Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Y.L. Teresa Ting
instruction is sufficiently familiar to support, rather than interfere with,
content-learning (e.g. Ex 2). Without such FL-expertise, content teachers risk
embedding unfamiliar content into unfamiliar language which would, as
stated early, not only deter science education but quench any love for the FL.
Excerpt 2.
A pipe with a wide mouth and a narrow
stem. It is used to channel liquid or finegrained
substances into containers with a
small opening.
Funnel
The third area of FL-expertise needed for developing effective content-driven
CLIL is b ased on the fact that task-based and purpose-oriented activities are the
staple of FL-instruction. Granted that students may do science experiments,
simply doing experiments is no guarantee that learners have comprehended
the science behind their observations (Wellington and Osborne, 2001): handson
activities must be transformed into ‘minds-on’ understanding through
language use (Webb, 2010; Osborn et al., 2010). Cultivating proper ways of
speaking and writing about new knowledge is the first step towards general
literacy as well as science literacy (Pearson et al., 2010).
Thus the fourth reason CLIL needs FL-expertise: FL-educators are familiar with
the concept of communicative competence – the right language for the right occasion,
adept at moving classroom discourse from BICS to CALP (CLIL-Operand-2). In
fact, it should not surprise FL-practitioners that literacy-driven minds-on
engagement with language enhances content education regardless of whether
it is our L1 or a FL (Lorenzo, 2010). Unfortunately, content teachers often do
not consider ‘language’ an integral component of discipline-instruction.
Therefore, rather than instructing learners on how to engage with, comprehend
and then generate academic language, science teachers often bypass
discipline-discourse through language simplification (Wellington and Osborn,
2001), inadvertently contributing therefore, to not only science-illiteracy, but
confirming that ‘real science’ is incomprehensible.
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