Proud to be tvmbo - Kortlopend Onderwijsonderzoek

make their content comprehensible to their students. There is a growing awareness of
how language can be part of content classes, but teachers need to be given the time to
learn about teaching language and content together. We go into this matter in more detail
below.
Language learning
Teachers need to be aware about various aspects of the language of their subject.
Genesee, for example, recommends that teachers should understand theories about bilingualism
and second language development (Genesee 2007). Teaching a subject
through English involves more, too, than just helping students to learn new words. The
literature also suggests that teachers should learn about the academic language of their
subject: teachers need to be aware of the aspects of language which are common in
their subject, the functions of language (e.g. comparing, classifying, predicting, justifying,
persuading, solving problems), the grammar involved in learning their subject, as
well as subject vocabulary. Moreover, teachers need to learn to recognize language
learning opportunities: vocabulary and grammar, but also language skills. They also
need to be aware of the different types of texts which are used in their subjects, so as to
help students to produce these.
Language awareness
It is important to help students, too, to realise that every lesson is also a language lesson.
One way of doing this is to think about and formulate language as well as content
aims for lessons. Teachers need to learn how to find or create comprehensible input
and to recognize language learning opportunities: this takes some time to learn. They
need to think about a variety of language skills (listening, viewing, reading, speaking
and writing) when lesson planning and to include a variety of these language skills in
each lesson.
Interaction and writing
Furthermore, CLIL teachers need to learn to help tvmbo students interact about their
subject in the classroom, and to produce output (spoken, written and practical output).
They need to be skilled in, for example, cooperative learning (Genesee, 2007) so that
what Genesee calls “high quality exchanges between teachers and pupils” can occur.
Collaboration
From the methodology literature as well as from the earlier literature research, collaboration
between English and subject teachers seems to be key (e.g. Lorenzo et al, 2010)
in making a success of bilingual teaching. Subject teachers are experts in their own
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