14 January, 2019
Venue:
British Council Invalides Center
Turner Room
9 rue de Constantine 75007 Paris
Métro: Invalides
Please note that due to the school vacation, the booking date and early bird rates have been extended to Thursday 10 January 2019
Member School: Early Bird 105€ (Late Fee: 125€)
Non-member School: Early Bird 130€ (Late Fee: 145€)
Booking Procedure and Terms Booking Information
Booking for the event closes 8 January 2019 11:30 PM
Early Bird rate is offered until 1 January 2019 11:30 PM.
Late fee runs from 2 January - 8 January, 11:30 PM
A booking is confirmed once payment has been received.
The fee includes lunch and morning coffee.
Phil Ball is a British writer based in Spain. After finishing University, Ball took up an English teaching post in a state comprehensive school in Hull. He subsequently taught in Peru and later Oman, eventually moving to San Sebastián.
Phil Ball is prominent in the world of language education, and has authored a wide variety of scholastic material for the Basque and Spanish curriculum. He specialises in the area known as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and has contributed a number of articles and publications to the field. His latest book, 'Putting CLIL into Practice' (2015, Oxford University Press), co-authored with Keith Kelly and John Clegg, offers a new theory of practice for teachers based on what Ball calls 'the three dimensions of content'. His series of textbooks for 12 year-old learners in Spain, 'Subject Projects' was nominated for the Innovation Awards in Education at the ELTONS in London, in 2016.
Programme
(For upper Primary and above grades.)
Bullock wrote in 1975 that ‘all teachers are language teachers’, a statement that was intended to herald the dawn of ‘language across the curriculum' in Britain. He was misunderstood (and usually quoted out of context), but we now understand what he meant. He was not exhorting subject teachers to become teachers of language but rather to make them aware of the impact of language on their subject. He wanted teachers to become more aware of the transversal role of language, and to make their learners aware of this too.
CLIL and other plurilingual approaches have finally helped us to understand this message. Effective teachers in bilingual contexts make language issues salient, and draw their students’ attention to key academic vocabulary and the discourse of their particular subjects. They do not need to be language teachers to do this but rather they need to understand how to extend their methodological repertoires to cover this necessity. The new acronym for this approach is LEST (Language Enhanced Subject Teaching) and it makes good sense. The other advantage of LEST is that in schools which use a bilingual or plurilingual approach, collaboration between subject and language teachers leads to the professional development of both, because language teachers also become more ‘content aware’ and more sensitive to the particular discourse that their subject-teaching colleagues need to work with.
The Three Dimensions of Content: The world of CLIL is basically conceptual, procedural and linguistic. At any point in a lesson, the teacher may find that one of these dimensions is more prominent than the other. If the conceptual dimension (demand) is high then the linguistic demand is probably similar. In this case, the teacher, as in a mixing-studio, can turn down the procedural volume, and make the ‘how’ the quieter/easier of the three dimensions. The combinations are various, but this is good teaching – adjusting the ‘volumes’ according to the shifting demands.
It’s a powerful idea, that we employ conceptual content, by means of procedural choices (cognitive skills), using specific language derived from the particular discourse context. It is the interplay amongst the dimensions that lies at the heart of CLIL practice. The concepts are ultimately understood by doing something, using a certain type of discourse.
Assessment (in 3 dimensions): Assessment is a crucial topic in all areas, and, to quote the cliché, CLIL is no exception. Teachers and researchers alike will never be convinced of the value of a new distinct paradigm unless the assessment model is clear from the outset. In CLIL, this has not been the case, and it has generated controversy as a consequence. The controversy has usually surrounded the issue of whether we test content, language or both – an issue complicated by the fact that CLIL has developed into two distinct types, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ – where the overall aims differ.
A further problem is that teachers are often culturally and politically obliged to ‘test’ their students summatively, and must therefore think of ways to do this fairly, in a CLIL-based context. The process-led nature of CLIL tends to favour more formative (continuous) approaches, but both means of assessment are perfectly valid.
In subject learning, the student must perform in such a way that he/she is demonstrating similar skills and understanding as a native speaker of the same cognitive age. Continuous assessment and its accompanying criteria must also be established with care, and its presence in the curriculum must be supported by all stakeholders.
The ‘three dimensions of content’ (conceptual, procedural and linguistic) enables teachers to ‘weigh’ the disparate elements of the assessment tools that make demands on the student. In CLIL, if the languagedemand is not supported by proceduraland conceptualadjustments, then we may be judging the student unfairly. Of course, the concepts must be learned as efficiently as in the L1, or else the whole CLIL venture is pointless. But by considering the assessment tools from a 3-dimensional perspective, it is often easier to judge the students fairly.
SCHEDULE
9:30-12:30 The 3 Dimensions of Content
- Warmer
- Introduction to theme
- Tasks in groups
- Tie-ups/conclusions
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:30 Assessment in 3 Dimensions
- Assessment in general
- Assessment in CLIL
- How to assess competences
- Tasks in groups
- Tie-up/conclusions
