in Academic Reading

25. Diagram 5. Progress in Academic Writing –group results

26. Diagram 6. The experimental groups results in Academic reading

27. The experiment results: 1. The experimental groups have made bigger progress than the control groups the experimental groups’ results in Academic Reading exceeded the control groups’ results by 20% • Academic Writing – by 24% • Use of English test – by 16% 2. The experimental groups have made comparable progress: In Academic Reading: group A - 21% group B-20% In Academic Writing: group A – 24% group B-22% In Use of English tests: group A – 20%, group B - 20%

28. Questionnaire #1 • The experimental groups’ students were asked to self-evaluate their overall progress in English language learning

29. Questionnaire #2 • The experimental groups’ students were asked to self-evaluate their overall progress in development of lexical competence

30. Questionnaire #3 • The experimental groups’ students were asked to self-evaluate their overall progress in development of grammatical competence

31. Questionnaire #4 • The experimental groups’ students were asked to self-evaluate their overall progress in development of academic reading skills

32. Ouestionnaire #5 • The experimental groups’ students were asked to self-evaluate their overall progress in development of academic writing skills

33. References: • Adamson, D.(1990). ESL students' use of academic skills in content courses. English for Specific purposes. 9,67-87. • Iluk , J. (1997). Curriculare Entscheidungen zur Entwicklung der Schriebfertigkeit im FSU”In: Iluk (ed.) Probleme der Schreibentwicklung im Fremdsprachenunterricht.Katowice 1997, . 11-31. • Chamot, A.U. i O'Malley, J.M. (1987). A Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach: A Bridge to the Mainstream. TESOL Quarterly, 21,227-247. • Cummins, J. (1999). Immersion education for the millennium: What we have learned from 30 years of research on second language immersion. Toronto: OISE. (See also web-references). • Hammann, L.A. (2003). Instructional approaches to improving students’ writing of compare-contrast essays. Journal of Literacy Research: • Horowitz, D. (1986). What professors actually require: Academic tasks for the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly 20 (3), 445–62. • Leki, I. (1998). Academic writing. Exploring Processes and Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Meyer, B.J.F. (1985). Prose analysis: Purpose procedures and problems: Parts I and II. In B.K. Britton&J.B. Black (Eds.), Understanding Expository Text Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. • Rose, M. (1983). Remedial writing courses: A critique and a proposal. College English, 4, 109-128. • Scull, Sharon, D.(1987). Critical reading & writing for advanced ESL students. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc